Earl of Chatham Earl of Chatham Earl of Chatham, in the County of Kent, was a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was created in 1766 for William Pitt the Elder on his appointment as Lord Privy Seal, along with the subsidiary title Viscount Pitt, of Burton Pynsent in the County of Somerset, also in the Peerage of Great Britain. The first Earl's wife, the former Lady Hester Grenville, daughter of the 1st Countess Temple, had earlier been created Baroness Chatham, of Chatham in the County of Kent, also in the Peerage of Great Britain, in 1761, as at that stage
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham the observance of the Treaty of Paris by France and Spain, tension between American colonists and the mother country, and the status of the East India Company. Chatham set about his duties with tempestuous energy. One of the new ministry's earliest acts was to lay an embargo upon corn, which was thought necessary in order to prevent a dearth resulting from the unprecedented bad harvest of 1766. The measure was strongly opposed, and Lord Chatham delivered his first speech in the House of Lords in support of it. It proved to be almost the only measure introduced by his government