The Descendants of Middle John, 1522-1665John the Middle, 1522 - 1558Middle John Wright was born in Kelvedon Hall in 1522. According to his father’s will, executed in 1551, “To my son called Myddle John I give all the land I have in Havering and houses and millers house and a tenement in Childerditch wherein Gibbes doth dwell.” This was the area where the bridge that the Wrights had tended for centuries spanned the Ingrebourne River. The land was known as Wrightsbridge, and the manor house and estate was referred to both as Wrightsbridge Manor and Dagenham Manor.
Middle John married Alice Rucke of Kelvedon Hatch in 1541. They had six children, Dorothy, John, Mary, Olive, Agnes, and Robert. Middle John died in Wrightsbridge in 1558 when he was just 36 years old. His wife Alice did not live much longer; she died in 1560. Lord John Wright of Wrightsbridge 1548-1624
Queen Elizabeth presides over the House of Lords, Lord John Wright somewhere amongst them. Peerage was not a taxing responsibility. During the 45 years that Elizabeth ruled, Parliament was in session for about 3 years all totaled. Among these new ideas was Puritanism. Henry VIII’s break with the Pope had been welcome in England not because the English wanted their King to have his marriage annulled, but because of the excesses and the failures of the Catholic Church. The Church of England was the beginning of the Reformation in England, but many felt it did not reform enough. The Anglican church retained much of the pomp and ceremony of the Catholic church it had replaced. More important, the rigid clerical hierarchy remained – the King and had simply replaced the Pope. Moreover, English protestants who fled to other countries during the reign of Mary I brought back to England the ideas of John Calvin and other contemporary theologians. This stew of religious ideas gave rise to the Puritans, who emerged largely from the new English middle class. As a group, they proposed less pomp and more substance. They rejected the hierarchy and the notion of a supreme spiritual leader to whom they owed allegiance. They wanted their congregations to have more autonomy and their God to be more accessible. At least two of Lord Wright’s sons John and, Nathaniel, had strong Puritan leanings. Lord John Wright died at Wrightsbridge in 1624 as the Puritan movement reached its strongest ebb – and a year before they faced their greatest challenge. John Wright, Esq. 1569 - 1640
He married Martha Castell in 1594, and they had four sons – John, Nathaniel, Samuel, and Robert. Martha died in 1610 and John remarried to Fortune (Garraway) Blount, the widow of Sir Edward Blount, in 1618. John and Fortune had one child, James.
In 1630, Puritans obtained a royal charter to form the Massachusetts Bay Colony. John’s brother Nathaniel was a charter member and 1/8 owner of the Arabella, flagship of the fleet that carried Puritans to the New World. John Wright, Esq. remained and died in Dagenham in 1640, only a few years after his brother left for America. Nathaniel landed at Salem in June 1630 but found the town unequipped for newcomers so they continued a little farther south to settle Boston. Deacon Samuel Wright 1606 - 1665Samuel Wright was born in 1606 in Wrightsbridge, Essex County, England. He attended Emmanuel College of Cambridge University like his father, graduating in 1624. And like his father, he became a dyed-in-the-wool Puritan. He married Margaret Dickerson in 1625. Samuel and Margaret had four children together while they lived in England –Samuel Jr., Margaret, Hester (or Esther), and Lydia. About 1636, they sailed with these four children to America where they had four more – James, Judah, Mary and Helped. Samuel and his family were part of the “Great Migration” in which 80,000 Puritans left England between 1629 and 1640, during the years that King Charles I (1625-1649) had suspended Parliament. Religious repression was rampant during this period and with an unsympathetic king on the throne and Parliament gone, the Puritans had no way to redress their grievances. They emigrated to Ireland, the Netherlands, the West Indies, and America. About 20,000 of them traveled to New England, settling mostly in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The migration began in the summer of 1630 with the "Winthrop Fleet" – eleven ships carrying 800 people under the guidance of John Winthrop and bound for Massachusetts. These ships and others continued to sail back and forth across the Atlantic for a decade ferrying Puritans intent on building a “nation of saints” in the New World. It is impossible to underestimate the effect that this migration of literate, socially-cohesive, working-class families had on the subsequent history of America. The Puritans thought of this as a Second Exodus in which Charles I was the Pharaoh and they were God’s Chosen People. They formed the basis for a uniquely American society with a respect for education, hard work, religious freedom, and personal autonomy, each member with a conviction that they were the apple of God’s Eye.
shillings per month. It was during this time he earned the title “Deacon.” Deacon Samuel Wright left Springfield about 1656, traveled up the Connecticut River and settled Northampton, Massachusetts, where he built a mill and continued to serve as a deacon. He died in 1665 at age 59 “while sleeping in his chair.” Map of the Home Lots of the Original Settlers of Northampton. Samuel Wright Jr. is in the middle of town near the church. Famous ‘Wrights’ that descended from Middle John's Family The Wright Brothers Frank Lloyd Wright
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