(Reverend) John WRIGHT
HUSBAND:
[F71936]. (Reverend) John WRIGHT.
It is thought more probable that the (Reverend) John Wright was born in Upminster, and died in the Romford/Havering area of Essex rather than Kelvedon Hatch, though I have found no records for this birth in any of these parishes. You should know that his birth date was probably arrived at by subtraction from the death notice at St. Peter's church in South Weald, (not Kelvedon Hatch). As you no doubt know, having an exact date of birth does not necessarily mean there was a birth record made that can prove birth location. Many of the inscriptions on memorials of those days contained the exact age to the day of the deceased and it is not difficult to calculate the birth date from that information.
He married Agnes, probably about 1487, as their elder son John was born in 1488.
The Wright family seems to have started out in the south of Essex near Upminster and actually did not come north to Kelvedon Hatch until nearly 100 years after the Reverend John Wright's birth and some 29 years after his death. What they left behind in the way of records seems to trace an arc during the period from 1410 to 1538, which first leads to the West toward Havering before coming back east and north to Kelvedon Hatch. The argument for the Reverend's family being from the Romford/Havering area was that there were a collection of inheritances in that area that passed down through the Rev. John Wright to his son, John Wright. It was the Reverend's son, John Wright, who was the purchaser of Kelvedon Hall in Kelvedon Hatch in 1538, which is the first known residence of Wrights in Kelvedon Hatch. But, prior to the move to Kelvedon Hall, some of the inherited lands in Havering had already formed the basis of the well established Wrightsbridge estate where the family resided prior to Kelvedon Hall. There, they were responsible for the maintenance of the King's bridge over the river, hence the name of the estate. The estate also operated a tannery on the river there and engaged in sheep raising, raising horses, and general farming. There was also property in the town of Romford which was passed on to later generations that appears to have been in the family since the late 1400s. All of this they owned long before the family bought (for 493 pounds sterling, 6s, 8d.) the tenancy of Kelvedon Hall from Richard Bolles, a descendant of the female side of the Multon family, who had been granted the tenancy of Kelvedon Hall by Westminster Abby in 1225. The local parish church, St. Nicholas, was located to the west of the manor house and was said to rest on the site of an original Anglo-Saxon church named for the patron saint of the Norse seaman. When Henry VIII seized the church lands in the area surrounding Kelvedon hatch, he sold the lordship to the Rich family of Essex. In 1547 Richard Rich was made a baron and given the Lordship of the Ongar Hundred, of which Kelvedon Hatch was a part. In a census of his new domain of the Hundred, Sir Richard Rich lists; "John Wright, yeoman of South Weald" as the holder of the tenancy of the Kelvedon Hall estate. This further substantiates the claim that the family's roots were in south Essex just prior to the purchase of Kelvedon Hall, and certainly during the lifetime of the Reverend John Wright.
WIFE:
Agnes.
CHILDREN of (Reverend) John WRIGHT and Agnes
SOURCES: