The Good Lord Wharton

Brief biographical details Philip Wharton was born in 1613. On the death of his grandfather in 1625 he became the fourth Lord Wharton, his own father having died when Philip was only nine years old. He inherited land, money and responsibilities, but all these were held in trust until he was 21 years old. He entered Exeter College, Oxford, at the age of 13, and later spent three years travelling on the continent of Europe with his brother Thomas and a tutor. He was called to the court of Charles I where he quickly became known for his abilities in dancing. At the age of 19 (the reason for the Van Dyke picture?) he married. All this before he was 21. At 21 he should have taken his seat in the House of Lords but could not do so because the King refused to call Parliament. The House of Lords did not sit until 1640. From then on Philip Lord Wharton was active in parliamentary affairs. In 1642 Philip Lord Wharton raised a regiment of foot and a troop of horse to fight in the battle of Edgehill. They behaved less than gloriously as Wharton himself reported later to Parliament. "Before there were any near excuse three or four of our regiments fairly ran away - Sir William Fairfax's, Sir Henry Cholmley's, my Lord Kimbolton's and to say the plain truth my own." Lord Wharton not only ran away but is said to have hidden in a sawpit, thus earning for himself the parliamentary nickname of Sawpit Wharton. In 1645 during the Commonwealth period Philip Lord Wharton wrote to Lord Fairfax concerning the vacancy in the Parish of Grinton: "I would be well pleased that an honest, faithful, godly man might be put in, who might be of bold spirit and able body. Most of the dale are in my hands and I would be exceeding glad therefore out of that respect, as well as the general, that it were well supplied."

Towards the end of his life Philip Lord Wharton founded and endowed our church (1690) and founded and endowed his Bible Charity (1693), a scheme devised on a grand scale for encouraging children from poor families to read, and study the scriptures. He died in 1696 and is buried in Wooburn Parish Church, Buckinghamshire. Source of biographical details: "The Good Lord Wharton" by Bryan Dale, published 1906. and "Sawpit Wharton" by GF Trevallyn Jones, published 1950. Also "Philip Lord Wharton - Revolutionary Aristocrat?" by K W Wadsworth being the 1990 Annual Lecture of the United Reformed Chuch History Society published in the Journal Volume 4 No 8 May 1991 and made available here with the permission of the Society. The full text of this lecture is available here in Public Document Format (pdf). After downloading the text (240k) it may be read with Adobe Acrobat software or any other pdf reader. Click here to download the full text of the 1990 Annual Lecture   Links to other pages on this web-site: Return to Low Row URC Home Page History of Low Row URC The Roy Huntingford Organ The Low Row Art Group Ministers of Low Row URC Lord Wharton's Bible Charity Pictures of church activities (457k download)