The son of Charles Wheler of
Charing, Kent, colonel in the
Life Guards, by his wife Anne, daughter of John Hutchin of
Egerton, Kent, he was born on 20 January 1651
New Style date at
Breda in the
Netherlands, where his Royalist parents were in exile. He was educated at a school in
Wye, Kent and
Lincoln College, Oxford, matriculating on 31 January 1667. He was created M.A. on 26 March 1683, and D.D. by diploma on 18 May 1702. In 1671 he became a student at the
Middle Temple. In October 1673 he set out for a tour in France, Switzerland, and Italy, and was at first accompanied by
George Hickes, his tutor at Lincoln College. While in Italy he received some instruction in antiquities from
Jean-Foy Vaillant; and at
Venice, in June 1675, met
Jacob Spon, with whom he travelled in Greece and the Levant in 1675 and 1676. Spon published a separate account of the journey in 1678 and Wheler's account,
A Journey into Greece, was published in 1682. Among the places visited and described by Wheler were
Zante,
Delos,
Constantinople,
Prusa ad Olympum,
Thyatira,
Ephesus,
Delphi,
Corinth, and
Attica. He brought home marbles and inscriptions from Athens, which he donated to the
University of Oxford in 1683 and are now kept in the
Ashmolean Museum. He made considerable use of coins in his book, and paid attention to botany. He brought home plants that had not been cultivated in Britain, including a
Hypericum. The botanists
John Ray,
Robert Morison, and
Leonard Plukenet received rare plants from Wheler. Wheler returned to England in November 1676. In 1677 he was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society (but expelled in 1685) and was knighted on 1 September 1682. About 1683 he took holy orders. In 1684 he received a canonry in
Durham Cathedral, and from 1685 to 1702 was vicar of
Basingstoke,
Hampshire. In 1706 he was promoted to the rectory of
Winston, and in 1709 to the rectory of
Houghton-le-Spring (where he founded and endowed a school for girls) both in
County Durham. He died at Durham, after a short illness, on 15 January 1724 New Style date, and was buried in the
galilee of Durham Cathedral. ==Works==