ton's appointments were scandalous, and it was a current story that he had recommended one of his boon companions to a bishop for ecclesiastical preferment as of ‘a character practically faultless but for his damnably bad morals.’ While in England Wharton was instrumental in having five hundred families of poor palatines settled in Ireland, and to him is also said to be due the acclimatisation of legitimate opera in that country. Thomas Clayton [q. v.], the composer of ‘Arsinoe,’ is stated to have gone over to Ireland in Wharton's train and to have produced an opera in Dublin in the course of 1709.
During his absence in Ireland there is no doubt that the whigs missed the aid of the most astute party manager they had ever had, but by the vehemence with which he pushed forward the Sacheverell trial there is equally no doubt that Wharton contributed to the temporary defeat of his political allies. His prominence in the affair led to his house in Dover Street being threatened by the ‘mobility’ on 10 Feb. 1710; he spoke at length in defence of the revolution in the great debate of 16 March (ib. p. 429). In the conferences that went on during the summer as to whether the whigs should form a kind of coalition with Harley, Wharton (who had bitterly opposed the admission of Harley into the administration in 1705) took the direction of whig policy very much into his own hands, and it was largely owing to his influence that the idea of a modus vivendi with the tories was so completely scouted.
For the time being (after the election of September 1710) the eclipse of the whig party was complete, but it was just during this period that the services of Wharton in keeping alive and fostering every element of discontent and opposition were most invaluable to his party. On 2 Jan. 1711–12, when the twelve new peers, or occasional peers as they were nicknamed, were introduced into the house, it was Wharton who, when the question about adjourning was going to be put, asked one of the newcomers whether they voted singly or by their foreman. Next month he entertained Prince Eugène with a befitting splendour and with a greater zest because it was thought by the populace that the great captain was being rather neglected by the tories. On 28 May 1712 he signed the protest, afterwards expunged from the ‘Lords' Journals,’ against the ‘restraining orders’ given to Ormonde (Rogers, i. 212). On 30 June 1713 he moved an address to the queen urging her to use her ‘influence’ with the Duke of Lorraine to procure the expulsion of the Pretender from Nancy, and, the motion having been carried after a vivacious debate, Wharton was on 2 July one of the lords who carried the address up to her majesty. About the same time, with the aid of the Duke of Portland, he managed successfully to resist the passing of a bill for the revision of the grants of William III. The fact that there were seventy-three voices on either side shows how equally the lords were divided between the two parties. This also explains the decision of the house in April 1713, when a committee appointed to investigate malpractices touching the management of the public revenue reported that Wharton had received 1,000l. from George Hutchisson to procure the latter the post of registrar of seizures in the custom-house. The whigs were sufficiently strong to procure a resolution to the effect that, the affair having taken place before the queen's general pardon of 1709, the delinquency should be passed over with a censure (16 May; cf. Boyer, p. 631).
On 2 March 1714 Wharton made a complaint against ‘a scandalous anonymous libel [by Swift] entitled “The Public Spirit of the Whigs,”’ and he tried his utmost, but without success, to prove the authorship. On 22 March he opposed the Easter adjournment on the ground that not one moment of time should be lost in addressing her majesty on behalf of the distressed Catalans (ib. p. 679), a distasteful subject which he resumed in April. On 4 June 1714 he spoke with vigour against the schism bill, saying that as what was schism with us was the established religion of Scotland, he hoped that the lords who represented Scotland would bring forward a similar bill to prevent the growth of Anglican schism in their country. When the bill passed the lords on 11 June he signed the protest against it (Rogers, i. 221). He was never tired of reopening the question of the unwisdom of the treaty of Utrecht, and on 6 July he attacked Arthur Moore [q. v.] by name in connection with the Spanish treaty of commerce.
During the illness of Anne he was prominent among the whig lords of the privy council who reasserted their right of attendance at the council board, and who issued orders to ensure the peaceable proclamation of George I; but his name was not upon the list of regents, probably because he was known to be an extreme man and personally objectionable to the late queen. On 15 Feb. 1715 he was created Marquis of Wharton and Malmesbury, having been already created in the previous month (7 Jan. 1714–1715) Baron of Trim, Earl of Rathfarnam, and Marquis of Catherlough in Ireland (Boyer, Political State). But he did not
