The Parochial History of Cornwall, Volume 1 (of 4)
History
The Parochial History of Cornwall, Volume 1 (of 4)
Cornwall (England : County) -- History; Geology -- England -- Cornwall (County)
He had two sons, Robert and Thomas. Robert Pitt who succeeded him at
Boconnoc, married Harriet Villiers, third sister of John Earl
Grandison. He died in May 1727, leaving two sons, Thomas Pitt, and
William, afterwards Earl of Chatham. Thomas Pitt, his brother, was
created Earl of Londonderry, in consequence of his marrying the
heiress of Ridgeway, who had borne that distinction; this younger
branch became extinct in 1764. Thomas Pitt, his son, engaged most
extensively in the political speculation, for which Cornwall was then
become an ample field. But, having supported the party of Frederick
Prince of Wales, he failed of obtaining any of the objects to which
most speculations are supposed to lead. He married Christiana, sister
of George first Lord Lyttelton; by whom he left Thomas Pitt, who, on
the elevation of his first cousin, William Pitt, to the chief office
in the State, when under twenty-five years of age, was created Baron
Camelford in Jan. 1784. He died in 1793, leaving a son Thomas Pitt,
the second and last Lord Camelford, and a daughter married to William
Wyndham Grenville, Lord Grenville, the present possessor of Boconnoc,
having succeeded to her brother in 1804.
The personal history of this young man is curious and extraordinary.
He became an object of attention in Cornwall almost from his birth. On
the event of his christening, in 1775, Boconoc was thrown open for
public and indiscriminate entertainment, accompanied by exhibitions of
the peculiar athletic exercise in which the Cornish boast to excel all
their contemporaries, and to rival the Palæstræ of ancient Greece. A
silver bowl of fifteen guineas was the prize of the victor (the first
who threw five falls), and about fifty pounds were distributed among
the vanquished.
His education was conducted under a private tutor alone in the
seclusion of Boconnoc; but having made an excursion to Plymouth at a
time when naval preparations were in full activity, he acquired a
passion for the sea so strong and rooted, as not to be overcome by all
the efforts of authority or of advice.
He went on the perilous voyage of discovery conducted by Captain
Vancouver, and in the course of it, he is said to have experienced
some harsh treatment on the part of the commmander, which seems to
have stamped a new impression on his mind, rendered permanent by the
long period during which it was necessarily concealed.
On Lord Camelford’s return to England, the effects burst forth in acts
of violence against Captain Vancouver, and from that time,
On each adventure rash he roved,
As danger for itself he loved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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