A replica of the crown made for the coronation of King Louis XV of France in 1722. Thomas Pitt’s diamond, now named after its purchaser the Duke of Orléans, sits atop. The diamond was set in a new crown for Louis XVI in 1775, but after the Revolution of 1789 the precious stone was put up as collateral with the Dutch for a loan to finance new Government’s military spending; Napoleon redeemed it in 1801, and thereafter it graced the guard of his sword. The stone featured in the crowns of Louis XVIII, Charles X and Napoleon III, and was latterly mounted upon a Greek-style diadem worn by Napoleon’s consort Eugenie. Today, the diamond is kept in the Louvre.
Part 1 of 2
IN these early days there were bold individuals who ignored the Company’s monopoly and operated on their own account. They were denounced as pirates, but as they did not plunder any one, but only traded on their own account the title was unjust, and a new one was invented of “interlopers.” They could not be hanged at the yard arm, but they could be sued in the Courts for damages and penalties because they had violated the Company’s Charter.
They would not claim notice but for the daring deeds of one of them who was the progenitor of one of the most famous English families. This was Thomas Pitt,* grandfather of the great Earl of Chatham.* For twenty years of his career [1674-1694] Thomas Pitt was the terror of the London Company, for he sailed his ship without their leave, making many profitable voyages,* and eventually purchasing a seat in Parliament.* Then the Court awoke to his merit, and sent him out as President to Fort St George at Madras.*
* Thomas Pitt (1653-1726). Despite his illustrious career in India and, more quietly, at home as an MP for Old Sarum and for Thirsk, he never received a peerage or even a knighthood, though other East India Company office-holders routinely received honours. “In the early years of his Presidency,” his biographer Sir Cornelius Dalton tells us, “it had been intimated to Pitt by Sir Stephen Evans, that the Old Company were thinking of getting him a baronetcy; but, so far from encouraging the project, he had written back at once to say that their bare thanks were of far greater value to him than any such honour. When he did return, his wealth and Parliamentary influence might have readily obtained for him a peerage if he had cared to have one. But he preferred to remain to the end of his days plain Thomas Pitt.”
* William Pitt (1708-1778) ‘the Elder’, 1st Earl of Chatham, Prime Minister in 1757-61 and again in 1766-67. He remained a force in Parliament long after leaving office. William’s son William Pitt (1759-1806) also served with distinction as Prime Minister, in 1783 to 1801 and in 1804 to 1806.
* Pitt went out to India as an employee of the East India Company in 1674, but soon began trading for himself, around the River Hooghly where Job Charnock was founding Calcutta: see Job’s City of Joy. Pitt returned to England early in 1695 a very wealthy man.
* One could not exactly buy a seat in the House of Commons; that would be corruption. But in 1688 Pitt did buy the manor of Stratford-under-the-Castle, and was elected to the ‘Convention Parliament’ of 1689 as MP for nearby Old Sarum, which was an archaeological ruin and had no resident voters: election was therefore something of a formality. He represented the more challenging New Sarum (Salisbury) following the 1690 general election, and the following year bought the Old Sarum site outright. Thereafter, he and his heirs could expect to be elected if ever they chose to stand, which Thomas did in 1695, 1710, 1713 and 1722. He represented Thirsk from 1717 to 1722.
* On the 24th of November 1697, the Council unanimously elected Pitt as Governor of Fort St George in Madras, an office he held from July 7th 1698 to September 18th, 1709. Pitt thus became one of the highest office-holders in the East India Company, against which he had been competing for so much of his career.
Précis
Thomas Pitt went out to India as an employee of the East India Company, but soon went into business for himself. This was illegal, but not piracy so he and others like him were dubbed ‘interlopers’. For twenty years, he was so successful in this role that in 1697 Pitt was appointed President of the Company’s headquarters in Madras. (58 / 60 words)
Part Two
Swallowfield Park in Berkshire, the stately home and estate which Thomas Pitt (1653-1726) purchased in 1717. Thanks to the sale of his diamond to the French Prince Regent, the Duke of Orleans, for £135,000 (almost £22m today), Pitt had plenty of money to spend. He already possessed several properties spread across Wiltshire, Cornwall, Dorset and Hampshire, but it was here that he died in 1726, after two days of illness.
For ten years he administered the affairs of that station with great credit to himself and the Company, becoming generally known as “The Great President” or “The Great Pitt.”
Pitt’s memory is associated with the great diamond which was long named after him. It came from the famous Golconda mines* and he bought it from a Deccani merchant* for £12,500.* In 1717 he sold it to the French Regent, the Duke d’Orleans, for £135,000. At the time of the French Revolution the Orleans Diamond, as it was renamed in France, was valued at £500,000, and its value to-day [1926] is at least quadrupled,* as it is deemed the purest and most brilliant gem in the world. At one time Thomas Pitt used to wear the gem fixed in his hat, and his portrait was painted in that costume, but he was too practical a man not to turn it to better account when he got the offer.
* Specifically, it came from the Kollur mine on the south bank of the River Krishna in the Golconda Sultanate of India; the mine (now drowned) lies today within the state of Andhra Pradesh. Many famous stones were found here, including the Darya-e Noor diamond, the lost Great Moghul diamond, the Hope Diamond, the Koh-i-Noor diamond and the Orlov diamond.
* In his diary, Pitt referred to this merchant as Jamchund. How Jamchund came by the stone has been the subject of several romances: for example, that it was once the eye of a Hindu idol, or that a slave of the mines smuggled it out in a wound in his leg only to be murdered for it by an English sea captain who had promised to take him to safety in exchange for a half interest in the diamond. A more humdrum account was given by Thomas Salmon in The Universal Traveller (1752), who declared: ‘I was upon the Spot and thoroughly acquainted with the Transaction in India, and am able to refute the scandalous Stories’. He explained that the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, who preferred gold and silver, let many large diamonds pass out of the mines in exchange for a modest percentage of the sale price.
* This figure is much too low and is perhaps a misprint. As Pitt recalled in his diary for July 29th, 1710, Jamchund first visited him in December 1701, and asked 200,000 pagodas for the uncut diamond — a pagoda was an Indian coin minted by the British East India Company at Madras. Then the haggling began; Pitt eventually beat Jamchund down to 48,000 pagodas. Discussing the sale in 1753, jeweller David Jeffries estimated the pagoda at 8s 6d, and Pitt’s payment at £20,400. Thomas Salmon put the figure at £24,000. Assuming 9s to the pagoda, the uncut stone would have cost Pitt £21,600 or more than £3.7m in today’s money.
* Philippe II (1674-1723), Duke of Orléans, nephew and son-in-law of Louis XIV of France, served as Regent of the Kingdom of France from 1715 to 1723 during the minority of Louis XV, who was only five when he came to the throne. The precious ‘Pitt diamond’ was purchased by the Regent in 1717 for a sum equivalent to about £22m in today’s money.
* The 140.64 carat ‘Regent diamond’ (as it is now known) was tentatively valued at £48m in 2015.
Précis
Pitt proved an able administrator, but his fame rests on his purchase in 1701 of a large diamond, mined at Kollur, for around £21,000. At first he wore it in his hat, but in 1717 he sold it to the French Regent for over six times what he paid for it, and its value has been rising ever since. (56 / 60 words)
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