WRIGHT, Richard

It is not always easy to distinguish Wright from possible namesakes although it is likely that the burgess who attested the Cambridge return to the Parliament of 1411 was an older townsman of the same name. It is unclear, for example, whether the MP should be identified with the Richard Wright who married Margaret, widow of Thomas Hervey of Ely. Yet it is worth noting that two Cambridge townsmen, Thomas Hancheche* and Richard Bush*, were pledges for the couple when they sued one of her first husband’s feoffees in Chancery, probably between 1433 and 1443.4 C1/41/197. See also C1/11/274. Bush was also associated with Richard Wright of Fulbourn, just outside Cambridge, although it is not possible to establish whether he was the plaintiff in Chancery. A tenant and estate officer of Sir James Butler (son of the earl of Ormond), Richard of Fulbourn was receiver for Sir James in Suffolk, Essex and Kent by May 1441.5 CAD, ii. B3250; iii. C3156. The chances are, therefore, that he was the same man as the Richard Wright ‘of Cambridge’ named as an ally of Henry Brokesby, another of Butler’s tenants at Fulbourn, when Brokesby became embroiled in quarrels with John, Lord Tiptoft†, and his friends and followers in the early 1440s. Yet litigation relating to these disputes – apparently linked to Tiptoft’s feud with Butler – refers to this Richard as a ‘husbandman’, a relatively lowly status for an MP.6 CP40/727, rot. 600; KB27/730, rot. 141.

In short, the only evidence that seems definitely to relate to the subject of this biography is that summarized in the cursus honorum above, since it was surely the MP who held these offices, of which he served no fewer than five terms as mayor. During the second of these terms, he transferred part of Mill Street in the town to the King, for the endowment of Henry VI’s foundation of King’s College,7 King’s Coll., Cambridge, CAM/19. and helped to prevent a serious outbreak of disorder. In early 1440 a large band of Lord Tiptoft’s followers, led by Thomas Lokton*, confronted a small group of Sir James Butler’s men, headed by Henry Filongley* and William Tyrell I*, in Cambridge. Fearing imminent violence, Master Richard Caudray, along with Master John Tylney, vice-chancellor of Cambridge university, and Wright intervened and persuaded the rival factions to withdraw in peace.8 Egerton Roll 8791. While it was the mayor’s duty to uphold the peace, Wright would no doubt have wished to prevent harm befalling Butler’s men if he is to be identified with the previously mentioned Richard of Fulbourn. During Wright’s third term as mayor, the borough acquired several pieces of land from the university, to provide ground for a common highway. An indenture of November 1445 records that the then vice-chancellor of the university, John Langton, and a local baker, Thomas Fordham, bound themselves in the sum of 100 marks to Wright, Richard Bush and another townsman, Thomas Crosse, as security that the university would make over the land before the Easter after next.9 City/PB Box X/80. As for property that the MP himself may have held in Cambridge, a Richard Wright is recorded as possessing a shop or workshop, and a tenement for which he was supposed to pay the local nunnery of St. Radegund 12d. p.a. By the end of the accounting year 1450-1, however, he owed the nuns four years of unpaid rent.10 Cambridge bor. recs., ‘Cross Bk.’, City/PB Box I/4, f. 18v; Priory of St. Radegund (Cambridge Antiq. Soc. octavo ser., xxxi), 160, 175.

Wright sat in Parliament late in his career, sitting in the Commons while also holding the offices of mayor and j.p. He took part in his last parliamentary election in 1453, the same year in which he ceased to hold office at Cambridge. It is possible that he died soon afterwards, since in January 1455 a Joan Wright, ‘late of Cambridge, widow’, was pardoned the outlawry she had incurred for failing to answer a plaintiff at Westminster over an action of debt and detinue arising from dealings between the parties in Surrey.11 CPR, 1452-61, p. 185. It is worth noting that a Richard Wright of Fulbourn was living in the late 1460s (Cambs. Archs., Fulbourn deeds, P75/25/19), but he may have been a younger namesake of the previously mentioned Richard of Fulbourn.