William Pitt the Younger King refused to support him. Fox stated the bill was necessary to save the company from bankruptcy. Pitt responded that: "Necessity was the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It was the argument of tyrants; it was the creed of slaves." The King was opposed to the bill; when it passed in the House of Commons, he secured its defeat in the House of Lords by threatening to regard anyone who voted for it as his enemy. Following the bill's failure in the Upper House, George III dismissed the coalition government and finally entrusted the premiership to William Pitt,
Pitt Bank and the deepest areas of the former lagoon reach 44 metres. The much smaller Wight Bank is located 6 km to the SE off the southeastern tip of Pitt Bank. This submerged atoll was named after William Pitt the Younger, who was a British prime minister in 1783–1801 and 1804–1806. A buoy, marked by a radar reflector, is moored on the NW side of the bank. Pitt Bank Pitt Bank is a wholly submerged atoll structure in the Southwest of the Chagos Archipelago. It is almost 56 km long Northwest to Southeast, with a width between 20 and 30 km.