George Pitt (died 1694)

He succeeded to Stratfield Saye House on the death of his father in 1643 and served briefly as a cornet in the Royalist army from 1643 to 1644.

[1] Pitt exploited the valuable china-clay deposits on his Purbeck estates, and, going further afield, acquired a colliery in county Durham.

In 1674 for the sum of £2,500 he bought the post of comptroller to the Duke of York, which he held until 1675, and in that year became a freeman of Portsmouth.

However, the Duke of York chose him to intermediate with Shaftesbury in 1679, preferring him over another as, ‘the steadier man, and the more my friend,' but the outcome of this arrangement is obscure.

[1] This marriage made Pitt absolute master of the Gloucestershire estates of the Chandos family under the will of Lady Jane's first husband, and his income was assessed at £4,000 p.a.