Family and Education

b. c.1688, 2nd s. of Thomas Pitt of Boconnoc (d.1726 ) and bro. of Robert and John Pitt. educ. Mr. Meure’s acad. 1704. m. 10 Mar. 1717, Lady Frances Ridgeway, da. and coh. of Robert, 4th Earl of Londonderry [I], 2s. 1da. cr. Baron of Londonderry [I] 3 Jan. 1719; Earl of Londonderry [I] 8 Oct. 1726.

Offices Held

Capt. Killigrew’s regt. of Drags. 1709; col. regt. of Horse 1715-26, 3 Ft. 1726-d.; gov. Leeward Is. 1728-d.

Mayor, Wilton 1716-17.

Biography

Entering the army in 1709, with a troop of dragoons bought for 1,100 guineas, Thomas Pitt was brought in for Wilton, adjoining his father’s estate of Stratford. From 1715 he voted regularly with the Government, serving with his regiment in the rebellion.1 Marrying one of the heiresses of the Earl of Londonderry, ‘he bought’, according to his nephew, the 1st Lord Camelford, ‘the honours that were extinct in her father’. He is said to have lost over £50,000 in the South Sea bubble. Camelford describes him as a man ‘of no character, and of parts that were calculated only for the knavery of business, in which he overreached others, and at last himself’.2 This seems to relate to a petition filed in Chancery against him in November 1727 by his elder brother, Robert, as the residuary legatee of their father, alleging that Londonderry owed the estate £95,000, but that, having improperly secured possession of the Governor’s papers, he had not only denied the debt but counter-claimed for £10,000.3 Both brothers died within the next three years, Londonderry on 12 Sept. 1729 in the Leeward Islands, where he had gone as governor; but the litigation which they had started was still dragging on twenty years later.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Romney R. Sedgwick

Notes

• 1. HMC Fortescue, i. 13, 18, 38, 54.
• 2. ‘Family Characters and Anecdotes’, by the 1st Ld. Camelford, Fortescue mss at Boconnoc; J. H. Plumb, Walpole, i. 332.
• 3. HMC Fortescue, i. 85.