have written against the power of the mendicants to hear confessions, for Adam Wodham or Godham replied to him (Little, Grey Friars at Oxford, p. 173 n.)
[Authorities cited.]
WETHERSHED, RICHARD of (d. 1231), archbishop of Canterbury. [See Grant, Richard.]
WETWANG, Sir JOHN (d. 1684), captain in the navy, had possibly been with Prince Rupert or the French privateers during the Commonwealth (cf. Gardiner, First Dutch War, i. 21). The first mention of him is in 1665, when he was appointed captain of the Norwich, a fifth-rate attached to the red squadron in the action off Lowestoft on 3 June. In 1666 he was captain of the Tiger, in 1668 of the Dunkirk, a third-rate. In 1672 he commanded the 70-gun ship Edgar, one of the blue squadron, in the battle of Solebay; in 1673 he was flag-captain to Prince Rupert in the Sovereign. In November he was appointed to the Newcastle, in which, in March 1674, he captured a large Dutch East Indiaman ‘of very great value.’ At the end of the war he took the Newcastle out to the Mediterranean, whence he brought home the ‘trade’ in the spring of 1676. In 1678 he commanded the Royal James as flag-captain to Sir Thomas Allin [q. v.]; in 1679 he was captain of the Northumberland, in 1680 of the Woolwich. On 20 Nov. 1680 he was knighted. In October 1683 he was appointed captain of the East India Company's ship Royal James, with a double commission from the king and the company to command the fleet in the East Indies for reinstating the king of Bantam and re-establishing the trade there. With him was Sir Thomas Grantham [q. v.], who had a commission to command in his absence. Wetwang died at Fort St. George, Madras, within a few weeks of his arrival in 1684. His will (in Somerset House: Cann, 50)—signed 18 Oct. 1683, proved 8 April 1685—constitutes his ‘dear and well-beloved wife Isabel’ sole executrix, and leaves everything to her during her natural life; after her death, which happened in 1691, to be equally divided among his four sons—Robert, John, Samuel, and Joseph. A brother Joseph, a captain in the navy, is mentioned by Charnock (ii. 58).
[Charnock's Biogr. Nav. i. 184; Bruce's Annals of the East India Company, vol. ii.; Yule's Diary of Hedges (Hakluyt Soc.), ii. 52, 164; Pringle's Consultation Books of Fort St. George, 1684; notes kindly furnished by Mr. William Foster.]
WEWITZER, RALPH (1748–1825), comedian, was born of respectable parents on 17 Dec. 1748 in Salisbury Street, Strand, and was apprenticed to a jeweller. He made his first appearance at Covent Garden in May 1773 as Ralph in the ‘Maid of the Mill,’ it is said for the benefit of his sister, Miss Wewitzer (see below). The first time his name can be traced to a part is 21 Nov. 1775, when he was the original Lopez in Sheridan's ‘Duenna.’ During fourteen years he remained at Covent Garden, acquiring gradually a reputation in Frenchmen, Germans, Jews, and old men. Near the outset of his Covent Garden career Wewitzer, who was heavily in debt, went to Dublin, where he acted under Ryder, though his performances cannot be traced. Among his parts at Covent Garden were Filch in the ‘Beggar's Opera,’ Champignon in ‘Reprisal,’ Jerry Sneak in ‘Mayor of Garratt,’ Simon Pure in ‘Bold Stroke for a Wife,’ Dr. Pinch in ‘Comedy of Errors,’ Coromandel (an original part) in Pilon's ‘Liverpool Prize,’ 22 Feb. 1779, Dr. Caius in ‘Merry Wives of Windsor,’ Vandervelt (an original part) in Holcroft's ‘Duplicity’ on 13 Oct. 1781, Cutbeard in ‘Epicœne,’ Basil in ‘Follies of a Day’ on 14 Dec. 1785, Juno in ‘Midas,’ Smuggler in ‘Constant Couple,’ Gardiner in ‘King Henry VIII,’ Frenchman in ‘Lethe,’ Tattle in ‘Love for Love,’ Lord Plausible in ‘Plain Dealer,’ Puritan in ‘Duke and no Duke,’ Grutti in Shirley's ‘Bird in a Cage,’ Razor in ‘Provoked Wife,’ first carrier in the ‘First Part of King Henry IV,’ Sir Philip Modelove in ‘Bold Stroke for a Wife,’ Oldcastle in ‘Intriguing Chambermaid,’ Papillion in the ‘Lyar,’ Rigdum Funnidos in ‘Chrononhotonthologos,’ Tipkin in ‘Tender Husband,’ Medium in ‘Inkle and Yarico,’ and very many parts, chiefly servants or the like, in forgotten comedies of Holcroft, O'Keeffe, Pilon, and others. In ‘Omar, or a Trip round the World,’ by O'Keeffe, with music by Shield, produced at Covent Garden on 20 Dec. 1785, Wewitzer delivered with very great effect a species of ‘state harangue-pomposo’ (O'Keeffe, Recollections, ii. 115), in what purported to be the language of a Polynesian chief.
On 8 July 1780 Wewitzer's name appears at the Haymarket as Fripon in Miles Peter Andrews's comic opera ‘Fire and Water,’ then first produced. At the same house, at which he appeared during many consecutive summers, he was Diana Trapes on 8 Aug. 1781, when the female parts in the ‘Beggar's Opera’ were played by men, and vice versa. In 1785 John Palmer (1742?–1798) [q. v.] built the Royalty Theatre in Wellclose Square,
