Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/396

 Mecca. At Alexandria the genuineness of his conversion was tested by his being blindfolded and told to walk a distance of ten paces to the stump of a tree, said to be the fig-tree that was blasted by the curse of Jesus Christ. He succeeded in stumbling against the tree, and was accounted to have passed the ordeal with credit. Shortly after his return to Algiers, he went to Tunis, where he heard news from England and sought to obtain the means of ransom from the English consul. The latter was prepared to advance 60l., but his patroon would take no less than 100l. Later he passed into the hands of a third master, by whom he was kindly treated and finally manumitted. He remained in his service as a supercargo until 1693, when he succeeded in effecting his escape in a French vessel to Leghorn, through the agency of William Raye, the English consul at Smyrna. From Leghorn he accomplished the journey home on foot by way of Florence, Augsburg, Frankfort, Mainz, Cologne, Rotterdam, and Helvoetsluys. From Helvoetsluys he sailed to Harwich, where, upon the first night of his return, he was impressed for the navy. He obtained his release with difficulty through the agency of Sir William Falkener, a prominent Turkey merchant, with whom he had had dealings in the Levant. He then proceeded to Exeter, where he was welcomed by his father early in 1694, and was greatly relieved to find that his opportunism in adopting the creed of Islam had been condoned by his father's spiritual advisers, among them his old preceptor, Joseph Hallett (1656–1722) [q. v.] He was living in Exeter in May 1731, aged 68; but the date of his death has not been ascertained.

In 1704 Pitts published, in 8vo, at Exeter, ‘A Faithfull Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mahometans, in which is a particular Relation of their Pilgrimage to Mecca.’ This work (of which Gibbon seems to have been ignorant) is the first authentic record by an Englishman of the pilgrimage to Mecca. It gives a brief but sensible and consistent account of what the writer saw. A second edition of the ‘Faithful Account’ appeared at Exeter in 1717, 12mo; and a third, dedicated to Peter King, first lord King [q. v.], with additions and corrections, in 1731, 12mo. To this edition were added a ‘map of Mecca’ (more exactly a plan of the temple and Ka'abah) and ‘a cut of the gestures of the Mahometans in their worship.’ Pitts's narrative was also reprinted in vol. xvii. of ‘The World displayed’ (1778), and as an appendix to Henry Maundrell's ‘Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem’ (London, 1810).

[Pitts's Faithful Account; Burton's Pilgrimage to Mecca, 1893, ii. 358 sq.; Crichton's Arabia, ii. 208; Quarterly Review, xlii. 20; Dublin Univ. Mag. xxvii. 76, 213; Athenæum, 1893, ii. 697.] 

PITTS, WILLIAM (1790–1840), silver-chaser and sculptor, born in 1790, was son of a silver-chaser, to whom he was apprenticed as a boy. In 1812 he obtained the gold Isis medal from the Society of Arts for modelling. He chased a portion of the ‘Wellington Shield’ designed by Thomas Stothard [q. v.] for Messrs. Green & Ward, and the whole of the ‘Shield of Achilles’ designed by John Flaxman [q. v.] for Messrs. Rundell & Bridge. In later life he modelled, in imitation of these, a ‘Shield of Æneas,’ and a ‘Shield of Hercules’ from Hesiod, but only a portion of the former was carried out in silver. Pitts had a very prolific imagination, and gained a great reputation for models and reliefs in pure classical taste. In 1830 he executed the bas-reliefs in the bow-room and drawing-rooms at Buckingham Palace. He exhibited many of his models at the Royal Academy. He made two designs for the Nelson monument, though he was not successful in the competition. He made innumerable designs for plates; the greater part of the épergnes, candelabra, &c., for presentation at this time were designed, modelled, or chased by Pitts. He was ambidextrous, drawing and modelling equally well with either hand, and in the latter art sometimes using both at once. He was a good draughtsman, and also tried his hand at painting. He executed for publication a series of outline illustrations to ‘Virgil,’ of which only two numbers were published, and also a series of illustrations to ‘Ossian,’ of which two were engraved in mezzotint, but never published. He made similar drawings to illustrate Horace and the ‘Bacchæ’ and ‘Ion’ of Euripides.

Pitts suffered from depression caused by professional disappointments, and committed suicide on 16 April 1840 by taking laudanum at his residence, 5 Watkins Terrace, Pimlico. He married at the age of nineteen, and left five children, of whom one son, Joseph Pitts, attained some distinction as a sculptor, and in 1846 executed the bust of Robert Stephenson, now in the National Portrait Gallery.

[Gent. Mag. 1840, i. 661; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760–1893; Times, 21 April 1840.] 

PIX, MARY (1666–1720?), dramatist, born in 1666 at Nettlebed in Oxfordshire, was daughter of the Rev. Roger Griffith, vicar of that place. Her mother, whose