• Name: Wharton, John
• Gender: Male
• Birth Date:
• Death Date:
• Occupation: politician

MP for Beverley, friend of Tooke and member of the SCI, who chaired the fourteenth anniversary meeting of the SCI at the Crown and Anchor on 2 May 1794 - and was afterwards questioned about it by the Privy Council. Wharton may then have given evidence against Tooke - according to one account, Wharton relayed the information that Tooke had welcomed the prospect of a naval mutiny. 'The Privy Council could not decide whether to call Wharton as a prosecution witness or allow Tooke to call him for the defence, when the damnng evidence would be produced under cross-examination. They decided on the latter course when Tooke subpoenaed Wharton, but Tooke stymied the prosecution by not calling Wharton who was then unable to give evidence against him' (Gentleman Radical, p. 155).

He appears in the diary on 1 November 1794, when Godwin records seeing him at Hardy's trial. His name is crossed out under 1794 in the 1796 list and mistakenly entered under 1793 - he does not appear in this year. The two instances of 'Warton' in 1789 have been taken as unrelated - different spelling, context unconvincing, pre-date first appearance recorded in 1796 lists.

• David and Christina Bewley, Gentleman radical: a life of John Horne Tooke, 1736–1812 (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 1998).
• Albert Goodwin, The friends of liberty: the English democratic movement in the age of the French Revolution (London: Hutchinson, 1979).

This table lists the people this person is most frequently noted with in the diary.