Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/145

 the other lords on whom it was sought to fix the responsibility for the negotiation of the partition treaty [see, first ; ; or ]. He continued in office on the accession of Queen Anne; he pronounced on 31 July 1702 the decree dissolving the Savoy Hospital, and presided over the commission which on 22 Oct. following met at the Cockpit to discuss the terms of the projected union with Scotland but accomplished nothing. On 14 Dec. 1704 he conveyed the thanks of the House of Lords to Marlborough for his services in the late campaign.

Among the sages of the law Wright has no place. Entirely without experience of chancery business, he made a shift to supply his deficiencies by assiduous study of a manual of practice compiled for his use; but, though he succeeded in avoiding serious error, the extreme circumspection with which he proceeded entailed a vast accumulation of arrears. His shortcomings were the more conspicuous by contrast with the great qualities of his predecessor, and the political meanness which led him to exclude Somers with other whig magnates from the commission of the peace gave occasion to unpleasant animadversions in the House of Commons (31 March 1704). His judicial integrity, however, is unimpeached even by his most censorious critic, Bishop Burnet; and his intervention, by the issue of writs of habeas corpus (8 March 1704–5), on behalf of the two counsel committed by the House of Commons to the custody of the serjeant-at-arms for pleading the cause of the plaintiffs in the Aylesbury election case, if indiscreet, was at any rate courageous [see ]. The House of Commons peremptorily enjoined the serjeant-at-arms to make no return to the writs, and might perhaps have proceeded to commit the lord keeper had not an opportune prorogation terminated the affair [cf. ].

The coalition of the following autumn between Marlborough and Godolphin and the whig junto was sealed by the dismissal of Wright, now out of favour with both parties, and his replacement (11 Oct.) by William (afterwards Lord) Cowper [q. v.] Neither peerage nor pension rewarded his services; but the wealth which he had amassed, largely, it was rumoured, by the corrupt disposal of patronage, enabled him to sustain with dignity the position of a county magnate. His principal seat was at Caldecote in Warwickshire, but he had also estates at Hartshill, Belgrave, and Brooksby in Leicestershire. He died at Caldecote on 4 Aug. 1721, and was buried in Caldecote church.

Wright married, in 1676 (license dated 4 July), Elizabeth, second daughter of George Ashby of Quenby, Leicestershire (, London Marr. Licences, col. 1514), by whom he had six sons and four daughters. The eldest son, George Wright, purchased the manor of Gayhurst, Buckinghamshire, which remained in his posterity until the present century.

Wright is described by Macky (Memoirs, Roxburghe Club, p. 50) as ‘of middle stature,’ with ‘a fat broad face much marked by the small-pox.’ An engraving from his portrait by White, done in 1700, is in the British Museum (cf., Leicestershire, iii. 218). His decrees in chancery are reported by Vernon and Peere Williams. For the proceedings in the case of the Savoy, see ‘Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica,’ vii. 238, and Stowe MS. 865. For epistolary and other remains, see Additional MSS. 21506 f. 111, 28227 ff. 67, 71, 29588 f. 135; Hist. MSS. Comm. 8th Rep. App. i. 440, ii. 103, 12th Rep. App. iii. 14. A small but important modification of criminal procedure, the substitution (by 1 Anne, stat. ii. c. 9, s. 3) of sworn for unsworn testimony on behalf of the prisoner in cases of treason and felony, appears to have been due to Wright's initiative.

[Le Neve's Pedigrees of the Knights (Harl. Soc.); Inner Temple Books; Nichols's Leicestershire, i. 435 et seq., 438, 453, iii. 176, 194, 216, 1059, iv. 689, 1036; Dugdale's Warwickshire, ed. Thomas, p. 1097; Lipscomb's Buckinghamshire, iv. 151; Howell's State Trials, xii. 280, 954, xiii. 1250, 1355, xiv. 861, 876; Luttrell's Relation of State Affairs; Raymond's Rep. p. 135; London Gazette, 20–28 May, 27 June–1 July 1700, 26–30 June 1701; Lords' Journals, xvi. 583; Boyer's Annals of Queen Anne, i. 155, iii. 184, iv. 181; Account of the Conduct of the Duchess of Marlborough, 1742, pp. 124, 147; Burnet's Own Time (fol.) ii. 242, 379, 426; Vernon's Letters, ed. James, ii. 54, 56, 257; Noble's Continuation of Granger's Biogr. Hist. of England, i. 35; Swift's Works, ed. Scott, x. 302; Pope's Works, ed. Elwin, vi. 25; Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors; Foss's Lives of the Judges; Stanhope's Hist. of England, 1701–13.] 

WRIGHT, PATIENCE (1725–1786), wax modeller, was born of quaker parents named Lovell at Bordentown, New Jersey, North America, in 1725. In 1748 she married Joseph Wright, also of Bordentown, and in 1769 was left a widow with a son and two daughters. Having made a