WARTON, Sir Michael (?1648-1725), of Beverley, Yorks.

Of an old Beverley family, who had sat for the borough since the sixteenth century, Warton was classed as a Whig in the list of the 1715 Parliament prepared for George I, in which it is stated that ‘il refusa l’offre de la reine qui l’avoit nommé pour un des douze pairs. Le Roy lui a aussi offert mais il s’en est excusé’. He was gazetted a baron in the coronation honours list but was allowed to decline.1Pol. State, viii. 345-6.He is not recorded as voting in that Parliament, and was one of a number of Members who were committed to the custody of the serjeant-at-arms for defaulting from a call of the House, 9 Dec. 1719.2CJ, xix. 61. He did not stand in 1722. In 1723 he wrote to his old friend, Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford, complaining that ‘a distemper in the guts ... tyrannises over the poor remains of life my fever has left, worse than this Walpolish government over an agonising free people’.3HMC Portland, v. 634. He died 25 Mar. 1725, leaving his real property to his heirs at law. One of these was Michael Newton, to whom he also left all his personal estate, subject to legacies, including liberal benefactions to Beverley. Another was Charles Pelham.