Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/414

 the Long parliament Wharton supported the policy of the popular leaders in the lower house, and was thought so deep in their secrets that the king proposed to call him as a witness against the five members (, Hist. of England, x. 16, 130). On 28 Feb. 1642 parliament appointed him lord lieutenant of Lancashire, and on 24 June of Buckinghamshire also (Commons' Journals, ii. 459, 638). He was also selected (18 June 1642) to command the army destined for the recovery of Ireland (, Army Lists of the Roundheads and Cavaliers, 1874, p. 67).

Wharton protested in his letters his desire for an accommodation between king and parliament, but nevertheless accepted a commission (30 July) to command a regiment of foot in the army under the Earl of Essex (, Story of Corfe Castle, pp. 132, 147). At Edgehill Wharton's regiment was routed, but it preserved its colours, and Wharton himself did his duty, though the royalist ballad-mongers reported that he ran away, and hid himself in a sawpit (Rump Songs, pp. 91, 103). Two days after the battle, Essex sent him to give an account of it to parliament, and Wharton also made a narrative of it to the lord mayor and aldermen of London (Old Parl. Hist. xi. 472;, Rebellion, vi. 101; Two Speeches of the Lord Wharton spoken in Guildhall, Oct. 27, 1642, 4to). For the rest of the war he confined himself to his parliamentary duties. He was from the first a member of the committee of both kingdoms, and was also one of the lay members of the assembly of divines. Wharton took at first a zealous part in the proceedings of the assembly; afterwards he went over to the independent minority, and even proposed the dissolution of the assembly (, Letters, ii. 117, 130, 236, 344). He supported the self-denying ordinance, the formation of the new model, and the appointment of Fairfax as general in place of Essex (Old Parl. Hist. xiii. 434; Fairfax Correspondence, iii. 143, 157). In July 1645 parliament appointed him one of the commissioners to treat with the Scots, who now regarded him as hostile. ‘You know his metal,’ wrote Baillie; ‘he is as fully as ever for that party’ (Letters, ii. 298). Wharton's letters during this employment, which continued until November 1645, are printed in the ‘Journals of the House of Lords’ and the ‘Old Parliamentary History’ (xiv. 44–61, 107). The House of Commons was so satisfied with his conduct that on 1 Dec. 1645, in debating the propositions to be sent to the king, they resolved that he should be desired to raise Wharton to an earldom. In the quarrel between army and parliament in 1647, Wharton took no public part. In June 1648 he was accused of concealing Major Rolfe's supposed plot against the king's life, but the House of Lords (19 June 1648) vindicated his conduct (ib. xvii. 238–56, xx. 355;, Rebellion, xi. 194; Carte MSS. 80, f. 574). He was not present in the House of Lords when the ordinance for the king's trial was rejected, but disapproved both of ‘Pride's purge’ and the king's execution (Old Parl. Hist. xviii. 492).

Wharton was on very intimate terms with Cromwell, who wrote to him on 8 Sept. 1648 to convey the news of the victory at Preston, and to congratulate him on the birth of his son Thomas. Cromwell frequently but vainly endeavoured to persuade Wharton to take an active part in the government of the republic, and, to remove his scruples, in a letter written just before the battle of Worcester he reproached him with stumbling at the dispensations of God and reasoning himself out of God's service. The work, he added, ‘needs you not—save as your Lord and Master needed the ass's colt, to show his humility—but you need it to declare your submission to and owning yourself the Lord's and his people's’ (, Cromwell, Letters 68, 118, 146, 181). In spite of this difference of opinion, the two continued on excellent terms, and in 1652 a match between Henry Cromwell and one of Wharton's daughters was discussed (ib. App. No. 26). Wharton intervened with Cromwell on behalf of Lord Claneboy in 1653, and his influence with the Protector was evidently considerable (Deputy-Keeper of Public Records, 32nd Rep. App. i. 24, 137). In December 1657 the Protector sent him a summons to the House of Lords, and, though Wharton refused to sit, it was evidently feared by Lord Saye that he would obey the summons (English Hist. Review, 1895, p. 106).

Wharton welcomed Charles II on his return to England, and spent a large sum in equipping himself for that purpose. ‘He was at that time in mourning for his second wife, and to give his black a look of joy on that occasion, his buttons were so many diamonds’ (Life of Thomas, Marquis of Wharton, p. 8). It is said that there was some thought of excluding Wharton from the act of indemnity, but it was not attempted, and it would have been difficult to find any ground for so doing (ib. p. 7). He lost, however, by the resettlement of Ireland a portion of the lands which he had obtained in that country during the