to inquire into the ‘treasons’ of William, third baron Dacre of Gillesland, against Northumberland; Dacre was brought to trial, but acquitted by his peers. On 22 Nov. 1535 Wharton was again appointed sheriff of Cumberland (Lists of Sheriffs, p. 28).
During the northern rebellions of 1536 Wharton, in spite of family pressure and the risks which loyalty entailed, remained faithful to Henry VIII. In October 1536 the rebels marched on his house at Kirkby Stephen to force Wharton to join them, but he had escaped and joined Norfolk, under whom he served during the troubles; he was one of the king's representatives at the conference at York on 24 Nov., with Aske and his followers. His appointment as warden of the west marches was suggested as a reward for his services; but Norfolk thought that he ‘would not serve well as a warden,’ and recommended Henry Clifford, first earl of Cumberland, for the post. Wharton was, however, on 28 June 1537 appointed deputy warden, and in the same year was acting as a visitor of monasteries in Cumberland (Gasquet, ii. 185). He seems to have been disliked by the older nobility as one of the ‘new’ men on whom the Tudors relied; the Musgraves ‘did not love him,’ the Dacres and Cliffords were persistently hostile, and on 11 Jan. 1538–9 Robert Holgate [q. v.], bishop of Llandaff and president of the council of the north, reported that Wharton did ‘good service, is diligent, and discreet. It were a pity that the disdain of his neighbours should discourage him’ (Letters and Papers, XIV. i. 50). On 17 Nov. 1539 he was for the third time appointed sheriff of Cumberland; on 14 May 1541 he sent Henry an account of the state of Scotland, and on 22 Oct. the king ordered him to revenge the burning of some barns near Bewcastle by the Scots; two days later he added the captaincy of Carlisle to his office of deputy warden, and on 3 Jan. 1541–2 he was returned to parliament as knight of the shire for Cumberland.
During 1542 both English and Scots were preparing for war, and Wharton laid before Henry a scheme for raiding Scotland and seizing the person of James V at Lochmaben (State Papers, v. 205). The council, however, disapproved of the idea, and Wharton contented himself with burning Dumfries on 5 Oct., and on 23 Nov., with another ‘warden's rode,’ i.e. a day's foray, doing as much damage as he could in the time. Meanwhile the Scots had planned an extensive invasion of the west marches, of which Wharton was kept hourly informed by his spies. At supper on the 23rd he received definite information of an attack impending on the morrow. The Scots were said to be fourteen, or even twenty, thousand strong, while Wharton could only muster a few hundreds. With these he watched the progress of the Scots over the Esk during the 24th; towards evening he attacked their left; under the incompetent Oliver Sinclair [q. v.], the Scots got entangled in Solway Moss at the mouth of the river. Enormous numbers, including many nobles, were taken prisoners, slain, or drowned, while the English loss was trifling. Wharton's official report of the battle to the Earl of Hertford, recently discovered among the papers at Longleat, is printed in the ‘Hamilton Papers’ (1890, vol. i. pp. lxxxiii–vi), and differs materially from Froude's account, which is based on Knox (Works, ed. Laing, i. 85–9).
In the following year Wharton was occupied with numerous forays into Scotland, and with intrigues to win over disaffected Scots nobles and obtain control of the south-west of Scotland. For his services in these matters and at Solway Moss he was early in 1543–4 raised to the peerage as Baron Wharton. The fact that his patent was not enrolled and could not be found led to the assumption that he was created by writ of summons to parliament from 30 Jan. 1544–5 to 30 Sept. 1566, in which case the barony would descend to his heirs general and not merely to his heirs male, as in the case of creation by patent; and in 1843–4 Charles Kemeys-Tynte, a descendant in the female line, laid claim to the barony, which was considered extinct since the outlawry of Philip, duke of Wharton [q. v.], on 3 April 1729. The House of Lords decided that this outlawry was illegal, and, assuming the barony to have been created by writ, declared Kemeys-Tynte heir to a third part of the barony (Courthope, Peerage, p. 509). There is, however, no doubt that the barony was created by patent; on 20 March 1543–4 Hertford wrote to Henry VIII that he had on the 18th at Newcastle delivered to Wharton the king's letters patent, creating him a baron (Hamilton Papers, ii. 303; Academy, 1896, i. 489; G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage, viii. 124, 130; cf. Hatfield MSS. i. 27, 28), and the decision of the House of Lords was therefore erroneous.
Throughout 1544, after acting as commissioner to draw up terms with the disaffected Scots for an English invasion, and being refused leave to accompany Henry to France on the ground that he could not be spared from the marches, Wharton kept guard at Carlisle while Hertford captured Edinburgh. Border forays and intrigues with Angus,
