Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton

Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton PC (21 December 1698 – 31 May 1731) was an English peer and Jacobite politician who was one of the few people in the history of England, and the first since the 15th century, to have been raised to a dukedom whilst still a minor and not closely related to the monarch.

Youth and marriage Wharton was the son of "Honest Tom" Wharton, 1st Marquess of Wharton, the Whig partisan, and his second wife, Lucy Loftus, and had a good education. Well prepared for a life as a public speaker, the young Wharton was both eloquent and witty, but spoiled and prone to excess. When his father died in 1715, Philip, then sixteen years old, succeeded him as 2nd Marquess of Wharton and 2nd Marquess of Malmesbury in the Peerage of Great Britain and as 2nd Marquess of Catherlough in the Peerage of Ireland. Wharton did not get control of his father's extensive estate, as it had been put in the care of his mother and his father's Whig friends until he reached the age of 21.

In 1715, one month after inheriting these peerages, he eloped with 15-year-old Martha Holmes, the daughter of Major-General Richard Holmes, who lacked any noble pedigree. Thereafter, young Wharton began to travel, leaving his wife behind in England. He travelled to France and Switzerland chaperoned by a severe Calvinist tutor whose authority he resented. He met James Francis Edward Stuart, the "Old Pretender" and son of King James II and VII, sometimes known in Europe as the rightful James III and VIII, or as James, Prince of Wales, who in 1716 created him Duke of Northumberland in the Jacobite peerage.

Wharton then went to Ireland where, at the age of 18, he entered the Irish House of Lords as Marquess of Catherlough. When he was 19 years old, in 1718, he was created Duke of Wharton in the Peerage of Great Britain by King George I, part of an effort to solidify his support in the British House of Lords.

Upon returning to England from Ireland in 1718, he was reunited with Martha, now styled as the Duchess of Wharton. According to a letter written around this time by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to her sister Lady Mary, the young Duke was pompous and unfaithful, and used his wife to make his mistresses jealous:

However, the following year, Thomas died in a smallpox epidemic in London. Wharton blamed his wife, whom he had told to stay with the baby at their estate at Winchendon, Buckinghamshire. According to author Lewis Melville: made up of high-society rakes celebrating debauchery, and primarily performed parodies of religious rites, "which damned him in the eyes of all sober-minded persons."

Before the treason charge, Wharton fitfully attempted a reconciliation with George. He offered to give Walpole's spies intelligence, but they rejected him as of little value, and he returned to Madrid to live on his army pay alone. When he was insulted by a valet, he caned him and was imprisoned briefly before being banished.

Death and succession In 1730, he renounced James and the Jacobite cause. In advanced stages of alcoholism, he and his wife moved to the Royal Cistercian Abbey of Poblet, in Catalonia, where he died on 1 June 1731. His widow returned to London, with the aid of James. When Wharton's will was proved in court in 1736, she was able to live comfortably in society in London. Wharton's titles became extinct on his death, other than Baron Wharton which was inherited by his sister Jane Wharton, 7th Baroness Wharton. In 1738 his valuable mining interests centred on Fremington in Yorkshire were sold, having many years earlier been placed in trust, with the mines of lead, iron and copper reserved for the use of his two sisters, Lady Jane Wharton (1707–1761) (wife of Robert Coke of Longford in Derbyshire, brother of Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester ) and Lady Lucy Wharton (d.1739) (wife of Sir William Morice, Baronet, of Werrington in Devon). Lady Jane survived her sister and on her death in 1760 bequeathed the mines in trust to a certain "Miss Anna Maria Draycott" (c.1736–1787), who was referred to as her "niece", possibly a sobriquet, "whom she had brought up" (i.e. from childhood), according to Clarkson (1814). The identity of Anna Maria is uncertain, she is called Anna Maria Delagard, "sister of William Delagard of Bombay", and "grand-daughter and heiress of William Draycott of Chelsea, county Middlesex" "and of Sunbury Court in Middlesex". She later adopted the surname Draycott, having also inherited the Sunbury-on-Thames estates of the Draycott family, and in 1764 married George Fermor, 2nd Earl of Pomfret, who thereby inherited her large fortune and the Wharton mining interests. Her gratitude to Lady Jane her benefactor is recorded on an inscribed monument she erected to her in St Mary's Church, Sunbury, where she was buried, but with no stated indication of the relationship.