Background
He was the son of a blacksmith in Westmorland.
He was the son of a blacksmith in Westmorland.
Wharton attended, with Ashmole, the first meeting in 1647 of the Society of Astrologers at Gresham College.
He went to Oxford to study, though not admitted to the University. He then returned to Westmorland, and in 1642 sold his family property, and raised his own troop of horse for the Royalist cause. He shared defeat at Stow-on-the-Wold, in 1643.
He is said to have served under Jacob Astley, 1st Baron Astley of Reading.
He then went to Charles I at Oxford, and was given a paymaster position in the Ordnance, under Sir John Heydon. lieutenant included both William Lilly and John Booker, Parliamentarians who had been on the other side of the astrological pamphlet exchanges in the Civil War that had ended in 1646.
He was released by the intervention of Ashmole, who made him steward on his Berkshire estates. At the English Restoration of 1660, he was reinstated as a paymaster.
He became Treasurer of the Ordnance in 1670, an office he held until his death.
He was made a baronet in 1677.