He was elected scholar of St John's College, Oxford, on 11 June 1629, and matriculated on 13 November.
[1] When William Laud received Charles I in St. John's on 30 August 1636, Wright delivered the speech welcoming the king to the new library, and after dinner he acted in the play Love's Hospital, by George Wilde, before the king and queen.
Wright is said himself to have written a comic interlude called The Reformation, acted at St. John's about 1631.
He soon became a popular preacher, and preached before the king, before the university, and at St. Paul's (Wood, Athenæ Oxon.
[1] In August 1645, he was presented to the vicarage of Oakham, Rutland, by Juxon, his constant patron, but he was not inducted, as he refused to take the covenant (cf.
728), and became tutor to the son of Sir James Grime or Graham at Peckham, and ‘read the common prayer on all Sundays and holy days, and on principal feasts he preached and administered.
About 1655 he was prevailed with to leave Peckham and to live in London, where he was chosen by the parishioners of St. Olave in Silver Street to be their minister and to receive the profits of that little parish, of which he was in effect the rector, though formally to take actual possession of the living he would not (as his nearest relation hath told me), because he would avoid oaths and obligations’ (Wood, Athenæ Oxon.)
[1] On the Restoration, he was offered a chaplaincy to Elizabeth of Bohemia, but he declined it and took possession of his living of Oakham.
He refused several preferments and lived quietly in the country, busy with his parish and his garden (cf.