person deserved so well of us in having supported our interests by the weight of his counsels, the force of his wit, and the firmness of his mind at a time when our title to the succession of this realm was endangered.’
During 1718 Wharton appears to have returned to his wife ‘in the seclusion of the country,’ and in March 1719 his only son, Thomas (who died of smallpox when barely a year old), was born at Winchendon. Here also he kept up his father's stud, and won several matches at Newmarket. These two years were the most reputable in his career. On 21 Dec. 1719 he was introduced to the House of Lords, his sponsors being the Dukes of Kingston and Bolton. He at once threw himself into opposition to the government bill for the extension of the South Sea Company's charter, and in the debate of 4 Feb. 1720 delivered a violent philippic against the general conduct of the Stanhope ministry. ‘My lords,’ he vociferated, ‘there was in the reign of Tiberius a favourite minister, by name Sejanus; the first step he took was to wean the emperor's affection from his son; the next to carry the emperor abroad; and so Rome was ruined.’ Stanhope, in a transport of anger, replied by instancing from the same history a Roman father, a great patriot, who had a son so profligate that he had him whipped to death. Wharton's attack proved the immediate cause of Stanhope's death; for in his fit of passion he broke a blood-vessel, and he died the next day.
About the same time that he was denouncing vice in high places, and invoking examples from Roman history for the benefit of the lords, Wharton was becoming notorious as president of the ‘Hell-fire Club,’ for the suppression of which body a proclamation was issued by the king on 28 April 1721. In connection with this action against ‘profligate clubs’ Wharton, says Lord Mahon, ‘played a strange farce. He went down to the House of Lords, declared that he was not, as was thought, a patron of blasphemy, and, pulling out an old family bible, proceeded with a sanctified air to quote several texts.’ His next prominence was as an opponent of the bill of pains and penalties against Atterbury, in the great debate about which, on 15 May 1723, he delivered a long and able speech. This oration, which affords the best criterion we have of Wharton's undoubted talents, was published in 1723, and was afterwards printed as a supplement to his ‘Works.’ This is the last speech by Wharton reported in the ‘Parliamentary History,’ but he remained in England three years longer, dissipating the last fragments of his estate.
A bi-weekly opposition paper entitled ‘The True Briton,’ which he started on 3 June 1723, came to an end on 17 Feb. 1724 (No. 74). Shortly after this his property was placed in the hands of trustees for the benefit of his creditors, and he was allowed no more than 1,200l. a year. According to his own account he had lost over 120,000l. in the South Sea scheme. In 1723 he had sold his Rathfarnham estates for 62,000l.; those in Buckinghamshire were sold in 1725 to the trustees of the Duke of Marlborough. Yet early in 1726 he computed his debts at over 70,000l. Two years later his collection of pictures (including several Van Dycks and Lelys) was sold to Sir Robert Walpole, and in 1730 his Westmorland estates went for 26,000l. to Sir Robert Lowther.
In the meantime, during the winter 1725–1726, Wharton had left England for Vienna. There he openly adopted the cause of ‘James III,’ from whom he now received the Garter and his patent as Duke of Northumberland. From Vienna he was sent to Madrid to assist Ormonde in pressing for an expedition, and to vindicate the late separation in the Pretender's family. (Sir) Benjamin Keene, the English minister, gives a vivacious account of his doings at the Spanish court. The Spaniards had some excuse for the reluctance they showed to treat with an ambassador who was perpetually drunk, and ‘scarcely ever had a pipe out of his mouth.’ He staggered into Keene's rooms one day in his Star and Garter, and the minister did not feel himself obliged to have him ejected; for ‘as he is an everlasting talker and tippler, he might lavish out something that might be of use to know.’ He declared upon this occasion that the chevalier's affairs had hitherto been managed by the Duchess of Perth and three or four other old women at St. Germains, but that he was now ‘prime minister,’ and would put things in ‘a right train,’ as Keene would soon perceive by the fall in English stocks.
In May 1726 Wharton heard of the death of his first wife, and two months later, at Madrid, he married Maria Theresa O'Neill, daughter of Henry O'Beirne, an Irish colonel in the Spanish service, by Henrietta O'Neill. The lady was maid of honour to the Queen of Spain, who was with difficulty persuaded to give her consent to the match. Previous to the wedding ceremony Wharton announced his conversion to catholicism. An order which he received under the privy seal to return to England was treated with ostentatious contempt by Wharton, who was
