July and August following, the younger Fairfax and Cromwell were marching to and fro in these parts, and had invested the Castle of Sherborne, and succeeded in capturing Bridgwater on July 23rd.

Nine children, as we have seen, were born to John and Sarah Pitt, the eldest being John, who was baptised on September 13th, 1649, the year of the King's execution. The eldest daughter was Sarah, who married the Rev. Henry Willis; and after her father's death the patronage of the living was settled upon her, at the time of her marriage, by her two uncles, William, of Dorchester, and Robert, of Blandford, who had received it in trust from their brother John, the Rector. In 1674-two years after her father's death-she appears to have presented to the living her husband, and on his death their son Robert became rector and eventually patron. By him-the Rev. Robert Willis-the present Rectory was built in 1732. On his death the patronage passed to his sister, who had married John Burrough, and with that family it remained till 1850. It then passed by purchase into other hands.

We come now to speak of the Rector's second son, Thomas Pitt, who is the person on whom the chief interest of this paper rests. He is generally known to history as Governor Pitt. He was born at St. Mary's in June, 1653, and lived to the age of 73 years. He would, therefore, have been seven years old when the King was restored in 1660, and nearly 33 when Monmouth lost his cause on Sedgemoor, and wandered a fugitive and outlaw over the Dorset hills. But it would seem that some years before that date young Thomas Pitt had begun to seek his fortune in the far East, and to find occupation, profit, and excitement in the career of an unlicensed trader in the Indian seas. In those days the right to trade with India was the exclusive privilege of the East India Company, which had obtained its first charter in 1600. When we first hear of him in those seas, he apparently possessed several ships of his own, and was engaged in a system of trade which the company considered to be in distinct violation

of their own rights. Their officials strongly resented his intrusion, and under the name of an "interloper" he is frequently spoken of with severe complaint in the despatches sent home. Madras, or Fort St. George, as it was then known, was the chief factory "of the Company on the Eastern coast, and the governor of that place was Sir Strensham Master. A gentleman, who is directly descended from Sir Strensham, lent to me a book published by the Hakluyt Society, which contains various letters and documents bearing directly on this early part of the history of Thomas Pitt. This book is the Diary of Sir W. Hedges, an Indian official who collected materials for the history of Madras, which in the end he never wrote. From this diary many of my facts are drawn.

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For nine years Pitt seems to have been a thorn in the side of Sir Strensham. At one time he ordered him peremptorily to leave the country; but Pitt seems to have disregarded all such warning, and to have come and gone pretty well as he pleased. He is spoken of by the Governor as "that roughly and immoral man," and his trade is termed pyrottical." No doubt it was difficult in the early days for the Company to enforce all the authority which the English Government had intended to bestow, and the jealous rivalry of the Dutch afforded encouragement and shelter to any enemies; but on the extension of the Charter in 1661, and the cession of Bombay to them in 1668, the power and prestige of the Company was no doubt greatly increased.

Taking up again the records of Pitt's adventurous life, we find him in England in 1681-the year of Lord Shaftesbury's trial and back in India and making money fast in 1682; again returning in 1683 to the old country. We then seem to lose sight of him for five years, and in 1688 find that he has purchased the estate of Old Sarum, and is returned as one of the members for that borough in the Convention Parliament. He and Mr. J. Young, his fellow member, were soon unseated, presumably for corruption, but in the following year he was duly elected for New Sarum, and entered

Parliament. Business calls soon necessitated a return to India, though he does not appear to have vacated his seat. At this point comes the curious and sudden change in his career when the Company at last gave up the contest with him and others, whom they had regarded as "interlopers," and after negotiating a purchase of all their interests, enrolled them as members; and then finding the value of Pitt's experience and talents, gave him, in 1689, the commanding position of Governor of Madras. The appointment was made while he was in England, and he landed as Governor Pitt in 1698, which is the date at which the Dropmore Papers begin. These are the papers collected by Lord Grenville, whose wife was the last of this branch of the family. They are now in the possession of J. B. Fortescue, Esq., and were lately published by Historical MSS. Commission.

During all these years Pitt seems to have prospered greatly in money matters, and from 1688 onward we find him eager to invest money in land in the West Country, and mentioning Dorset, Wilts, and Berks with particular favour. We have already mentioned his purchase of Old Sarum, where a memorial of him still exists in the restored church tower, which bears his name in large capitals, and the Manor House -now the Vicarage-where he often resided and his son after him, which bears an inscription over the door, as placed by him, Parva sed apta domino. His agent in all these purchases was Sir Stephen Evance, and in one of his letters to this gentleman in 1704 we find the first mention of land purchased in "the place where I was born," Blandford St. Mary, but what land this was I have been unable so far to ascertain. He says that he wishes his wife to receive income from his land at Old Sarum and Blandford S. Mary, and that he will not allow her or her children one penny more, and that he may tell her that if she cannot live on that she may starve, and all her children with her." But it is quite clear that at this time he had not secured the old Manor of the parish, which had been possessed by the family of Chettle since the time of the Dissolution of the Clerkenwell

Nuns. The negotiations for this purchase went on for a long time, and are repeatedly mentioned up to 1710, when he at last acquired the estate. After this purchase the demolition of a house is spoken of, which was presumably the old Chettle Manor House, standing at the end of the avenue on the right of the hill coming up from the Brewery, where the traces of the foundation are still visible.

In the letters we hear frequently of "my house at Blandford S. Mary," but nothing more definite as to its position or name is stated. There seems good reason, however, to suppose that the older part of the present "Down House" is what he refers to, and that it was erected by him about this time. Subsequently he also purchased lands on the other side of the Stour, Keynston, Preston, &c., which were sold to him by his cousin George Morton Pitt, and are still part of the Down House Estate.

Other estates acquired by Governor Pitt were at Okehampton, in Devon, and Swallowfield, in Berks; but his greatest purchase of all, and one that gave him subsequently much trouble, was that of Boconnoc, in Cornwall. He bought it from the executors of Lord Mohun, who fell in one of the most notorious duels of those days, when he and his opponent, the Duke of Hamilton, both were killed, in the year 1712. In after years Boconnoc became the chief family residence, and it is there that the portrait of this remarkable man is still preserved, in which he is drawn with the famous diamond in his hat. And here we may perhaps well add the tale of this historic gem, which is so often mentioned in the correspondence and usually called "my grand concern." The care of it and the seeking of a purchaser was a source of endless anxiety to him, and he was latterly so annoyed with the various stories reported in social circles about his original acquisition of the treasure, that he wrote a careful account for the perusal and use of his executors. The whole document is in the Dropmore papers. The gem was found in a mine near the Kistna river by a coolie, who hid it in a wound in his leg, round which I suppose a bandage

was tied. The man made off with his prize to the coast and took passage in a small trading vessel. Suffering from nervous fears, he confided his secret to the skipper, and the skipper without scruple, according to the account, secured the gem and put the poor fellow overboard. He soon sold it to a dealer who was known to Governor Pitt, and who had instructions from him to look out for profitable treasures of any sort. A long haggle went on between Pitt and the dealer, and Pitt confesses to have beaten him down again and again, but at last agreed to pay a sum equal to about £20,000 of English money. The gem was taken home by his son Robert with the most minute orders about the way in which he was to take care of it. It is again and again mentioned in the letters, and at one time he names £800,000 as its supposed value. He offered it for sale to all the Sovereigns and rich men of Europe. In the end it was bought in 1713 for £135,000 by the Duke of Orleans, who in 1715 became Regent of France during the minority of Louis XV. It has, therefore, often been called the Regent Diamond. On the death of the Duke it became one of the Crown jewels, and in the time of the Revolution (1793) it was seized as national property. Then comes a curious story of its being stolen and recovered with other jewels from a ditch on the outskirts of Paris. Napoleon, when First Consul, pawned it for a time to a firm of Dutch bankers, and afterwards redeemed it, and it figured in his Coronation as Emperor on December 2nd, 1804, by the Pope; but whether it shone in the diadem, or whether it adorned the hilt of the Emperor's sword, is a question about which the records vary. Since then the only mention of it seems to be its inclusion in the inventory of jewels made by the Minister of Finance in 1881, and it appears that it now rests in a strong box in the cellars of his office in Paris.

So much for the diamond. We return to Governor Pitt. He left India finally in 1710, and afterwards resided in turn at the various houses on his estates. We have already mentioned his restoration of the church at Old Sarum in