Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton

Who was Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton?

Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton was a powerful Jacobite politician, was one of the few people in English history, 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. He was the son of Thomas "Honest Tom" Wharton, the Whig partisan, and his second wife Lucy Loftus. When Thomas died in 1715, Philip, then 16 years old, succeeded him as 2nd Marquess of Wharton and 2nd Marquess of Malmesbury in the Peerage of Great Britain and 2nd Marquess of Catherlough in the Peerage of Ireland. Just a month after he inherited his titles, he eloped with Martha Holmes, the daughter of Major-General Richard Holmes. Wharton did not get control of his father's extensive estate, for it was put in the care of Philip's mother and Thomas's Whig party friends.

Thereafter, young Wharton began to travel. He had been raised with an excellent education and prepared for a life as a public speaker, and Wharton was eloquent and witty. He travelled to France and Switzerland with a severe Calvinist tutor whom he resented.