Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/403

 Whalley unsuccessfully contested Leominster in 1845 and Montgomery in 1852; but on 6 Dec. 1852 he was returned for Peterborough in the liberal interest. In May 1853 he was unseated on petition, but was again returned on 30 April 1859 at the general election, and retained his seat until his death nineteen years later. During the famine of 1847 he established fisheries in the west of Ireland, and in his yacht explored the fishing banks off the coast, receiving for his services the thanks of the British Association. In 1853 he was appointed examiner of private bills for parliament. In 1863 he introduced a bill for ‘Abolishing Committees as a Court for Private Bill Legislation,’ and in 1865–6 another for ‘Abolishing Turnpikes in England.’ He served the office of sheriff of Carnarvonshire in 1852, and was also deputy lieutenant of Denbighshire and captain of the Denbighshire yeomanry. At the time of the Crimean war he volunteered the service of his troop, and received the thanks of the war office. Whalley was an ardent protestant, and made himself notorious by the frequency and bitterness of his denunciations of the jesuits, whom he suspected of all manner of intrigues. He warmly espoused the cause of the Tichborne claimant, and was so intemperate in his advocacy that he was committed to prison by Lord-chief-justice Cockburn for contempt of court. He died on 8 Oct. 1878 at King William's Tower, near Llangollan in Denbighshire, and was buried on 12 Oct. in the family vault at Ruabon. He married at Brighton, on 25 Jan. 1846, Anne Wakefield, eldest daughter of Richard Attree of Blackmoor, Selborne, Hampshire. By her he had a son and two daughters.

 WHALLEY, JOHN (1653–1724), quack, the son of a Cromwellian adventurer, was born in Ireland on 29 April 1653. He was a shoemaker by trade. He came to Dublin in 1682, where he established himself as a compounder of universal medicines, and gained a reputation as a necromancer and as a compiler of prophetic almanacs. So great was his fame that the authorities consulted him concerning the whereabouts of the Duke of Monmouth. In 1688 he was placed in the pillory for a political offence, and somewhat roughly used by the crowd. He was very unpopular with the native Irish, whom he perpetually assailed with abuse, and with the Roman catholics, whose religion he constantly denounced, and during the Jacobite ascendency in Dublin he withdrew to England to avoid punishment. During his sojourn in that country he became a coffee-house keeper, but after the conclusion of the Irish war he returned to Dublin and took up his residence at the ‘Blew post, next door to the Wheel of Fortune, on the west side of St. Stephen's Green,’ where he resumed his practice ‘in physick and mathematicks,’ and regularly published his astrological almanacs, styled ‘Vox Urani,’ a title which he changed towards the close of his life to ‘Advice from the Stars.’ In 1687 and 1688 these annuals were compiled in the interests of the Roman catholics who were then dominant in Dublin. Before 1698 Whalley removed to Nicholas' Street, next door to the Fleece tavern, where in 1701 he translated ‘Ptolemy's Quadripartite, or four books concerning the influences of the stars. Faithfully render'd into English from Leo Allacius’ (London, 16mo), of which a second revised edition was published by Manoah Sibly [q. v.] in 1786 (London, 8vo). He also issued, with a preface, dated from his house in Nicholas' Street in January 1701–2, ‘A Treatise of Eclipses’ (Dublin, 12mo). In 1703 he was living in Patrick Street, at No. 1, a house built in the old wall, and he finally removed to Arundel Court, just without St. Nicholas' Gate. In 1711 John Mercer, a coal-dealer, commenced a prosecution against him for having printed as an address to parliament the case of several poor inhabitants of Dublin against Mercer as an engrosser or forestaller of coal. Whalley, however, obtained relief on petitioning the House of Commons, who directed proceedings to be taken against Mercer ‘as a common and notorious cheat.’ In 1714 the astrologer started ‘Whalley's News Letter, containing a full and particular Account of Foreign and Domestic News.’ This newsletter contained weekly supplements, in which some leading citizen was grossly satirised. These scurrilous attacks were advertised beforehand, and frequently procured Whalley hush-money, though occasionally they earned him a horsewhipping instead.

Whalley died at Dublin on 17 Jan. 1723–4. Swift's lines on John Partridge [q. v.], commencing Here, five foot deep, lies on his back A cobbler, starmonger, and quack, were adapted to Whalley and circulated through the city. By his will, printed in Evans's ‘History of Irish Almanacs,’ he 