ABSTRACT
The impressive study of the life of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, was first published in 1913 when it achieved instant recognition as a brilliant appraisal of Pitt's career. As in other wars, the English began by despising their adversary, and could not believe that an army which had humbled the Bourbon power to the dust would find any difficulty in suppressing a few riots among rebels, whom they talked of as poltroons. During the early part of 1776 all interest centred in the great trial by the peers of Chatham's Tunbridge Wells acquaintance, Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston, for bigamy. The sight, wrote Harriot Pitt when she begged to be allowed to go to the trial, in which there was to be 'nothing improper', was to be 'finer than a coronation'. The Duke of Richmond spoke first; next Lord Weymouth for the ministers; then Chatham rose, leaning on his crutches and supported on each side.
