Sir George Wheler

Sir George Wheler (1651–1724) was an English clergyman and travel writer.

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 January 20th 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 Jan. 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 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 gave an account of the antiquities of Athens, and brought home marbles and inscriptions. 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.

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