His father was a labourer; his mother, Anne (d. 11 October 1810), claimed cousinship with Sir John Fenn.
He served as page, and was apprenticed to a shopkeeper, joined (1780) the independent church at Guestwick under John Sykes (d. 1824), and began village preaching on week nights; for which he was excommunicated.
[2] For a short time he ministered to a newly formed General Baptist congregation at Norwich.
This introduced him (1797) to William Vidler, to whose periodical, the Universalist's Miscellany, he contributed (in the last half of 1797) a series of letters (reprinted Edinburgh, 1797).
In 1827 he moved to the charge of a small congregation at Kirkstead, Lincolnshire, where John Taylor had once preached.
[6] He taught against the pre-existence of Christ and followed the views of Joseph Priestley and Thomas Belsham in rejecting the virgin birth of Jesus.
His brother, John Wright, lay-preacher in Liverpool, was the subject of an abortive prosecution for blasphemy in a sermon delivered on Tuesday, 1 April 1817.