837 



WRIOTHESLEY, THOMAS. 



WROTTESLEY, LORD. 



833 



society as possible. In the case of criminals sentenced to death, Mr. 

 Wright has been in the custom of visiting and conversing with them, 

 and imparting to such as would receive it suitable religious instruction. 

 These labours have been extended to prisons in London, and in many 

 places throughout England and Scotland. Mr. Wright has also visited 

 the hulks. Having for many years pursued this course without osten- 

 tation, the attention of several influential and benevolent persons was 

 at length drawn to the circumstances, and a subscription amounting 

 to upwards of 3000Z. was raised in 1852, chiefly in Manchester and 

 Liverpool, and invested, so as to furnish a small yearly income to Mr. 

 Wright, and thus enable him to devote his entire energies to his 

 benevolent pursuits. Since that time he has continued to carry out 

 hia long-cherished plans on behalf of criminal outcasts; but, although 

 now sixty-nine years of age, he by no means confines himself to one 

 branch of effort. He has been the means of foundiug a Reformatory 

 school for boys in Manchester, of which he is a director. He assists 

 iu. the management of several Ragged schools, and is occasionally 

 engaged on the Sabbath in preaching annual sermons on behalf of local 

 Sunday schools and in aid of different religious bodies in Manchester. 

 His self-denying and useful labours have secured for Mr. Wright the 

 esteem of numerous persons in all parts of the empire. 



WRIOTHESLEY, THOMAS, the fourth Earl of Southampton, 

 being the son of the Earl of Southampton who was engaged in Lord 

 Essex's conspiracy in the reign of Elizabeth, and the great-grandson of 

 the first Earl of Southampton, Henry VIII. 's lord chancellor, was one 

 of the most distinguished as well as zealous and constant supporters 

 of Charles I. after the breaking out of the civil war, until that king's 

 death, and having transferred his devotion to the son, and rendered 

 important services to Charles II. while in exile, was after the Resto- 

 ration appointed lord high treasurer, and was, next to Lord Clarendon, 

 the chief stay of the restored government until his death in 1667. 



Lord Southampton, as a member of the House of Peers, approved 

 of the first proceedings of the Long Parliament, on its assembling in 

 1640, in retrenching the royal prerogative : but left the popular party 

 as did his friend through life, Lord Clarendon, at that time Mr. Hyde, 

 in the course of the proceedings for attainting Lord Strafford. The 

 connection between the father of Lord Southampton and the father 

 of Lord Essex, the parliamentary commander-in-chief at the com- 

 mencement of the civil war, has led Lord Clarendon to trace, in his 

 eloquent sketch of Lord Southampton's career and character, the 

 early agreement aud subsequent separation between the sons. " The 

 great friendship that had been between their fathers made many 

 believe that there was a confidence between the Earl of Essex and 

 him; which was true to that degree as could be between men of so 

 different natures and understandings. And when they came to the 

 parliament in the year 1640, they appeared both unsatisfied with the 

 prudence and politics of the court, and were not reserved in declaring 

 it, when the great officers were called in question for great transgres- 

 sions in their several administrations." And then after speaking of 

 Lord Southampton's opposition to the bill of attainder against Lord 

 Strafford, he proceeds : " From this time he and the Earl of Essex 

 were perfectly, divided and separated, and seldom afterwards con- 

 curred in the same opinion ; but as he worthily and bravely stood in 

 the gap in the defence of that great man's (Lord Strafford's) life, so he 

 did afterwards oppose all those invasions, which were every day made 

 by the House of Commons upon the rights of the crown or the pri- 

 vileges of the peers, which the lords were willing to sacrifice to the 

 useful humour of the other." (' Life,' hi., 228.) When the king and 

 parliament took up arms against one another, Lord Southampton 

 zealously joined the king, by whom he was made a member of his 

 privy council and a gentleman of his bedchamber. He was one of the 

 king's commissioners to treat for peace at Uxbridge, in 1645; and 

 Lord Clarendon gives the following account of the zeal which he 

 showed on this occasion : " He was naturally lazy, and indulged over- 

 much ease to himself : yet as no man had a quicker apprehension or 

 solider judgment in business of all kinds, so when it had a hopeful 

 prospect, no man could keep his mind longer bent, and take more 

 pains in it. In the treaty at Uxbridge, which was a continued fatigue 

 of twenty days, he never slept four hours in a night, who had never 

 used to allow himself less than ten, and at the end of the treaty was 

 much more vigorous than in the beginning, which made the chan- 

 cellor to tell the king when they returned to Oxford, that if he would 

 have the Earl of Southampton in good health and good humour, he 

 must give him good store of business to do." After the king's death, 

 he compounded with the ruling powers and resided in England, at his 

 estate near Southampton, and assisted the son of his late master, 

 according both to Clarendon and Burnet, with liberal supplies of 

 money. In the letters passing between Clarendon and the royalists 

 in England immediately before the Restoration, there are several 

 proofs of the high value set on Lord Southampton's counsel and 

 co-operation. " I do not undervalue any man," says Clarendon in one 

 of these letters, " when I say that my Lord Southampton is as wise 

 a man as any the nation hath, as well as of honour superior to any 

 temptation. I shall not need to desire you to communicate all things 

 freely to him." (' Clarendon State Papers,' iii., 750.) 



Immediately upon Charles II.'s return to England, while he stayed 

 for two days at Canterbury on his way from Dover to London, Lord 

 Southampton was made a member of hia privy council : and before 



the end of the year 1 660 was made lord high treasurer. Lord South- 

 ampton's high character for judgment and integrity gave a lustre to 

 the administration. Ill health and the natural indolence of his dis- 

 position led him to leave the business of the treasury chiefly in the 

 hands of the secretary, Sir Philip Warwick. In the council he at first 

 strongly advised the king stickling for a larger fixed revenue than that 

 which was granted by the convention parliament, and afterwards was 

 urgent in recommending economy in order to keep within the amount 

 settled ; and in the House of Lords he showed himself more disposed 

 to toleration of the Protestant dissenters than his friend and colleague 

 Lord Clarendon. He died on the 16th of May 1667, of the stone, 

 which had caused him great suffering for some years before his death. 

 Mr. Pepys has the following entry in his diary, a day or two after his 

 death : " Great talk of the good end that my Lord Treasurer made ; 

 closing his own eyes, and wetting his mouth, and bidding adieu with 

 the greatest content and freedom in the world : and is said to die 

 with the cleanest hands that ever any lord treasurer did." (Pepys, 

 ' Diary,' iii., 222.) 



Bishop Burnet has drawn the following sketch of this minister, 

 whose incorruptness in an age of corruption is his chief title to be 

 remembered. "He was a man of great virtue and of very good 

 parts. He had a lively apprehension and a good judgment. He had 

 merited much by his constant adhering to the king's interest during 

 the war, and by the large supplies he had sent him every year duriug 

 his exile ; for he had a great estate, and only three daughters to 

 inherit it. He was lord treasurer, but he soon grew weary of busi- 

 ness, for as he was subject to the stone, which returned often and 

 violently upon him, so he retained the principles of liberty, and did 

 not go into the violent measures of the court. When he saw the 

 king's temper, and his way of managing, or rather of spoiling business 

 he grew very uneasy, and kept himself more out of the way than was 

 consistent with that high post. The king stood in some awe of him, 

 and saw how popular he would grow, if put out of his service ; and 

 therefore he chose rather to bear with his ill-humour and contradiction 



than to dismiss him Before the Restoration, the lord treasurer 



had but a small salary, with an allowance for a table ; but he gave, or 

 rather sold, all the subaltern places and made great profits out of the 

 estate of the crown ; but now, that estate being gone, and the Earl 

 of Southampton disdaining to sell places, the matter was settled so 

 that the lord treasurer was to have 80001. a year, and the king was to 

 name all the subaltern officers. It continued to be so all his time ; 

 but since that time the lord treasurer has both the 8000Z. and a main 

 hand in the disposing of these places." (' History of his Own Time,' 

 i. 173, ed. 1833.) 



Lord Southampton was married three times : first, to Rachael, 

 daughter of Daniel, baron de Rouvigny, and sister to Henry, who 

 was created by William III. Earl of Galway ; secondly, to Elizabeth, 

 daughter and coheir of Francis, lord Dunsmore, afterwards Earl of 

 Chichester; and thirdly, to Frances, daughter of William, duke of 

 Somerset, and widow of Richard, viscount Molineux. (Banks ' Extinct 

 Peerage,' iii. 671.) 



* WROTTESLEY, JOHN, SECOND LORD, M.A., F.R.A.S., President 

 of the Royal Society. This nobleman is the eldest son of Sir John 

 Wrottesley, Bart., of Wrottesley, near Wolverhampton, in Staffordshire, 

 who was raised to the peerage as Baron Wrottesley. He was born on 

 the 5th of August 1798, and graduated first class in mathematics at 

 Oxford in 1819, being a member of Corpus Christi College. He suc- 

 ceeded his father in the barony, on the 16th of March 1841. 



Taking much interest in practical astronomy, he became, as the 

 Hon. John Wrottesley, an original member of the (Royal) Astronomical 

 Society, and contributed various observations, chiefly of the stars, to 

 its Monthly Notices and Memoirs. In the year 1829, he commenced 

 the erection of an observatory at Blackheath, where he began to 

 observe, assisted by Mr. John Hartnup (afterwards assistant secretary 

 to the Royal Astronomical Society, and now astronomer of the obser- 

 vatory at Liverpool), in the spring of 1831; having a transit-instru- 

 ment by Thomas Jones, of 62 inches focal length, and clear aperture 

 3| inches, and a clock by Hardy. Being provided with such means of 

 making astronomical observations, he determined to fix upon some 

 definite object, and steadily pursue that alone. He accordingly 

 selected 1318 stars from the Astronomical Society's Catalogue of 2881, 

 beiug the stars of the sixth, and from that to the seventh magnitude 

 inclusive, resolving to determine their right ascensions, observing, if 

 possible, each star at least ten times. Having ascertained everything 

 necessary to be known respecting the qualities of the instruments 

 about to be employed, Mr. Wrottesley began the observation of his 

 catalogue on the 9th of May 1831, and on the 1st of July 1835, the 

 task was brought to a conclusion. The catalogue so produced em- 

 bodies the results of 12,007 observations, exclusive of those of the 

 stars required for comparison. It was read before the Royal Astro- 

 nomical Society on the llth of November 1836, and published in the 

 Society's ' Memoirs,' vol. x. The council awarded the gold medal to 

 the author, to whom it was presented by the president, the late Mr. F. 

 Baily, at the annual general meeting of February 8, 1839, after he had 

 delivered an appropriate address, in which he informed the society 

 that when the requisite comparisons had been made with the positions 

 of the same stars obtained at the public observatories and every 

 star in Mr. Wrottesley's catalogue, he also stated, had undergone that 



