WIGLEY, Edmund (1758-1821), of Ullesthorpe, Leics.

Wigley, of an old Worcestershire family, was nominated for Worcester by a group of independent freemen who ‘voluntarily offered to defray any expense that might arise’, and was returned without a contest.Worcester Jnl. 23 Oct. 1788. He first spoke in the House on 15 May 1789, and between then and the dissolution fourteen speeches are reported. Most of them are on non-political subjects—the poor law, the bill to make destroying trees a felony, the tobacco regulation bill, etc. But in May 1790 he spoke five times in defence of John Scott, who was charged with breach of privilege in publishing a letter about Warren Hastings’s trial; and on 27 May reminded Burke that Hastings ‘had not yet been convicted; and it was the maxim of the law, that every man was to be held innocent till he was found, after a full and fair trial, guilty’.Stockdale, xix. 451.

Wigley died 9 Sept. 1821.