PITT, WILLIAM (1759-1806), English statesman, second son of William Pitt, earl of Chatham, and of Lady Hester Gren ville, was born at Hayes, near Bromley, Kent, on May 28, 1759, in the year of the pinnacle of his father's glory. Both because of his extreme delicacy and because his father was an early critic of the public school system, he was educated at home under the tutorship of the Rev. Edward Wilson of Pembroke Hall, Cam bridge, and the earnest supervision of Chatham himself—a plan which tended to the intensive development of the child's unusual precocity. Before he was ten years old he was a good classical scholar : at 13 he had composed a strange political tragedy tino, King of Chersonese. In Oct. 1773, in his 15th year, he went into residence at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where his tutor was the Rev. Dr. George Pretyman (he changed his name in 1803 to Tomline), to whom Pitt in later years awarded the bishopric of Lincoln, and at the last bequeathed his papers : and who in return became his pupil's first biographer. Pitt had not been at Cam bridge long when he fell seriously ill and was obliged to return home. It was then that the family physician, Dr. Anthony Adding ton prescribed that generous consumption of port wine which was to become the habit of a life. He returned to Cambridge in July 1774; and in 1776, by the privilege of his birth as the son of a peer, graduated as a master of arts without examination. That year saw the Declaration of American Independence, and the next the battle of Saratoga. On April 7, 1778 Pitt was the wit ness of his father's last dramatic utterance in the House of Lords. A month later Chatham died. Pitt was left with an income of £300 a year; he began to keep his terms at Lincoln's Inn; was called to the bar on June 12, I 78o and joined the western circuit. At the general election in September Pitt was defeated for the University of Cambridge but was returned for Sir James Lowther's pocket borough of Appleby. He entered parliament on Jan. 23, 1781: he was not yet 2 2 years old.
Parliament.—Pitt was attached to that section of the opposi tion which had followed his father, and was now led by Lord Shelburne. His maiden speech on Feb. 26 was made in support of Burke's Bill for economical reform, and produced a series of famous eulogies, Lord North admitting it the best first speech he had ever heard, and Burke, with even greater prodigality, declar ing him "not a chip of the old block but the old block itself." A year later, when North's ministry was near its fall, Pitt had the self-confidence to announce in the House of Commons (March 8, 1782) that, should he conceivably be asked to join the new ministry, he would never accept a subordinate position in it; nor did he alter his mind when Rockingham, shortly afterwards offered him certain well-paid but unimportant posts, and even though one of them—the vice-treasurership of Ireland—had been held by Chatham before him.
As a private member Pitt now supported a new version of Burke's reform project, a measure for shortening the duration of parliaments, and another for destroying bribery at elections. On May 7 he presented his own motion for a select committee to inquire into the state of the representation. It was only de feated by 20 votes. Shortly afterwards the death of Rockingham on July I provoked a major crisis. The king appointed Shelburne as his successor. Fox, Lord John Cavendish and Burke immedi ately refused to serve with him; whereupon Shelburne turned to Pitt, who on July 6 accepted the office of chancellor of the exchequer.