Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/374

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Pitt
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Pitt

to Viscount Cobham. There are engravings of this portrait by Richard Houston, Edward Fisher, and others. The picture in the National Gallery, strangely misnamed 'The Death of the Earl of Chatham [in the House of Lords],' was painted by Copley in 1779-80. It was engraved under the direction of Bartolozzi by J. M. Delatre in 1820. References to a number of caricatures of Chatham will be found in the 'Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum: Political and Personal Satires' (vol. iii. pt. ii. pp. 1205-6, vol. iv. pp. lxxxii-iv). The original Blackfriars Bridge, designed by Robert Mylne, when first opened in 1769, was called 'Pitt Bridge' by order of the common council, but the name was soon afterwards dropped. The city approach to the bridge, also named after him, 'Chatham Square,' is now absorbed in New Bridge Street and the Thames Embankment. Fort Duquesne was renamed Fort Pitt, and subsequently Pittsburg, in his honour.

According to Lord Chesterfield, Chatham had 'a most happy turn to poetry, but he seldom indulged and seldomer avowed it' (Chesterfield, Letters and Works, ii. 468). Some Latin verses written by Chatham on the death of George I were published in 'Pietas Universitatis Oxoniensis in obitura serenissimi Regis Georgii I,' &c., Oxford, 1727, fol. These and some English verses addressed by Chatham to Temple and Garrick respectively are printed in Thackeray's 'History' (i. 4, 5, 172-3, ii. 250-1). Chatham published nothing himself, though more than one pamphlet has been erroneously ascribed to him. The authorship of the 'Letters of Junius' has also been attributed to Chatham, but on absurdly insufficient grounds. The connection of Francis and Junius with the reports of Chatham's speeches is the subject of an article by Mr. Leslie Stephen in the third volume of the 'English Historical Review' (pp. 233-49). Chatham's letters 'to his nephew, Thomas Pitt, esq. (afterwards Lord Camelford), then at Cambridge,' London, 1804, 8vo. were edited by William Wyndham Grenville, baron Grenville [q. v.], and have passed through several editions. His 'Correspondence' was edited by Messrs. W. S. Taylor and J. H. Pringle, the executors of the second Earl of Chatham, and 'published from the original manuscripts in their possession,' London, 1838-40, 8vo, 4 vols. A large number of Chatham's despatches and letters will be found in the Record Office and at the British Museum (see indices to the Addit. MSS. 1783-1835, 1854-75, 1876-81, 1882-7, 1888-93). Others belong to Lord Cobham (see Hist. MSS. Comm. 2nd Rep. App. p. 38). The Marquis of Lansdowne (ib. 3rd Rep. App. pp. 130-1,135, 142, 146, 6th Rep. App. p.241), Lord Leconfield (ib. 6th Rep. App. p. 315), and the Duke of Leeds (ib. 11th Rep. App. vii. 45).

He married, on 16 Nov. 1754, Hester, only daughter of Richard Grenville of Wotton Hall, Buckinghamshire, and Hester, countess Temple. His wife's brothers, Richard (afterwards Richard, earl Temple) and George, with her first cousing, George Lyttelton, and her husband, formed the famous 'Cobham cousinhood.' The marriage was a singularly happy one. They had three sons—viz.: (1) John [q.v.], who succeeded as second Earl of Chatham; (2) William (1759-1806) [q.v.], the famous statesman; and (3) James Charles, born on 24 April 1761, who entered the royal navy, became captain of H.M.'s sloop Hornet, and died off Barbados in 1781— and two daughters, viz.:(1) Hester, born on 18 Oct. 1755, who married, on 19 Dec. 1774, Charles, lord Mahon (afterwards third Earl Stanhope), and died at Chevening, Kent, on 18 July 1780, leaving three daughters, the eldest of whom was the well-known and eccentric Lady Hester Lucy Stanhope [q.v.]; and (2) Harriet, born on 18 April 1758, who married on 28 Setp. 1785, the Hon. Edward KJames Elliot, remembrancer of the exchequer, second son of Edward, secon baron Eliot of St. Germans, and died on 24 Sept. 1786, leaving an only daugher, Harriet Hester, who became the wife of Lieutenant-general Sir William Henry Pringle, G.C.B. Chatham's widow died at Burton-Pynsent, Somerset, on 3 April 1803, aged 82, when the barony of Chatham, bestowed on her on 4 Dec. 1761, devolved on her eldest son, John, second earl of Chatham. She was buried in Westminster Abbey on 16 April 1803.

For some years previously to his marriage Chatham resided at South Lodge, Enfield, Middlesex. He purchased Hayes Place, near Bromley in Kent, soon after his marriage. He rebuilr the house, and by subsequent purchases extended the grounds to about a hundred acres. Here he indulged in his favourite pursuit of landscape-gardening, sometimes even 'planting by torchlight, as his peremptory and impatient temper could brook no delay' (Walpole Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iii. 30). From 1759 to 1761 Chatham lived in the house (now numbered 10) in St. James's Square which was occupied by Mr. Gladstone in the parliamentary session of 1890. On resigning office in October 1761 Chatham gave up his town house in St. James's Square, and resolved to live entirely at Hayes. Sir William Pynsent, an eccentric Somersetshire baronet, who