J. R. Smith ‘Edwin,’ ‘Maria,’ ‘Boy and Girl with Bladder,’ ‘Boy and Girl with Lighted Stick,’ &c.; and among plates by W. Pether were ‘The Alchymist,’ ‘The Drawing Academy,’ and ‘The Gladiator.’
In the National Gallery is his masterpiece, ‘The Air-pump;’ in the National Portrait Gallery, London, his portraits of Arkwright and Erasmus Darwin and one of himself. He made many portraits of himself, one of which (in a hat) was engraved by Ward, while another is reproduced in Bemrose's ‘Life’ (1885) as well as the National Portrait Gallery portrait and an etching, the only etching by Wright that is known. An early sketch, in a turban-like cap, is reproduced as a frontispiece to a biographical notice by Bemrose, republished from the ‘Reliquary,’ quarterly journal, of 1864.
[Bemrose's Life and Works of Joseph Wright, 1885, 4to; Bemrose's biographical notice of ‘Wright of Derby,’ reprinted from Nos. xv. and xvi. of the Reliquary, 1864; Monthly Mag. 17 Oct. 1797; Hayley's Life of Romney; Johnson's Life of Hayley; Meteyard's Life of Wedgwood; Wine and Walnuts; Hayley's Poems; Catalogue of the Wright Exhibition at Derby Corporation Art Gallery, 1883; Redgraves' Century; Sandby's Royal Academy; Magazine of Art, 1883.]
WRIGHT, LAURENCE (1590–1657), physician, third son of John Wright of Wright's Bridge, near Hornchurch in Essex, was born in 1590, matriculated a pensioner of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in March 1608, and proceeded B.A. the following year. He entered as a medical student at Leyden on 22 Aug. 1612, but graduated M.A. at Cambridge in 1618. He was admitted a candidate of the Royal College of Physicians on 22 Dec. 1618, elected fellow on 22 Dec. 1622, censor in 1628 and 1639, named an elect on 24 May 1642, conciliarius in 1647, and again from 1650 annually till his death in 1657. Wright was a physician in ordinary to Cromwell and to the Charterhouse. To the latter post he was elected on 25 May 1624, and resigned it in 1643. He was chosen governor of the Charterhouse on 21 March 1652.
Wright, who was possessed of property at Henham and Havering in Essex, died on 3 Oct. 1657, and was buried in the church of South Weald. He married Mary, daughter of John Duke, physician, of Foulton Hall, Ramsey, Essex, and Colchester. She survived him till 16 Feb. 1698, being also buried at South Weald. Of Wright's two sons, Laurence was expelled from a fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, during the Commonwealth, but readmitted in 1660, and took the degree of M.D. in 1666. A second son (1636–1663), Henry, who was added to the trade committee of the council of state on 5 Feb. 1656, was made a baronet by Cromwell on 10 April 1658, in which dignity he was confirmed on 11 June 1660; he married Anne (d 1708), daughter of John Crew, first baron Crew of Stene, by whom he had a son and a daughter; the baronetcy expired on the death of his son in 1681.
[Visitation of Essex, 1634 (Harl. Soc. Publ. xiii. 534); Morant's Hist. of Essex, i. 62, 121, ii. 568; Munk's Royal Coll. of Phys. i. 181–3; Peacock's Index to Leyden Students; Cal. of State Papers, Dom.; Wood's Athenæ (Bliss), vol. iii. col. 827 n.; Welch's Alumni Westmon. pp. 139, 141; Burke's Extinct Baronetage; Masson's Milton, v. 354 n.]
WRIGHT, LAWRENCE (d. 1713), commodore, is first mentioned as lieutenant of the Baltimore in 1665. In 1666 he was in the Royal Charles, flagship of George Monck, first duke of Albemarle [q. v.], in the four days' fight and in the St. James's fight. He is said to have been almost continuously employed during the next twenty years of peace and war, but the details of his service cannot now be satisfactorily traced; those given by Charnock are not entirely trustworthy; some of them appear very doubtful. He is said to have taken post as a captain from 1672. On the accession of James II he was appointed to command the Mary yacht, and in March 1687 was moved into the Foresight, in which he carried out Christopher Monck, second duke of Albemarle [q. v.], to Jamaica. Albemarle died within a year of his taking up the governorship, and Wright returned to England with the corpse. He arrived in the end of May 1689, and in the following October was appointed to the 60-gun ship Mary as commodore and commander-in-chief of an expedition to the West Indies, with orders to fly the union flag at the main (Admiralty Minute, 6 Feb. 1689–90), and with instructions ‘to act according to the directions of General Codrington in all things relating to the land service,’ and ‘in enterprizes at sea to act as should be advised by the governor and councils of war, when he had opportunity of consulting them.’ He was, ‘when it was necessary, to spare as many seamen as he could with regard to the safety of the ships,’ and he was not ‘to send any ship from the squadron until the governor and council were informed of it and satisfied that the service did not require their immediate attendance’ (cf. Secretary's Letters, iii. 21, December 1689).
The squadron, consisting of eight two-
