All this may seem trivial enough, but it has an important, indeed necessary, bearing on the story of William's life, as showing the stock from which he sprang.
The harsh passions of the Governor and the petulant violence of his heirs seem so outrageous and uncontrolled as to verge on actual insanity. Shelburne explicitly states that 'there was a great deal of madness in the family.' Every indication confirms this statement. What seemed in the Governor brutality and excess, frequently developed in his descendants into something little if at all short of mental disorder. We thus trace to their source the germs of that haughty, impossible, anomalous character, distempered at times beyond the confines of reason, which made William so difficult to calculate or comprehend.
CHAPTER II.
And now we come by a process of exhaustion to the subject of this book.
William Pitt, the elder statesman of that name, was born in London, in the parish of St. James's, November 15, 1708. It does not now seem possible to trace the house of his nativity, but it was probably in Pall Mall, where his father then or afterwards resided. We are limited to the information that his godfathers were 'Cousin Pitt' (probably George Pitt of Strathfieldsaye) and General Stewart, after the latter of whom he was named. General Stewart was the second husband of William's grandmother, Lady Grandison.[20]
It may be well to recall here that William was the second son of Robert Pitt, the Governor's eldest son, and his wife, Harriot Villiers, fourth daughter of Catherine, Viscountess Grandison, and her husband the Hon. Edward Villiers Fitzgerald, who was descended from a brother of the first Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.
Of his childhood we catch but occasional and remote glimpses.
His grandfather, as we have seen, had early marked him. The shrewd old nabob had discerned the boy's possibilities, but seems also to have determined that his energies should not be relaxed by wealth. At any rate, the Governor refrained from any special sign of favour, and bequeathed the lad only an annuity of 100l. a year. This was William's sole patrimony, for he seems to have received nothing from his father.