What is the first name of the person who, during his apprenticeship, is likely to have lodged at the High Street tenement near Netherbow Gate?
John Michael Wright, who at the height of his career would interchangeably sign himself "Anglus" or "Scotus", is of uncertain origin. The diarist John Evelyn called him a Scotsman, an epithet repeated by Horace Walpole and tentatively accepted by his later biographer, Verne. However, writing in 1700, the English antiquarian Thomas Hearne claims Wright was born in Shoe Lane, London and, after an adolescent conversion to Roman Catholicism, was taken to Scotland by a priest.  A London birth certainly seems supported by a baptismal record, dated 25 May 1617, for a "Mighell Wryghtt", son of James Wright, described as a tailor and a citizen of London, in St Bride's Church, Fleet Street, London.What is known is that, on 6 April 1636, the 19-year-old Wright was apprenticed to George Jamesone, an Edinburgh portrait painter of some repute. The Edinburgh Register of Apprentices records him as "Michaell, son to James W(right), tailor, citizen of London". The reasons for this move to Scotland are unclear, but may have to do with familial connections (his parents may have been London Scots) or the advent of plague in London. During his apprenticeship, Wright is likely to have lodged at the High Street tenement near the Netherbow Gate that served as Jameson's workplace. The apprenticeship was contracted for five years, but may have been curtailed by Jameson's imprisonment in late 1639. There is no record of any independent work by Wright from this period (his earliest known painting being a small portrait of Robert Bruce, 1st Earl of Ailesbury, painted in the early 1640s during his time in Rome).It is also possible that Wright met his wife during his Scottish residency. Nothing is known of her, except from a statement of thirty years later which describes her as "related to the most noble and distinguished families of Scotland." If this is accurate, it may explain how Wright was later able to find aristocratic patronage. All that is known for certain is that Wright had at least one child by her, a son, Thomas.
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