John Pitt (1610–1672), Rector of Blandford St Mary (whose mural monument survives in that church[4]), by his wife Sarah Jay.

[citation needed] In August 1698, Pitt arrived at Madras as the President of the East India Company and was entrusted to negotiate an end to the Child's War with the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb.

In 1702, when the fort was besieged by Daud Khan of the Carnatic, the Mughal Empire's local subedar (lieutenant),[8] Pitt was instructed to seek peace.

He began garrisoning East India Company forts by raising regiments of local sepoys by hiring from Hindu warrior castes, arming them with the latest weapons and deploying them under the command of English officers to save Madras, his base of operations, from further Mughal harassment.

[citation needed] These native governors (Subedars and Nawabs) have the knack of tramping upon us and extorting what they please of our estate from us...they will never forbid doing so till we have made them sensible of our power.

In August 1699, one John Pitt arrived at Madras and claimed that he had been appointed as the Governor of Fort St George by the new Company on behalf of the Stuarts.

[citation needed] On 4 December 1700, the Government of Fort St George banned cock-fighting and other traditional games, regarding it as the foremost reason for the poverty of the inhabitants of Madras.

According to legend, the diamond had been originally found by an enslaved man in the Kollur Mine near the Krishna River and was concealed by the slave in a leg wound, which he suffered while fleeing the siege of Golconda.

With John Law acting as agent, it was sold that year to the French regent, Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, for £135,000, becoming one of the crown jewels of France.

Pitt took a lease in 1686 on Mawarden (or Marwarden) Court, at Stratford-sub-Castle north of Salisbury, and bought lands in the area which were within Old Sarum borough.

Besides Mawarden Court and the Down at Blandford, he acquired Boconnoc in Cornwall from Lord Mohun's widow in 1717, and subsequently Kynaston in Dorset, Bradock, Treskillard and Brannell in Cornwall, Woodyates on the border of Dorset and Wiltshire, Abbot's Ann in Hampshire (where he rebuilt the church) and, subsequently his favourite residence, Swallowfield Park in Berkshire, where he died in 1726.