at his house at Enfield on 12 Aug. 1681, aged 64, and was buried on the 25th of that month in the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, within the Tower of London. Wood calls him ‘a constant and thoroughpaced royalist, a good companion, a witty droll, and a waggish poet.’
By his wife, Anne Butler, Wharton had four sons and three daughters. His eldest surviving son, Polycarpus, succeeded to the baronetcy; Sir Polycarpus married Theophila, daughter of Justinian Sherburne, second brother of Sir Edward Sherburne, knt., but died without issue before 1741, and the baronetcy became extinct. He is stated to have lost 24,000l. in the powder works at Chilworth, near Guildford.
After his death Wharton's writings were collected under the title of ‘The Works of that most excellent Philosopher and Astronomer, Sir George Wharton, bart., collected into one entire volume. By John Gadbury, Student in Physic and Astrology,’ London, 1683, 8vo. Gadbury supplied a preface. From the chronological tables, entitled ‘Gesta Britannorum,’ which appeared in Wharton's almanacs from 1657 to 1666, W. Crook compiled the greater part of his ‘Historian's Guide from 1600 until the year 1679’ (London, 1679, 12mo). Some of Wharton's astrological papers and his letters to Ashmole are in the Ashmolean Library at Oxford (cf. Black, Cat. Ashmolean MSS.) A portrait of Wharton, assigned to Faithorne, was prefixed to his ‘Works.’ Another portrait of Wharton, at the age of forty-six, was engraved ‘ad vivum’ by D. Loggan in 1663.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, iv. 5; Lives of Ashmole and William Lilly, 1774; Lysons's Environs of London, ii. 320; Aubrey's Brief Lives, ed. Clark, ii. 295; Wharton's publications.]
WHARTON, HENRY (1664–1695), divine and author, was the son of Edmund Wharton (a descendant of Thomas Wharton, second son of Thomas, second baron Wharton [see under Wharton, Thomas, first Baron]), vicar of Worstead, Norfolk, rector of Stoley, and afterwards rector of Saxlingham, and Susan his wife (Henry calls her Mary, so her name may possibly have been Susan Mary), daughter of John Burr, a well-to-do clothmaker of Dedham in Essex. He was born at Worstead on 9 Nov. 1664, and baptised on 20 Nov. Both his father and his mother survived him. He had a younger brother, Edmund, born 1666, ‘an apothecary and great rake,’ and a sister Susan.
He was born with two tongues, both of the same shape and size. The lower gradually lessened and the upper grew till the deformity ceased to be inconvenient (Philosophical Transactions, 1748, xlv. 232–233, from a manuscript of Wharton's). At the age of six he was sent to a ‘public school’ at Norwaltham for a year, after which he was taught by his father so thoroughly ‘that at his entrance into the university he had the reputation of an extraordinary young man’ (‘Life’ prefixed to Sermons, vol. i.) His manuscript autobiography records many youthful classical exercises in verse. He was admitted pensioner of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, on 15 Feb. (‘Autobiography’ in D'Oyley's Life of Sancroft, ii. 109; but the ‘Life’ says 17 Feb.) 1679–80, of which college his father had been a fellow. His tutor was Dr. John Ellys, ‘a person of eminent learning, singular piety, and strictness of life.’ In November of the same year he was elected scholar of his college. He held this scholarship by special favour until 1687, though he went out of residence a year before. As an undergraduate he seldom studied less than twelve hours a day, and he became proficient not only in classics, but in philosophy, French, Italian, and mathematics, being in the last private pupil of Isaac Newton, then fellow of Trinity, and Lucas, professor of mathematics. He graduated B.A. Hilary term 1683–4, having ‘deservedly the first place given him by the then proctor of the university, the learned Rev. William Needham, fellow of Emmanuel College, afterwards his dear friend and fellow chaplain at Lambeth.’ He bore the highest character as an undergraduate, and was especially noted as ‘constant in frequenting the prayers and sacraments in the chapel.’
He remained in college till the spring of 1686, when, seeing no likelihood of a vacant fellowship, he accepted the recommendation of Dr. Barker, a senior fellow of his college, to William Cave [q. v.], the ecclesiastical historian, who promised him a salary of ten pounds a year and free access to his fine library. He greatly assisted Cave in his ‘Historia Litteraria’ (published 1688), and he considered that his help was not adequately acknowledged (cf. his own account in D'Oyley's Life of Sancroft, ii. 111–12, with Cave's letter to Archbishop Tenison, ib. 165 sqq.). He visited Windsor with Cave in April, and was made acquainted with many learned persons and with a Roman priest named Matthews, who said mass for James II privately, and who tried to lure Wharton into hideous vice, alleging his own
