Author: Wharton, Richard
Biography:
WHARTON, Richard (1765-1828: ancestry.com)
He was baptised on 10 Jan. 1765, the third son (but second surviving son) of Thomas Wharton MD (1717-94) of Old Park, Durham, and his wife Margaret Wilkinson (1721-1803). He went up to Pembroke College, Cambridge, aged 15 (matric 1781, BA 1785, Fellow 1787, MA 1788); he also entered the Inner Temple, London, in 1783 to train as a lawyer, and was called to the bar in 1789. On 7 June 1792 he married Henrietta Farrer (1767-1834) at her parish of Hertingfordbury, Hertfordshire, Wharton giving St. Clement Danes, London, as his parish of residence. There were no children. In adult life Wharton suffered from two disadvantages over which he had no control: his precarious income as a younger son, and recurrent bouts of illness that he sometimes referred to as gout. Nevertheless he had a respectable career in parliament as MP for Durham 1802-4 and 1806-20, rising to the position of Secretary to the Treasury in 1809 but being obliged to retire with a civil list pension of £300 p.a. in 1813. He was elected FRS in 1810, a distinction that he displayed on the title-page of his last literary work, Roncesvalles (1812). He died at his London home on Grafton St. on 21 Oct. 1828 and was buried at St. George’s, Hanover Square, on 27 Oct. He left his property to his widow Henrietta, who died at Bromley, Kent, on 11 Nov. 1834. (ancestry.com 11 May 2024; findmypast.com 11 May 2024; historyofparliamentonline.org; LES 15 Nov. 1834) HJ