torate, and he was in some danger of being obliged to refund 4,000l. which parliament had granted him out of Sir George Savile's estate (Deputy-Keeper of Public Records, 32nd Rep. App. i. 160; Foxcroft, Life of Halifax, i. 18, 28; Carte MS. 103, f. 252). In 1670 Wharton was conspicuous among the opponents of the new Conventicle Act, and in 1675 against the act to impose a non-resistance test on the whole nation (Foxcroft, i. 66, 120; Hist. and Proc. of the House of Lords, 1742, i. 130, 138, 150). On 15 Feb. 1676–7 Wharton, with three other peers, was sent to the Tower for arguing that the existing parliament was dissolved because it had been illegally prorogued for fifteen months, and refusing to make the submission demanded (Christie, Life of Shaftesbury, ii. 232). He remained in prison till 29 July 1677, staying there ‘somewhat longer than the rest, because he chicaned and had no mind to own his fault in plain terms’ (Macpherson, i. 82; Carte MSS. 103, f. 223, 79, 27–60). In the agitation about the popish plot and the exclusion bill, Wharton took little part, but no doubt approved his son's zeal against catholics and the Duke of York. When James II ascended the throne he thought it best to travel, obtained a pass from Lord Sunderland on 7 Aug. 1685 (Carte MS. 103, f. 260), and spent some time in Flanders and Germany. The elector of Brandenburgh made him a present of six horses and received him with great distinction (ib. 81, ff. 768–74; Life of Thomas, Marquis of Wharton, p. 9). In the crisis of 1688 none declared more emphatically than Wharton for the elevation of the Prince of Orange to the throne. In the council of peers held after the king's flight when Clarendon urged consideration of the rights of the newly born heir, Wharton answered, ‘I did not expect at this time of day to hear anybody mention that child, who was called the Prince of Wales, and I hope we shall hear no more of him’ (Singer, Diary of Henry, Earl of Clarendon, ii. 235; cf. Burnet, Reign of James II, ed. Routh, 1852, p. 479). When William III became king, Wharton was made a privy councillor (14 Feb. 1689). His last appearance in politics was on the occasion of the bill brought forward in 1690 for imposing a general oath abjuring the title of James II. ‘Lord Wharton,’ according to Dartmouth's note to Burnet, ‘said he was a very old man, and had taken a multitude of oaths in his time, and hoped God would forgive him if he had not kept them all; for truly they were more than he could pretend to remember; but should be very unwilling to charge himself with more at the end of his days’ (Burnet, Own Time, ed. 1833, iv. 79; cf. Macaulay, Hist. of England, ii. 163). He died on 4 Feb. 1696, and was buried at Woburn.
Wharton was three times married: (1) in 1632, to Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Rowland Wandesford of Pickhill, Yorkshire; (2) on 7 Sept. 1637, to Jane, daughter of Arthur Goodwin of Winchendon, Buckinghamshire; she died on 21 April 1658. Many letters from her father to her are among the Carte MSS. (vol. 103); and (3), on 4 Aug. 1661, to Anne, daughter of William Carr of Fernihurst, Roxburghshire, and widow of Edward Popham. She was buried on 17 Aug. 1692. By his first wife he had a daughter, who married, in 1659, Robert Bertie (afterwards third Earl of Lindsey). By his second wife he had four daughters: Anne, married William Carr, and died in 1689 without issue; Margaret, who married successively Major Dunch, Sir Thomas Seyhard, and William Ross, twelfth baron Ross [q. v.]; Mary, who married, in 1673, William Thomas of Wenvoe Castle, Glamorganshire, and in 1678, Sir Charles Kemeys of Cefn Mably, in the same county; Philadelphia, who married, in 1679, Sir George Lockhart, and, secondly, Captain John Ramsay. Of Wharton's sons, by his second wife, Thomas, first marquis of Wharton, the eldest surviving, is separately noticed; Henry, the second, died a colonel in the English army in Ireland in 1687; and Goodwin, the third, who died in 1704, wrote an autobiography, which is now in the British Museum (Addit. MSS. 20006–7). William, Wharton's only son by his third wife, was killed in a duel (Life of Thomas, Marquis of Wharton, p. 10).
Wharton had a taste for architecture and gardening, and is said to have spent 30,000l. on enlarging his house at Woburn. He had a very fine collection of the paintings of Van Dyck and Lely (Life of Thomas, Marquis of Wharton, p. 7). By a deed made in 1662 he settled some of his lands near Healaugh, Yorkshire, upon trustees for 1,050 bibles, and as many catechisms were to be given yearly in certain towns and villages of the four counties in which his estates lay—Buckingham, York, Westmorland, and Cumberland—to poor children who had learnt by heart seven specified Psalms (E. R. Wharton, The Whartons of Wharton Hall, 1898, p. 35). A fine portrait of Wharton as a young man by Van Dyck is in the gallery of the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. There is an engraved portrait of Wharton by Hollar.
[G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage; Doyle's Official Baronage; Life of Thomas, Marquis of Wharton, 1715, 8vo; E. R. Wharton's Whartons of Wharton, 1898; six volumes of collections
