CARTWRIGHT, JOHN (1740-1824), English parliamentary reformer, was born at Marnham in Nottinghamshire on the 17th of September 1740, being the elder brother of Edmund Cartwright, inventor of the power-loom. He was educated at Newark grammar school and Heath Academy in Yorkshire, and at the age of eighteen entered the navy. He was present, in his first year of service, at the capture of Cherbourg, and served in the following year in the action between Sir Edward Hawke and Admiral Conflans. Engaged afterwards under Sir Hugh Palliser and Admiral Byron on the Newfoundland station, he was appointed to act as chief magistrate of the settlement; and the duties of this post he discharged for five years (1765-1770). Ill-health necessitated his retirement from active service for a time in 1771. When the disputes with the American colonies began, he saw clearly that the colonists had right on their side, and warmly supported their cause. At the beginning of the war he was offered the appointment of first lieutenant to the duke of Cumberland, which would have put him on the path of certain promotion. But he declined to fight against the cause which he felt to be just. In 1774 he published his first plea on behalf of the colonists, entitled American Independence the Glory and Interest of Great Britain. In the following year, when the Nottinghamshire Militia was first raised, he was appointed major, and in this capacity he served for seventeen years. He was at last illegally superseded, because of his political opinions. In 1776 appeared his first work on reform in parliament, which, with the exception of Earl Stanhope’s pamphlets (1774), appears to have been the earliest publication on the subject. It was entitled, Take your Choice—a second edition appearing under the new title of The Legislative Rights of the Commonalty vindicated. The task of his life was thenceforth chiefly the attainment of universal suffrage and annual parliaments. In 1778 he conceived the project of a political association, which took shape in 1780 as the “Society for Constitutional Information,” including among its members some of the most distinguished men of the day. From this society sprang the more famous “Corresponding Society.” Major Cartwright worked unweariedly for the promotion of reform. He was one of the witnesses on the trial of his friends, Horne Tooke, John Thelwall and Thomas Hardy, in 1794, and was himself indicted for conspiracy in 1819. He was found guilty in the following year, and was condemned to pay a fine of £100. He died in London on the 23rd of September 1824. He had married in 1780, but had no children. In 1831 a monument from a design by Macdowell was erected to him in Burton Crescent where he had lived.
The Life and Correspondence of Major Cartwright, edited by his niece F.D. Cartwright, was published in 1826.
CARTWRIGHT, PETER (1785-1872), American Methodist Episcopal preacher, was born on the 1st of September 1785 in Amherst county, Virginia. His father, a veteran of the War of Independence, took his family to Kentucky in 1790, and lived near Lancaster until 1793, and then until 1802 in Logan county near the Tennessee line. Peter received little education, and was a gambler at cards and horse-racing until 1801, when he heard John Page preach. In June he was received into the church; in May 1802 was licensed as a regular exhorter, becoming known as the “Kentucky Boy”; in the autumn of 1802 was licensed to form the Livingston circuit around the mouth of the Cumberland river; in 1806 was ordained deacon by Bishop Asbury, and in 1808 presiding elder by Bishop McKendree, under whose direction he had studied theology. He was presiding elder of the Wabash district in 1812, and of Green river district in 1813-1816, and, after four years on circuit in Kentucky and two as presiding elder of the Cumberland district, was transferred in 1823 to the Illinois conference, in which he was presiding elder of various districts until 1869. Up to 1856 he preached some 14,600 times, received some 10,000 persons into the church, and baptized some 12,000 persons. He died near Pleasant Plains, Sangamon county, Illinois, on the 25th of September 1872. He was a typical backwoods preacher, an able, vigorous speaker, and a racy writer.
See the Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, the Backwoods Preacher, edited by W.P. Strickland (New York, 1856).
CARTWRIGHT, SIR RICHARD JOHN (1835- ), Canadian statesman, was born in Kingston, Canada, on the 4th of December 1835, son of the Rev. R.D. Cartwright, chaplain to H.M. Forces. In 1863 he entered the Canadian parliament as a Conservative, but soon after federation in 1867 quarrelled with his party on the question of their financial policy, which he considered extravagant. By 1870 the breach was complete, and in 1873 he became finance minister of the Liberal ministry of the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie. His honesty and economy were undoubted, but the latter quality was sometimes pushed to extremes. From 1878 to 1896 he was the chief financial critic on the side of the Liberal opposition, and on the accession of Sir Wilfrid Laurier to power in 1896 he became minister of trade and commerce. In 1898-1899 he represented Canada on the Anglo-American joint high commission at Quebec. In 1904 failing health led to his retirement to the senate. He acted in Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s absence at the Imperial Conference 1907 as acting premier.
CARTWRIGHT, THOMAS (c. 1535-1603), English Puritan divine, was born in Hertfordshire. He studied divinity at St John’s College, Cambridge, but on Mary’s accession had to leave the university, and found occupation as clerk to a counsellor-at-law. On the accession of Elizabeth, he resumed his theological studies, and was soon afterwards elected fellow of St John’s and later of Trinity College. In 1564 he opposed John Preston in a theological disputation held on the occasion of Elizabeth’s state visit, and in the following year helped to bring to a head the Puritan attitude on church ceremonial and organization. He was popular in Ireland as chaplain to the archbishop of Armagh (1565-1567), and in 1569 he was appointed Lady Margaret professor of divinity at Cambridge; but John Whitgift, on becoming vice-chancellor, deprived him of the post in December 1570, and—as master of Trinity—of his fellowship in September 1571. This was a natural consequence of the use which he made of his position; he inveighed bitterly against the hierarchy and constitution of the Anglican Church, which he compared unfavourably with the primitive Christian organization. So keen was the struggle between him and Whitgift that the chancellor, William Cecil, had to intervene. After his deprivation by Whitgift, Cartwright visited Beza at Geneva. He returned to England in 1572, and might have become professor of Hebrew at Cambridge but for his expressed sympathy with the notorious “Admonition to the Parliament” by John Field and Thomas Wilcox. To escape arrest he again went abroad, and officiated as clergyman to the English residents at Antwerp and then at Middelburg. In 1576 he visited and organized the Huguenot churches of the Channel Islands, and after revising the Rhenish version of the New Testament, again settled as pastor at Antwerp, declining the offer of a chair at St Andrews. In 1585 he returned without permission to London, was imprisoned for a short time, and became master of the earl of Leicester’s hospital at Warwick. In 1590 he was summoned before the court of high commission and imprisoned, and in 1591 he was once more committed to the Fleet. But he was not treated harshly, and powerful influence soon secured his liberation. He visited Guernsey (1595-1598), and spent his closing years in honour and prosperity at Warwick, where he died on the 27th of December 1603. Cartwright was a man of much culture and originality, but exceedingly impulsive. His views were distinctly Presbyterian, and he stoutly opposed the Brownists or Independents. He never conceived of a separation between church and state, and would probably have refused to tolerate any Nonconformity with his reformed national Presbyterian church. To him, however, the Puritanism of his day owed its systematization and much of its force.