Note 410 — Chapter XXIV

Thomas Pitt of Boconnock, only son of Thomas Pitt, elder brother of the famous William Pitt, by the eldest sister of George Lord Lyttelton. [He inherited from his father the borough of Old Sarum, for which he brought himself into Parliament in 1761. In 1763 he was made a Lord of the Admiralty. In 1784 created Lord Camelford. He went abroad for his health in 1787, and died at Florence in 1793. The letters addressed to him when a student at Cambridge, by Lord Chatham, have attached an interest to his name beyond what belongs to his political career; and it is singular that he should, at the very outset of his public life, have abruptly separated from one whose opinions up to that time he seems to have entirely shared. Their connection was not afterwards resumed, though, as Lord Chatham’s relative, he returned thanks (rather coldly) to the House for the marks of distinction conferred on that great man’s memory. He is described by his son-in-law, Lord Grenville, “as combining a steadiness of principle and a correctness of judgment with an integrity of heart, which produced the affectionate attachment from those who knew him that has followed him beyond the grave.” Many of his letters during his residence abroad are printed in Nichols’s Illustrations of Literary History, vol. vi. p. 75; they show more amiability of disposition than power of mind, and were scarcely worth being preserved. On the death of his only son the title became extinct.—E.]