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PITT, George (aft.1691-1745), of Shroton, Dorset and Strathfieldsaye, Hants.
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b. aft. 1691, 1st s. of George Pitt of Strathfieldsaye by his 1st w. m. by 1721 Mary Louisa, da. of John Bernier of Strasburg, in Alsace, 4s. 2da. suc. to Dorset estates of his maternal gd.-fa. 1714 and fa. 1735.
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Biography
George Pitt, a Tory, was returned for Wareham on his family’s interest in 1715 at a by-election caused by his father’s opting to sit for Hampshire. Refusing like his father to sign the loyal association, December 1715,1 he voted against the septennial bill in 1716, but was absent from the divisions on the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts and the peerage bill in 1719. Unsuccessful at Wareham in 1722, he apparently changed sides, defeating the Tory, Thomas Horner, at a by-election for Dorset in January 1727, with the help of Bubb Dodington, who described him as ‘scarcely capable’.2 Before the general election Richard Edgcumbe reported to Walpole that Pitt had again changed sides:
The end of it is, a total desertion from his old friends and a transfer of his interest to Chaffin and Horner; strange that he should take this conduct after the candles were lighted up, but stranger still that any thing of this kind should happen in Dorsetshire.3
He did not stand again. According to a petition of his brother-in-law, Henry Bernier, supported by an affidavit, dated 21 Mar. 1730, of Mary Louisa Pitt, he separated from his wife, ‘who was forcibly abducted from London by her husband, George Pitt ... and kept locked up at a seat of Pitt’s at Melcombe, in Dorset.’4 He died in October 1745.
