Wright continued to do many things which caused great scandal, and, therefore, was dearer than ever to his patron, who would have discarded him if he had shown any symptoms of reformation. He accompanied General Jeffreys as aide de camp in the famous “campaign in the west;” in other words, he was joined in commission with him as a judge in the “bloody assize,” and, sitting on the bench with him at the trial of Lady Lisle and the others which followed, concurred in all his atrocities. He came in for very little of the bribery; Jeffreys, who claimed the lion’s share, tossing him by way of encouragement one solitary pardon, for which a small sum only was expected.
But on the death of Sir Henry Beddingfield he was made chief justice of the Common Pleas; and very soon afterwards, the unexpected quarrel breaking out between Sir Edward Herbert and the government about martial law and the punishment of deserters,[152] the object being to find some one who by no possibility could go against the government, or hesitate about doing any thing required of him, however base or however bloody, Wright was selected as chief justice of the king’s bench. Unluckily we have no account of the speeches made at any of his judicial installations, so that we do not know in what terms his learning and purity of conduct were praised, or what were the promises which he gave of impartiality and of rigorous adherence to the laws of the realm.
On the very day on which he took his seat on the bench he gave good earnest of his servile spirit. The attorney general renewed his motion for an order to execute at Plymouth the deserter who had been capitally convicted at Reading for deserting his colors. The new chief justice, without entering into reasons, or explaining how he came to differ from the opinion so strongly expressed by his predecessor, merely said, “Be it so!” The puisnies now nodded assent, and the prisoner was illegally executed at Plymouth under the order so pronounced.
Confidence was entirely lost in the administration of justice in Westminster Hall, for all the three common law courts were at last filled by incompetent and corrupt judges. Pettifogging actions only were brought in them, and men settled their disputes by arbitration, or by taking the opinion of counsel. The reports during the whole reign of James II. hardly show a single question of importance settled by judicial decision. Thus, having no distinct means of appreciating Chief Justice Wright’s demerits as a judge in private causes, we must at once follow him in his devious course as a political judge.
The first occasion on which, after his installation, he drew upon himself the eyes of the public was when he was sent down to Magdalene College, Oxford, for the purpose of turning it into a Popish seminary. Upon a vacancy in the office of president, the fellows, in the exercise of their undoubted right, had elected the celebrated Dr. Hough, who had been duly admitted into the office; and the preliminary step to be taken was to annul the election, for the purpose of making way for another candidate, named by the king. There were associated with Wright, in this commission, Cartwright, Bishop of Chester, who was ready to be reconciled to Rome in the hope of higher preferment, and Sir Thomas Jenner, a baron of the Exchequer, a zealous follower in the footsteps of the chief justice of the King’s Bench. Nothing could equal the infamy of their object except the insolence of their behavior in trying to accomplish it. They entered Oxford escorted by three troops of cavalry with drawn swords, and, having taken their seats with great parade in the hall of the college, summoned the fellows to attend them. These reverend and gallant divines appeared, headed by their new president, who defended his rights with skill, temper and resolution; steadily maintaining that, by the laws of England, he had a freehold in his office, and in the house and revenues annexed to it. Being asked whether he submitted to this royal visitation, he answered:—
“My lords, I do declare here, in the name of myself and the fellows, that we submit to the visitation as far as it is consistent with the laws of the land and the statutes of the college, and no further.” Wright, C. J.—“You cannot imagine that we act contrary to the laws of the land; and as to the statutes, the king has dispensed with them. Do you think we come here to break the laws?” Hough.—“It does not become me, my lords, to say so; but I will be plain with your lordships. I find that your commission gives you authority to alter the statutes. Now, I have sworn to uphold and obey them; I must admit no alteration of them, and by the grace of God never will.” He was asked whether one of the statutes of the founder did not require mass to be said in the college chapel; but he answered, “not only was it unlawful, but it had been repealed by the act of Parliament requiring the use of the Book of Common Prayer.” However, sentence was given that the election of Hough was void, and that he be deprived of his office of president. Hough.—“I do hereby protest against all your proceedings, all you have done, or shall hereafter do, in prejudice of me and my right, and I appeal to my sovereign lord the king in his courts of justice.” “Upon which (says a contemporary account) the strangers and young scholars in the hall gave a hum, which so much incensed their lordships that the lord chief justice was not to be pacified, but, charging it upon the president, bound him in a bond of one thousand pounds, and security to the like value, to make his appearance at the King’s Bench bar on the 12th of November; and, taking occasion to pun upon the president’s name, said to him, “Sir, you must not think to huff us.” He then ordered the door of the president’s house to be broken open by a blacksmith; and a fellow observing, “I am informed that the proper officer to gain possession of a freehold is the sheriff with a posse comitatus,” Wright said, “I pray who is the best lawyer, you or I? Your Oxford law is no better than your Oxford divinity. If you have a mind to a posse comitatus, you may have one soon enough.”
Having ejected Hough, he issued a mandate for expelling all the contumacious fellows, and insured the expulsion of James from his throne, when the commissioners returned in triumph to London.
Wright was likewise a member of the Ecclesiastical Court of High Commission, of which Jeffreys was president, and he strenuously joined in all the judgments of that illegal and arbitrary tribunal, which, with a non obstante, had been revived in the very teeth of an existing act of Parliament. He treated with ridicule the scruples of Sancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and others who refused to sit upon it, and he urged the infliction of severe punishment on all who denied its jurisdiction.
Although he was not a member of the Cabinet, he usually heard from the chancellor the measures which had been resolved upon there, and he was ever a willing tool in carrying them into effect.
When the clergy were insulted, and the whole country was thrown into a flame, by the fatal order in Council for reading the “Declaration of Indulgence” in all churches and chapels on two successive Sundays, he contrived an opportunity of declaring from the bench his opinion that it was legal and obligatory. Hearing that the London clergy were almost unanimously resolved to disobey it, he sent a peremptory command to the priest who officiated in the chapel of Serjeants’ Inn to read the declaration with a loud voice; and on the famous Sunday, the 20th of May, 1688, he attended in person, to give weight to the solemnity. However, he was greatly disappointed and enraged to find the service concluded without any thing being uttered beyond what the rubric prescribes. He then indecently, in the hearing of the congregation, abused the priest as disloyal, seditious, and irreligious, for contemning the authority of the head of the church. The clerk ingeniously came forth to the rescue of his superior, and took all the blame upon himself by saying that “he had forgot to bring a copy,” and the chief justice, knowing that he had no remedy, was forced to content himself with this excuse.[153]