1713, and he appears to have done the same just previously at Blandford St. Mary, where the memorial tablet, which mentions the virtues of his parents and the facts of his own wandering life and pious restorations, bears the date 1712. His death took place at Swallowfield, near Reading, on April 28th, 1726, and he was buried at Blandford St. Mary on May 21st.

The wife of this strange character-a man of fortune and wide travel was a woman of good position and connection. She was a daughter of Sir James Innis, of Reidhall, in the county of Moray, and her mother was Lady Grizel Stuart, daughter of the Earl of Moray. She and her husband can hardly be said to have lived in great harmony together, and she outlived him only nine months, dying in January, 1727. Robert, the eldest son, after his father's death, resided chiefly at Boconnoc, and died there in 1736. He had married Harriet Villiers, sister of Earl Grandison, and two sons were born to them-Thomas, the eldest, who inherited Boconnoc and most of the landed estates, and William, who became the great orator and Statesman so well known as Earl of Chatham. There is a tradition that the Great Commoner was born at the Manor House at Stratford-underCastle, but I can find no trace of his ever being at Blandford St. Mary, though it is not unlikely that he attended the funeral of his father, who certainly lies buried in the church.

The second son of Governor Pitt was Thomas, who married a daughter of Robt. Ridgway, Earl of Londonderry, a descendant of one of the first colonists planted by Elizabeth in N. Ireland. On the decease of the Earl, Thos. Pitt was created a Baron, and later in 1726 was advanced to a viscounty and earldom of the same title as his father-in-law. He was M.P. at various times for Wilton and Old Sarum, and in 1727 was appointed Governor of the Leeward Islands, and after not quite two years of office died at St Kits on September 12th, 1727. So great was the regard paid to the old Dorset home that the body was brought over the ocean and laid beside his father in St. Mary's Church, where the coffin was

seen and identified, with others, during the restoration in 1863. He left two sons, Thomas and Ridgway, who each in turn became earls, and are also buried at St. Mary's. Neither left issue, and the earldom in that family became extinct.

The family property at Blandford St. Mary and on the other side of the Stour descended with the Cornish and other estates to the head of the family. On the death of Robert Pitt, who held office in the household of the Prince of Wales, all passed to his eldest son, Thomas-the brother of Lord Chatham. He died in 1761 shortly after the accession of George III. and before the first resignation of his great Statesman brother. He was succeeded by his eldest son, also Thomas Pitt, who took an important part in the business of the House of Commons, and is mentioned on various occasions in the public life of his most distinguished cousin, William the great Prime Minister. In 1782 we find him opposing a motion for Parliamentary reform, introduced by the Prime Minister, on the ground that the motion was inadequate and too vague and not from any opposition on principle, though the existence of the pocket-boroughs, of which he was one of the largest owners, was notoriously at stake. In the following year a similar motion was brought forward, and he gave it strong support, referring pointedly to his own position and adding that he was willing to surrender Old Sarum into the hands of the Parliament as a free sacrifice, and a victim to be offered up at the shrine of the British Constitution." He suggested further that the right to send two members might well be transferred to the Bank of England-surely an odd suggestion. The resolution was defeated by 293 votes to 149, but the part taken by the Pitt family in the question of Reform is of special interest. Within two years after this debate the King consented to the creation of some new peerages at the request of his Minister, and two of them went to Cornish gentlemen. Thomas Pitt was created Lord Camelford, and Edward Eliot became Lord St. Germans.

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Towards the end of his life Lord Camelford went to live at Florence, and shortly before his death in 1793 he wrote a letter to his cousin the Prime Minister on a subject which has a peculiar interest. It was a very cautious but kindly application for help in money for the widow of the young Pretender, Charles Edward, who was then at Florence in a condition of absolute penury. The letter did not reach till after Lord Camelford's death. Nothing apparently was done then, but later in 1800-on the proposal of W. Pitt, a yearly pension was granted to Cardinal York, the Pretender's brother.

Now we come to the last members of the family who held the Blandford St. Mary property-the second Lord Camelford and his sister, who married Lord Grenville. Lord Camelford was born in 1779, and therefore succeeded his father at the age of 14. He seems to have been a somewhat hot-headed and eccentric young man, who separated himself from the politics of his family, and has left the character of a notorious duellist. In January, 1800, when he had only just reached his majority and taken his seat, we find him, in company of five other lords, voting against an address moved by his brother-in-law, Lord Grenville. The object of the address was to agree with the Cabinet of Mr. Pitt, in declining to treat for peace with France in an irregular fashion, and without the support of England's great Continental Allies. Lord Camelford, in company with the Duke of Bedford and Lord Holland, was in a minority of 6 to 92.

There is also a story of his taking part in a debate on Reform, which he advocated, as his father had done, when he threatened to send his negro footman into Parliament as Member for one of his rotten boroughs, in order to bring the whole system into contempt. A tradition, too, of a duel lingers about a certain pond in the Down House grounds, and he ended his life at the early age of 25 in a duel fought in Hyde Park. The estates then all passed to his sister, Lady Grenville, and her husband seems for a time to have administered them for her, but very shortly the whole of the

land in these parts was sold to Sir John Smith, Bart., of St. Nicholas Sydling, and is now in the possession of his descendant, Sir William Smith-Marriott. It may, perhaps, be of some interest to add that the house now known as the Manor House had a small estate attached to it, which descended through Hussys or Browns to a Sir John Forster, whose arms are still to be seen on the ceiling of the hall, and by him it was sold to Mr. Pitt in 1755, and has since then been part and parcel of the Down House property.

The Story of the Bettiscombe Skull.*

By J. S. UDAL, F.S.A.

(Read March 2nd, 1910.)

PART I.

BETTISCOMBE: THE LEGEND OF THE SKULL

80 quiet and unobtrusive was the introduction to public notice of the story of this old skull that in the reference which heralded

its first appearance in Notes and Queries " [Circa 1872] (4th Series X., 183) no mention at all was made of its local habitat. I sent it simply as the record of a matter of pure Dorset folk-lore, a subject in which I was as keen then as I am now, and I have been collecting ever since; so that my readers may imagine what a mass of more or less undigested material those intervening years must have brought me.

* See " Notes and Queries (4th Series, X., 183); and Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries," Vol. II., p. 249; VIII., pp. 308, 343; IX., pp. 315, 350, 352.