Duchess of Wharton, my dearest spouse, during her life"; he also directed (with a strange estimate of his wasted life): "I order and appoint that after my death my testamentary executor shall see fixed upon my burial place a stone with the following inscriptions engraven upon it: "Vixi et quem dederat cursum fortuna peregi." "My fame shall live when pyramids of pride Mix with the ashes they were raised to hyde."† His widow survived him many years, married Count Montijo, lived during the latter part of her life in Golden Square, London, died in 1777, and was buried in old St. Pancras Churchyard. His younger sister, Lucy, married (1731) Sir William Morice, of Werrington, near Launceston, was divorced, and died at Bath in 1739. His elder sister, Jane, wife of John Holt, and subsequently of Robert Coke, died in 1761, "the last of that noble family." After the death of "the last of the Barons," the Wharton titles became extinct, and all the Wharton estates came into the hands of private owners of another name, except the portion devoted by the fourth Lord to charitable uses, and known as the Bible Lands, which continued to perpetuate his memory, and has conferred a lasting benefit upon posterity. "Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust." THE EXTINCT BARONY. After the lapse of over a century, the Barony of Wharton, having been deemed in abeyance, was claimed in 1844 by Colonel Charles Kemeys Kemeys Tynte, of Halswell, near Bridgwater, Somerset, a descendant of the fourth Lord Wharton's daughter Mary, and her second husband, Sir Charles Kemeys, of Cefn Mabley, Glamorganshire. He got the outlawry of the Duke reversed on technical grounds (1845), but only succeeded "I have lived, and the course which fortune gave I have accomplished.""Eneid," IV. 653. "Notes and Queries," Series VIII., Vol. XII., p. 488; Series IX., Vol. I., p. 91. "Whartonia" (1727). Philip, Duke of Wharton," by J. R. Robinson (1896). in proving that other descendants of daughters of the fourth Lord had an equal right to the title. The judgment of the House of Lords was to the effect that Colonel Tynte was only entitled to a third part of the barony. This decision was founded on the assumption that the barony was created by Writ of Summons, in which case it would have descended through the heirs general, female as well as male. But it has been since shown that it was created by Letters Patent, and was consequently limited to heirs male of the body. There being no such heirs the decision was wrong, and the barony must be regarded as having become absolutely defunct, without any hope of a resurrection. Sic transit gloria mundi. |