1611–18, p. 123). Neile says that on the arrival of the writ directed to the sheriff of Lichfield, also dated 9 March 1611–12 (Cobbett), Wightman was brought to the stake. The fire ‘scorched him a little,’ and ‘he cried out that he would recant.’ Thereupon the crowd rescued him, themselves getting ‘scorched to save him.’ A form of recantation was presented to him ‘which he there read and professed, before he was unchained from the stake.’ He was remitted to prison, and ‘after a fortnight or three weeks’ was again brought before the consistory court to recant ‘in a legal way.’ This he declined to do, but ‘blasphemed more audaciously than before.’ The writ was renewed, ‘sent down and executed, and he died blaspheming’ (Calendar, ut supra, 1639–40, pp. 83–5). Fuller says he was burned ‘in the next month’ after the execution (18 March 1612) of Legate. Wallace supposes the date to have been 11 April 1612; this was the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter day. Neile affirms that Laud ‘was with me and assisted me in all the proceedings … from the beginning to the end.’
[The Narrative History of King James, 1651, pt. iv., gives the commission and warrant (reprinted in Greenshield's Brief Hist. of the Revival of the Arian Heresie, 1711); Fuller's Church History, 1655, bk. x. sect. 4 (reprinted, with the warrants, in Cobbett's State Trials, 1809, ii. 727); Wallace's Antitrinitarian Biogr. 1850, ii. 534, iii. 565 (with reprints of the warrants).]
WIGHTMAN, Sir WILLIAM (1784–1863), judge, came of an old Dumfriesshire family. He was the son of William Wightman, gentleman, of St. Clement's, London, and was born in 1784. He was an undergraduate of University College, Oxford, where he matriculated on 23 March 1801, and on 21 June was elected to a Michel exhibition at Queen's College, graduating B.A. on 30 May 1805, and M.A. on 23 Oct. 1809; from 1859 to 1863 he was an honorary fellow of his college. On 31 Jan. 1804 he entered Lincoln's Inn, and, after some years of practice as a special pleader, he was called to the bar in 1821. In 1830 he transferred himself to the Inner Temple and joined the northern circuit. He was known as an exceptionally sound and clear-headed lawyer, and for several years held the important post of junior counsel to the treasury. He was appointed a member of the commission of 1830 upon the practice of the common-law courts, and of that of 1833 upon the proposal for a criminal law digest. He was engaged in many celebrated cases, particularly the prosecutions arising out of the Bristol riots; but, owing to an almost excessive modesty, was little known except to his profession. In February 1841 he was promoted to a judgeship of the queen's bench, on the resignation of Mr. Justice Littledale, and was knighted on 28 April, and here he served as a judge for nearly twenty-three years. While on circuit at York, on 9 Dec. 1863, he was seized with an attack of apoplexy, and died next day. He married in 1819, a daughter of James Baird of Lasswade, near Edinburgh.
Wightman's pre-eminent qualities as a lawyer were accuracy and caution. As a judge he had deep learning, a faculty of lucid reasoning, and abundance of good sense. He was courteous, firm, and dignified, and added greatly to the strength of the court of which he was a member. He had also great humour, considerable literary gifts, and was widely read in English letters (Campbell, Autobiography, ii. 310; Croker Papers, iii. 240).
[Foss's Lives of the Judges; Gent. Mag. 1864, ii. 250; Times, 11 Dec. 1863; Arnould's Life of Denman; Alumni Oxon. 1715–1886; Lincoln's Inn Admission Register.]
WIGHTWICK, GEORGE (1802–1872), architect, son of William Wightwick (d. 1811) by his wife Anna Maria (1779–1864), daughter of Alexander Taylor, was born at Alyn Bank, Mold, Flint, on 26 Aug. 1802. He was educated at Wolverhampton grammar school, and privately under Dr. Lord at Tooting. After professional pupilage under Edward Lapidge and an educational tour (1825–6) in Italy, he entered the office of Sir John Soane, and in 1829 opened practice at Plymouth (where for a time he was in partnership with J. Foulston), having already erected Belmont House for John Norman in that neighbourhood. In 1836 he designed the South Devon and East Cornwall hospital; this was followed by works at Crediton church in 1838 and the restoration of the church at Helston. In Plymouth he carried out the town-hall (1839–40), the congregational chapel, Courtenay Street (1848), and the Cottonian Library (1850). He designed the episcopal chapel at Flushing, near Falmouth, in 1841, and St. John's Church, Treslothan, in 1844. Wightwick, whose terms for employment are to be seen in the ‘Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects’ (1891, p. 161; reprinted from the ‘Architect,’ 1850, ii. 28), retired to Clifton in 1851, and subsequently to Portishead (1855), where he died on 9 July 1872. He was buried in Portishead churchyard on the 13th. He married, first, in 1829, Caroline (1808–1867), daughter of William Damant
