U.S. senator in 1833-1844, and governor of New York in 1844-1846. During his public life he had become a leader of the Democratic party in New York, Martin Van Buren being his closest associate. He was an influential member of the so-called “Albany Regency,” a group of Democrats in New York, including such men as J. A. Dix and W. L. Marcy, who for many years virtually controlled their party within the state. Wright's integrity in office was illustrated in 1845, when the “anti-rent troubles” (see New York) broke out and it seemed probable that the votes of the disaffected would decide the coming election. The governor asked and obtained from the legislature the power to suppress the disturbance by armed force, and put an end to what was really an insurrection. When the national Democratic party in 1844 nominated and elected James K. Polk to the presidency, instead of Martin Van Buren, Wright and the state organization took an attitude of armed neutrality towards the new administration. Renominated for governor in 1846, Wright was defeated, and the result was by many ascribed in part to the alleged hostility of the Polk administration. He died at Canton on the 27th of August 1847.
The best biography is that by J. D. Hammond, Life and Times of Silas Wright (Syracuse, N.Y., 1848), which was republished as vol. iii. of that author's Political History of New York.
WRIGHT, THOMAS (1809–1884), British palaeontologist, was born at Paisley in Renfrewshire on the 9th of November 1809. He studied at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, and qualified as a doctor in 1832. Soon afterwards he settled at Cheltenham, and graduated M.D. at St Andrews in 1846. He devoted his leisure to geological pursuits, became and active member of the Cotteswold Naturalists' Club (founded in 1846), and gathered a fine collection of Jurassic ammonites and echinoderms. He contributed to the Palaeontographical Society monographs on the British fossil Echinodermata from the Oolitic and Cretaceous formations (1855–1882); he also began (1878) a monograph on the Lias ammonites of the British Islands, of which the last part was issued in 1885, after his death. He wrote many papers in the Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. and Proc. Cotteswold Club. The Wollaston medal was awarded to him by the Geological Society of London in 1878, and he was elected F.R.S. in 1879. He died at Cheltenham on the 17th of November 1884.
WRIGHT, THOMAS (1810–1877), English antiquary, was born near Ludlow, in Shropshire, on the 21st of April 1810. He was descended from a Quaker family formerly living at Bradford, Yorkshire. He was educated at the old grammar school, Ludlow, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1834. While at Cambridge he contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine and other periodicals, and in 1835 he came to London to devote himself to a literary career. His first separate work was Early English Poetry in Black Letter, with Prefaces and Notes (1836, 4 vols. 12mo), which was followed during the next forty years by a very extensive series of publications, many of lasting value. He helped to found the British Archaeological Association and the Percy, Camden and Shakespeare societies. In 1842 he was elected corresponding member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres of Paris, and was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries as well as member of many other learned British and foreign bodies. In 1859 he superintended the excavations of the Roman city of Uriconium, near Shrewsbury, of which he issued a description. He died at Chelsea on the 23rd of December 1877, in his sixty-seventh year. A portrait of him is in the Drawing Room Portrait Gallery for October 1st, 1859. He was a great scholar, but will be chiefly remembered as an industrious antiquary and the editor of many relics of the middle ages.
His chief publications are—Queen Elizabeth and her Times, a Series of Original Letters (1838, 2 vols.); Reliquiae antiquae (1839–1843, again 1845, 2 vols.), edited with Mr J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps; W. Mapes’s Latin Poems (1841, 4to, Camden Society); Political Ballads and Carols, published by the Percy Society (1841); Popular Treatises on Science (1841); History of Ludlow (1841, &c.; again 1852); Collection of Latin Stories (1842, Percy Society); The Vision and Creed of Piers Ploughman (1842, 2 vols.; 2nd ed., 1855); Biographia literaria, vol. i. Anglo-Saxon Period (1842), vol. ii. Anglo-Norman Period (1846); The Chester Plays (1843–1847, 2 vols., Shakespeare Society); St Patrick’s Purgatory (1844); Anecdota literaria (1844); Archaeological Album (1845,410); Essays connected with England in the Middle Ages (1846, 2 vols.); Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1847–1851, Percy Society), a new text with notes, reprinted in 1 vol. (1853 and 1867); Early Travels in Palestine (1848, Bohn’s Antiq. Lib.); England under the House of Hanover (1848, 2 vols., several editions, reproduced in 1868 as Caricature History of the Georges); Mapes, De nugis curialium (1850, 410, Camden Society); Geoffrey Gaimar's Metrical Chronicle (1850, Caxton Society); Narratives of Sorcery and Magic (1851, 2 vols!); The Celt, the Roman and the Saxon (1852; 4th ed., 1885); History of Fulke Fitz Warine (1855); Jo. de Garlandia, De triumphis ecclesiae (1856, 410, Roxburghe Club); Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English (1857); A Volume of Vocabularies (1857; 2nd ed., by R. P. Wulcker, 1884, 2 vols.); Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Paris, 1858, 2 vols.); Malory’s History of King Arthur (1858, 2 vols., revised 1865); Political Poems and Songs from Edward III. to Richard III. (1859–1861, 2 vols., “Rolls” series); Songs and Ballads of the Reign of Philip and Mary (1860, 4to, Roxburghe Club); Essays on Archaeological Subjects (1861, 2 vols.); Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England in the Middle Ages (1862, 410, reproduced in 1871 as The Homes of other Days); Roll of Arms of Edward I. (1864, 4to); Autobiography of Thomas Wright (1736–1797), his grandfather (1864); History of Caricature (1865, 4to); Womankind in Western Europe (1869, 4to); Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets of 12th Century (1872, 2 vols., “Rolls” series).
WRIGHT, WILLIAM ALDIS (1836–), English man of letters, was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1888 became vice-master of the college. He was one of the editors of the Journal of Philology from its foundation in 1868, and was secretary to the Old Testament revision company from 1870 to 1885. He edited the plays of Shakespeare published in the “Clarendon Press” series (1868–1897), also with W. G. Clark the “Cambridge” Shakespeare (1863–1866; 2nd ed. 1891–1893) and the "Globe" edition (1864). He published (1899) a facsimile of the Milton MS. in the Trinity College library, and edited Milton's poems with critical notes (1903). He was the intimate friend and literary executor of Edward FitzGerald, whose Letters and Literary Remains he edited in 1889. This was followed by the Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1895), his Miscellanies (1900), More Letters of Edward FitzGerald (1901), The Works of Edward FitzGerald (7 vols., 1903). He edited the metrical chronicle of Robert of Gloucester (1887), Generydes (1878) for the Early English Text Society, and other texts.
WRIST, in anatomy, the carpus or carpal articulation in man, the joint by which the hand is articulated with the fore-arm (see Anatomy: Superficial and Artistic; and Skeleton: Appendicular). The word means by origin “that which turns,” and is formed from the O. Eng. wríðan, to twist.
WRIT (O. Eng. gewrit, writ, from writan, to write), in law, a formal order from the crown or a delegated executive officer to an inferior executive officer or to a private person, enjoining some act or omission.[1] The word represents the Latin brevis or breve (sometimes Englished into “brief” in the older authorities), so called, according to Bracton and Fleta, from its “shortly” expressing the intention of the framer (quia breviter et paucis verbis intentionem proferentis exponit).[2]
The breve can be traced back as far as Paulus (about A.D. 220), who wrote a work Ad edictum de brevibus, cited in the Vatican Fragment, § 310. In the Corpus juris the word generally means a summary or report. In Cod. vii. 44, breviculum means a summary of the grounds of a judgment. The interdictum of Roman law sometimes represents the writ of English law; e.g. there is considerable likeness between the Roman interdictum de libero homine exhibendo and the English writs of habeas corpus and de homine replegiando. From Roman law the breve passed into the Liber feudorum and the canon law, in both in a sense differing from that at present borne by the writ of English law. The breve testatum of the Liber feudorum was an instrument in writing made on the land at the time of giving seisin by the lord to the tenant, and attested by the seals of the lord
- ↑ There seems to be no authentic definition of writ. That of Reeves is “a settled form of precept applicable to the purpose of compelling defendants to answer the charge alleged by plaintiffs” (1 Hist. of the Eng. Law, 415).
- ↑ It is perhaps doubtful whether intentio is here used in its ordinary sense or in the technical signification which it bore as a part of the Roman formula.
