845 



PITISCUS, SAMUEL. 



PITT, WILLIAM, EARL OP CHATHAM. 



843 



discovery of the circulation of the blood, and several dissertations on 

 the utility of mathematics in the etudy of medicine. 



PITISCUS, SAMUEL, was born at Zutphen, March 30, 1637, and 

 in his younger days was the scholar of John Frederick Gronovius. 

 He was appointed master of the public school at Zutphen in 1685, 

 and about the same time was entrusted with the direction of the 

 college of St. Jerome at Utrecht This last employment he retained 

 till 1717, when, being in his eightieth year, ho resigned it. His most 

 important works were his ' Lexicon Latino Belgioum,' the best edition 

 of which is that published at Dort in 1725, and his ' Lexicon Antiqui- 

 tatum Romanorum,' 2 torn. foL, Leov., 1713. His editions of Quintus 

 Curtius , Solinug, Suetonius, and Aurelius Victor are well known to 

 classical scholars. He likewise edited Forney's ' Pantheon Mythicum ' 

 and Rosin's ' Antiquitatum Komanorum Corpus,' 4 to, Utrecht, 1701. 

 He prepared large collections for a ' Lexicon Catullo-Tibullo-Proper- 

 tianum.' He died February 1, 1727. He acquired considerable pro- 

 perty by his works, and is said to have left at his death ten thousand 

 florins to the poor. 



PITS, or PITSEUS, JOHN, an English biographer, was born at 

 Alton in Hampshire, A.D. 1560. He received his early education at 

 Winchester school, whence, at the age of eighteen, he was elected a 

 probationer fellow of New College Oxford, but in less than two years 

 he left the kingdom as a voluntary Romish exile, and went to Douay. 

 He went thence to Rheims, and a year afterwards to the English 

 college at Rome, where he studied seven years, and then returned to 

 hold the professorship of rhetoric and Greek at Rheims. Toward 

 the end of 1590, he was appointed governor to a youug nobleman, 

 with whom he travelled into Lorraine, and afterwards went through 

 Upper Germany and Italy. He subsequently returned to Lorraiue, 

 where he was preferred to a canonryof Verdun. When he had passed 

 two years at his new residence, Antonia, daughter of the Duke of 

 Lorraine, who had married the Duke of Cleves, invited him to Cleves 

 to be her confessor. He continued in her service twelve years, till 

 her death, when he returned a third time to Lorraine, and was pro- 

 moted to the deanery of Liverdun, where he died in 1616. The 

 leisure he enjoyed while confessor to the Duchess of Cleves enabled 

 him to compile a work which alone has made him known to posterity. 

 ' The Lives of the Kings, Bishops, Apostolical Men, and Writers of 

 England.' They were comprised in four large volumes ; the first con- 

 taining the lives of the kings, the second of the bishops, the third of 

 the apostolical men, and the fourth of the writers. The three first 

 are preserved in the archives of the collegiate church of Verdun ; the 

 fourth only was published after his dec. ase, 4to, at Paris, 1 6 1 9 and 

 1623, under the title of 'Joannis Pitsei Angli, S. Theologise Doctoris, 

 Liverduni in Lotharingia Decani, Relationum Historicarum de Rebus 

 Auglicis Tomus Primus,' &c. ; but the running title by which it is 

 most frequently quoted is ' De Illustribus Angliic Scriptoribus." In 

 this work Pits took much from Bale's book 'De Scriptoribus Majoris 

 Britannia; ' without acknowledgment, pretending at the same time to 

 abhor both Bale and his work. He also quotes Leland's ' Collectanea 

 de Scriptoribus Angliie,' which Wood asserts he never could have had 

 the means of perusing, but must likewise have taken at second hand 

 from Bale. His partiality is also great. He leaves Wycliffe and his 

 followers, together with the Scotch and Irish writers, entirely out of 

 his work, and in their room gives an account of the Roman Catholic 

 writers, such especially as had left the kingdom after the Reformation 

 in Queen Elizabeth's time, and settled at Rome, Douny, Louvain, &c. 

 This however is the btst and most valuable part of Pita's work: He 

 piil>li.-hed three small treatises, which are less known : 'De Legibus,' 

 Triers, 1592; 'De Beatitndiuc,' Ingolst., 1595; 'De Peregrinatione," 

 12mo, Dusaeldorf, 1604. The last is dedicated to the Duche-s of 

 Cleves. 



PITT, WILLIAM, EARL OF CHATHAM, was the second son of 

 Robert Pitt, Esq., of Boconnoc, near Lostwithiel, in Cornwall, by 

 Harriet Villiers, sister of the Earl of Grandison (an Irish peer), and 

 the grandson of Thomas Pitt, governor of Madras, the possessor of 

 the celebrated Pitt diamond, which, according to an account published 

 by himself, he bought in India for 24,000i, and sold to the French 

 king for 135.000/. Will-am Pitt was born at Boconnoe on the 15th of 

 November 1708. He was educated at Eton, whence he went in 1726 

 aa a gentleman commoner to Trinity College, Oxford. Through ill- 

 health he left the university without taking a degree, and made a 

 tour through France and Italy. On his return to England he obtained 

 a ccrnetcy in the Blues, and entered parliament in January 1735, as 

 one of the representatives for the borough of Old Sarum, which was 

 th 1 ) property of his family. 



He immediately joined the opposition, of which the head at this 

 time was Frederic, prince of Wales, but for the first session he took 

 no part in the proceedings of the house beyoud giving his vote. His 

 maiden speech was delivered on the 29th of April 1736, on occasion 

 of a motion made by Mr. Pulteney, for an address of congratulation 

 to his majesty on the recent marriage of the prince. Tlie motion 

 was seconded by Mr. Pitt, and was supported by his friend George 

 Lyttelton (afterwards the first Lord Ljttelton), who held the office of 

 secretary to his royal highness. The animosity between the prince 

 and his father now rose to a great height, and, among the other 

 adherents of the prince, Pitt experienced the vengeance of the court 

 by being deprived of his commission within a few days after the 



delivery of his speech. For this loss however he was recompensed 

 by being appointed by the prince one of the grooms of his bed- 

 chamber. The next occasion on which he is recorded to have taken 

 any part in the debates of the house was on an opposition motion for 

 a reduction of the army, on the 3rd of February 1738; nor did he 

 become a frequent speaker till some years later. He made another 

 speech, of more energy and vehemence than he had yet displayed, in 

 the debate on the 8th of March 1739, on the convention with Spain ; 

 but his name does not again occur in the reports of the debates, either 

 in that or in the following session. He appears to have first taken a 

 prominent part as a debater in the discussion of the successive motions 

 directed against Walpole, in January and February 1741, towards the 

 close of the seventh and last session of this the firat parliament in 

 which he had a seat. It was in one of these debates, professedly 

 on the second reading of the ministerial bill for the encouragement 

 and increase of seamen, which took place on the 27th of January, that 

 ho is made, in the report drawn up by Johnson for the ' Gentleman's 

 Magazine,' to have delivered his celebrated philippic in reply to the 

 elder Horatio Walpole (the minister's brother, and afterwards Lord 

 Walpole of Wooltertou), beginning " The atrocious crime of being a 

 young man, which the houourable gentleman has with such spirit 

 and decency charged upon m^, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor 

 deny, but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those 

 whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who 

 are ignorant in spite of experience." It is believed however that this 

 brilliant declamation is almost entirely Johnson's own ; the style at 

 any rate is certainly his, and not Pitt's. 



To the next parliament , which met in December 1741, Pitt was 

 again returned for Old Sarum. Walpole resigned in the beginning of 

 February 1742, but his retirement did not leave the road to office 

 open to Pitt, against whom tho king had conceived a violent preju- 

 dice, not only on account of the prominent and effective part he had 

 taken in the general assault upon the late administration, but more 

 especially in consequence of certain strong opinions he had expressed 

 on the subject of Hanover, and the public mischiefs arising from his 

 majesty's partiality to the interests of that electorate. It is under- 

 stood also that Pulteney, the framer of the new ministry, owing to a 

 dislike which existed between his friend Lord Carteret (afterwards 

 Earl of Granville), who now became one of the secretaries of state, 

 and Lord Cobham, the friend and relation of Pitt, Lyttelton, and 

 George Greuville, found it impossible or unadvisable to bring any 

 one of the three last-mentioned persons into office for the present, 

 although the most distinguished members of his party. Grenville's 

 elder brother Richard (afterwards Earl Temple) and Lyttelton'a father 

 had married sisters of Lord Cobham, and Pitt's elder brother was 

 married to a sister of Lyttleton's. 



The nominal head of the new ministry was Lord Wilmington, who 

 held the office of first lord of the treasury ; but when Walpole, in a 

 few mouths after his own fall, had contrived to extinguish Pulteney by 

 forcing him into the House of Lords, where, from being the most 

 popular and powerful man in England, he suddenly dropped down into 

 a nonentity as Earl of Bath, the real supremacy in the cabinet was 

 divided, or rather contended for, between Cartei-et and the two 

 Pelhams, the elder of whom, the Duke of Newcastle, was the other 

 secretary of ptate, his brother Henry Pelham being paymaster-general. 

 Wilmington died in July 1743, and although by Walpole's advice Mr. 

 Pelham was then appointed first lord of the treasury and chancellor of 

 the exchequer, Carteret notwithstanding derived from the favour of 

 the king a power really superior to that of his rival, and upon which 

 his bold and impetuous character made him presume in a manner 

 equally offensive to the public and to his colleagues. lu this state of 

 affairs Pitt soon threw himself ngaiu into opposition, and became more 

 active and acrimonious in his denuuciations of the new ministry than 

 he had ever been in inveighing against Walpole himself. On the 

 subject of the king's Hanoverian partialities in particular, to his 

 sympathy with which Carteret was understood chiefly to owe his 

 influence over the royal mind, the eloquent commoner was now louder 

 and more eloquent than ever. He and Lytteltou are also said to have 

 both been members of the secret committee of six, headed by Bubb 

 Dodington (afterwards Lord Melcombc), by which all the operations 

 of the opposition were now directed. 



Carteret, now become Lord Granville, was dismissed a few days 

 before the opening of the session of parliament in November 1744 ; 

 and what was called the ' Broad-Bottom Ministry ' wa? formed, with 

 Mr. Pelham in reality, as well as in appearance, at its head. But 

 although his friends George Grenville and Lyttelton both obtained 

 places in the new arrangement, Pitt's time was not yet come: his 

 recent conduct in fact had given additional provocation to the king. 

 From this date however he ranged himself among the supporters of 

 the administration, and not merely softened his tone touching Hanover 

 and other delicate points, but even did not scruple to unsay a good 

 deal of what had in past yejrs formed the staple of his oratory. 



In the beginning of 1746 an attempt was made by the Duke of 

 Newcastle to overcome the king's repugnance to tho admission of Pitt 

 into office ; but the insinuations of Pulteuey are said to have been 

 employed to strengthen the royal aversion, and his majesty made a 

 desperate struggle to escape the threatened infliction. On the 10th 

 of February Lord Bath was actually named first lord of the treasury, 



