There is an old Hebrew saying, "Every one who repeats this Hymn of Praise three times a day may be sure that he is a child of the world to come."

HIS DEATH, 1696.

"Mark the perfect man,

And behold the upright;

For the end of that man is peace."

Ps. XXXVII. 37.

Having survived most of his old friends and all the prominent actors in the principal events of the first half of the preceding century, Lord Wharton died at Hampstead on February 4th, 1696.

In noticing this event, the Flying Post (February 4th-6th, 1095-6) stated: "The Right Hon. Philip, Lord Wharton, died at Hampstead, where he had been for some time for the air, being above eighty years of age. He behaved himself with great honour in all the revolutions which happened in his time, was a great patron of religion, and true patriot to his country, and is succeeded in his honour and estate by his eldest son, the Right Hon. Thomas Wharton, Comptroller of His Majesty's household."

"I doubt not," wrote his chaplain, William Taylor, to Oliver Heywood (May 29th, 1696), "but your son has given you an account of the circumstances of my lord's death, who, in a full old age, at last was carried off by a dropsy which fell into his leg, which inflamed and mortified; but the danger of the dropsy and mortification seemed to be over, and the day before he died Mr. Mortimer, coming that day out of Yorkshire, he was engaged in business all day, as he used to be, and ate his supper well, and went to bed so well that he would have nobody to sit up with him, and appointed business the next morning, but never awakened, and in the morning his servants found him speechless and senseless, and he died about eleven o'clock at noon."* "His death," says Thoresby, "was an euthanasia, i.e. an easy and comfortable death."

Brit, Mus., Birch MSS. 4276.

His son, Goodwin (between whom and himself there had been an estrangement, arising, in part at least, from a secret marriage or an illicit alliance which Goodwin had contracted with some lady whose name he would not reveal) thus refers to his decease: "This day God was pleased to take my father out of this foolish world -he having four days before, with my consent, acquainted my brother [Thomas] before me with my having children, and yesterday having, with many tears, given me and my children his last blessing, he seemed much afflicted for the sorrows I had endured and the suspicion he had had of the truth of what I said to him-he died without a groan" (Manuscript Autobiography).

He was buried on February 12th, within the altar rail of Wooburn Parish Church, where there is a large mural monument of grey marble erected to his memory, with a Latin inscription, of which the following is a translation: "S. R. (IN HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION).

"Here await the second coming of Jesus Christ the remains of Lord Philip Wharton, Baron of Wharton, who, sprung from the noble race of the Whartons in the county of Westmorland, proved at length their heir and their glory, his honours shedding lustre on his worth, his worth on his honours; for, indeed, about three-andsixty years he held and graced his place in the House of Lords, was an active supporter of the English constitution, a loyal observer, advocate, and patron of the Reformed Religion, a model alike of good works, and of a true and living faith. His doors stood open to outcast ministers of God's Word, affording them shelter and hospitality; nay more, he dispensed his gifts with liberal hand from year to year to such as toiled in anxiety and want; and setting a noble example of munificence, he directed by his last will that a sufficient share of his estate should be devoted to truly pious uses. Thus he lived, and at length, after manifold troubles endured for God, country, and Church, he fell peacefully asleep in Christ on February 4th, 1695, aged about eighty-three."

There is also in the church a stone laid across the doorway of the vestry, and partly covered by the jamb of the door, bearing an inscription (in Latin) to the following effect:

"Here peacefully rests what was mortal

Of Lord Philip Wharton, Baron of Wharton.

O traveller, spare his ashes and pass on.Ӡ

The year began on March 25th; so that the date, reckoned according to the New Style, is 1696. +"Notes and Queries," IX. Ser., Vol. I., p. 170.

HIS BENEFACTION TO NONCONFORMIST MINISTERS.

"Lord Wharton was a man of great piety and charity, and his bounty flowed more particularly towards those who, nursed, as he was, in the spirit of Puritanism, found themselves in consequence cast out of the Church, and exposed to penury and scorn.”—JOSEPH HUNTER, F.S.A.

By his will, dated February 1st, and proved February 21st, 1696, he disposed of certain property at Healaugh, Hartford, Aske, &c., leaving to his second son, Goodwin, a dwelling-house (leased from the Merchant Taylors' Company) "on the west side of the Church of the Parish of St. Giles'-in-the-Fields," and four dwellinghouses then lately built in Lloyd Street, St. Giles'; also his "household stuff at the manor of Healaugh, or of the house late of Mr. John Gunter," &c. He gave to his chaplain, William Taylor, £20; to his servants a month's wages; and to fifteen persons, whom he names, small legacies, including £10 to John Gowland, £10 to Edward Hartley, £5 to William Bewley, and £4 to Anthony Fothergill. He also left 100 a year, for five years, " for binding and putting out any of the children of any of my tenants to be apprentices," limiting each case to £25. His executors were, with the exception of his chaplain, William Taylor, the same as the Trustees of his Bible Charity.

No provision was made in his will for the benefit of poor ministers after his decease, as seems to be indicated in the inscription on his monument. But it was commonly believed that some such provision was made therein, or in some other manner. William Taylor, writing to Oliver Heywood, May 29th, 1696, stated, "I suppose your son has given you an account of the great sum he has left for charitable purposes, in which I am not at all concerned any further than to give in to the executors an account of what my lord allowed the last year of his life, which I have done, and among the rest given in the allowance you had for six children that were at school at Northowram, and what

he allowed to you for yourself, which I doubt not will be continued."

His executors or trustees were accustomed for many years to make an annual allowance to Nonconformist ministers and meeting-houses, of which several instances are here given. In 1702, May 10th, Matthew Smith, M.A., a Congregational minister at Warley, near Halifax, wrote to Ralph Thoresby, of Leeds, stating that his congregation had by Mr. Heywood's means [Oliver Heywood died May 4th, 1702] from the trustees of Lord Wharton the sum of £10 per annum, and asking him to improve his interest with the trustees for its continuance (Correspondence, i. 412). William Mortimer, of Healaugh (one of Lord Wharton's trustees), wrote to Thoresby (January 29th, 1702-3) that he had sent £5 to Mr. Johnson [Thomas Johnson, M.A., a Nonconformist minister in the parish of Sandal Magna, near Wakefield, where he had licence to preach in 1672 as a Presbyterian, and died in 1707], and stating "when I was in London I had discourse with the trustees about it."

Richard Stretton, a Nonconformist minister in London, also wrote to Thoresby (July 10th), "Pray, when Mr. Mortimer pays you for Lord Wharton's executors, let him know that before Christmas they ordered that Mr. Johnson's allowance should be £8 per annum, in respect of his great losses; which Mr. Gow

Richard Stretton, M.A. (1632-1712), after having been ejected at the Restoration at Petworth, Sussex, became domestic chaplain to Lord Fairfax at Nunappleton, Yorkshire, till the death (1671) of his lordship (who left him the tithes of Bilbrough for sixty years, "provided he supply the office of preaching minister there, or find one to do it "), and while here he became acquainted with Mr. Rokeby, afterwards Judge; he then came to Leeds, being chosen the first minister of Millhill Nonconformist meeting-place (1673), and formed an intimate friendship with Thoresby; on removing to London (1677) he gathered a congregation at Haberdashers' Hall, and suffered imprisonment for his nonconformity. He was a zealous promoter of works of charity, and assisted Lord Wharton in his benevolent endeavours. He also aided the trustees of Lady Mary Armine, of Monk Bretton Priory (widow of Sir Thomas Armine, a Parliamentarian, who died in 1657), in the distribution of her benefactions. Besides giving £500 to Nonconformist ministers in 1662, she left at her death (1674) a rent charge of £44 per annum for 99 years for their benefit to be employed in Derbyshire, Huntingdonshire, and Yorkshire. Mr. Stretton was also the principal means of setting up a fund in London for assisting poor country ministers and congregations. In 1704 he wrote, "If God spare my life a few years I may have a fairer opportunity to help my northern friends."

land did or should have informed him of; and he tells me he had no more than his old allowance." From 1703 to 1706 the following amounts were granted by Lord Wharton's trustees-viz. to Joseph Dawson, an ejected Nonconformist and minister at Morley, £1 10s. per annum; Joshua Sagar, educated by Frankland, and Nonconformist minister at Wakefield, £2 per annum; Samuel Crompton, Nonconformist minister at Doncaster, £5 per annum; and Thomas Johnson £5 per annum, as before stated. Other instances of a similar kind about this period are mentioned. And such benefactions were not confined to ministers in Yorkshire. Ambrose Barnes, of Newcastle, "by his interest with Mr. Bendlows [one of Lord Wharton's trustees], procured a yearly allowance out of the legacy of Philip Lord Wharton for Mr. Robert Blunt, who had been cast out at Pontelon [Ponteland], and lived to above ninety years of age."

In the Memoirs of the Marquis (1715) it is stated, "Mr. Edward Harley was one of the trustees of this Charity, which was reported in the late times to have received a great interruption, if not a misapplication, especially about the time of the elections." Dr. Calamy, also, in his "Life and Times," has the following statement on the subject: "Lord Wharton left large sums in his will to religious and charitable uses, some of which were generally said to have been afterwards applied by his trustees to serve the purposes of election of members to serve in Parliament. He also left some thousands of pounds to be laid out in Bibles and other religious books, and distributed among the poor, the management whereof was reckoned more unexceptionable" (i. 351). And, referring to a later period (1719) when a controversy had arisen among Protestant Dissenting ministers on subscribing to a declaration of their belief in the doctrine of the Trinity, he says: "Warm complaints were also made of the gentlemen

This was the famous Salters' Hall controversy, in which the London ministers, whilst all professing belief in the Trinity, divided on the question of subscribing a formal statement of doctrine, or simply accepting the Bible as the rule of faith.