have been tolerant or tolerable. He set himself to rule them with the notions of absolutism which are associated with the Oriental monarchies, but he met with no great measure of success. It is necessary to study his methods as exhibiting the volcanic source of a formidable race.

His wife was of the family of Innes in Morayshire, 'of Scotch and Cornish extraction,' says Lord Camelford, and she was lineally descended from the Regent Murray. Sir John Sinclair, like a loyal Scot, attributes the genius and eloquence of the Pitts to their 'fortunate connection ... with a Miss Innes of Redhall, in the Highlands of Scotland.' Of her, nevertheless, in unconsciousness of this obligation, but in receipt of private advices, the Governor writes in terms of implacable hostility. He had heard, he says to his son, 'that your mother has been guilty of some imprudence at the Bath ... let it be what it will, in my esteem she is noe longer my wife, nor will I see her more if I can help it.'[9]

But his children were not to be released from duty to her by her supposed misconduct. Four years earlier he had written to Robert: 'If what you write of your mother be true, I think she is mad, and wish she was well secured in Bedlam; but I charge you let nothing she says or does make you undutiful in any respect whatever.' So when they apparently act on the Governor's view of Mrs. Pitt, he turns round and belabours them. 'Have all of you,' he inquires of his eldest son, 'shook hands with shame, that you regard not any of the tyes of Christianity, humanity, consanguinity, duty, good morality, or anything that makes you differ from beasts, but must run from one end of the kingdome to the other, aspersing one another, and aiming at the ruine and destruction of one another?' This genial picture of his offspring does not seem wholly imaginary, for the Governor proceeds: 'That you should dare to doe such an unnatural and opprobrious action as to turne your mother and sisters out of doors?—for which I observe your frivolous reasons, and was astonished to read them; and I no less resent what they did to your child at Stratford. But I see your hand is against every one of them, and every one against you, and your brother William to his last dying minute.' (William had died young, in 1706.) A week later he writes again: 'Not only your letters, but all I have from friends, are stuffed with an account of the hellish confusion that is in my family; and by what I can collect of all my letters, the vileness of your actions on all sides are not to be paralleled in history. Did ever mother, brother, and sisters study one another's ruine and destruction more than my unfortunate and cursed family have done?' He again reverts to the grievance of Robert's having turned his mother and sisters out of doors, though he calls them, in the same letter, 'an infamous wife and children,' and states that he has 'discarded and renounced your mother for ever;' apparently on suspicion, for he makes 'noe distinction between women that are reputed ill and such as are actually soe.' The wife of the Cæsar of Fort St. George had to be above suspicion. Nor is this by any means an isolated passage. From his Eastern satrapy the Governor pours on his hapless family, and especially on his firstborn, a constant flood of scorn and invective. The arrival of the Indian mail must have caused a periodical panic to his children, and his announcement in 1715 that 'writing now is not so much my talent as formerly' a corresponding relief.

In vain does Robert, the eldest son, inspire friends to write to the Governor glowing accounts of his conduct; the Governor sniffs suspicion in every breeze. 'I wish gaming bee not rife in your family, or you could never have spent so considerable an estate in so short a time.' 'I wish gameing, drinking, and other debaucheries has not been the bane of you.' 'I wish these sore eyes of yours did not come by drinking, and that generally ushers in gaming, of either of which vices or any other dishonourable action, if I find you guilty, you may be assured I will give you no quarter.' 'I think that no son in the world deserves more to be discarded by a father.' But on the rare occasions when the Governor does not write in a passion his letters are full of sound sense. The cost of education is the only expense which he does not grudge. 'I would also have you putt your mother in mind that she gives her daughters good education, and not to stick at any charge for it.' But he wishes to get his money's worth. 'See that your brothers and sisters keep close to their studies, and let not my money be spent in vain on them; if it be, I'll pinch 'em hereafter.' Again, later, he writes: 'When this reaches you your brothers will be 17 years old. If their genius leads them to be scholars, I would have them sent to Oxford, but placed in two distinct colleges; and if inclined to study law you may enter them in the Temple. But if they are inclined to be merchants, let them learn all languages, and obtain perfect knowledge of the sciences bearing upon trade. I believe that trade will flourish rather than decay.'

When he returned home things were probably not much better for his children, though his letters, of course, are less frequent, and also less violent. But we gather from timid and vigilant bulletins sent off by those who cautiously approached the Governor's lair that he was still as formidable and plain spoken as ever. He suspects Robert of Jacobitism, the supreme sin in the judgment of the old Governor. 'It is said you are taken up with factious caballs, and are contriving amongst you to put a French kickshaw upon the throne again.' 'I have heard since I came to towne,' he writes seven years afterwards, 'that you are strooke with your old hellish acquaintance, and in all your discourse are speaking in favour of that villainous traytor Ormond.' And again: 'Since last post I have had it reiterated to me that in all company you are vindicating Ormonde and Bullingbrooke, the two vilest rebells that ever were in any nation, and that you still adhere to your cursed Tory principles, and keep those wretches company who hoped by this time to have murthered the whole Royall family: in which catastrophe your father was sure to fall,' &c. &c. From which it may be gathered that the moral temperature of Pall Mall, whence the Governor was writing, differed little from that of Madras.

The only note of tenderness that he ever strikes is with regard to his grandson, William, to whom he looks with a rare prescience of attention. At first he conducts both boys from Eton to Swallowfield, 'with some of their comrogues,' on a short leave of absence. But soon it is William alone whom he takes as a companion. 'I set out for Swallowfield Friday next; your son, William, goes with me.' 'I observe you have sent for your son, William, from Eton. He is a hopeful lad, and doubt not but he will answer yours and all his friends' expectations,' 'I shall be glad to see Will here as he goes to Eton.' 'Monday last I left Will at Eton.' Sentences like these taken from the Governor's letters are, when the writer is considered, a sufficient testimony of exceptional regard. It is not too much to say that William is the only one of his descendants whom the Governor commends; the only one, indeed, who never falls under the lash of the Governor's uncontrollable tongue.

The Governor left behind him three sons, Robert, Thomas, and John; and two daughters, Lucy and Essex. Robert, the eldest son, married, somewhat clandestinely, Harriot Villiers, sister of the Earl of Grandison, 'who seems to have brought with her,' says her grandson, 'little