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See Life Story of Sir C. T. Bright, by his son Charles Bright (revised ed. 1908).
BRIGHT, JOHN (1811-1889), British statesman, was born at Rochdale on the 16th of November 1811. His father, Jacob Bright, was a much-respected Quaker, who had started a cottonmill at Rochdale in 1809. The family had reached Lancashire by two migrations. Abraham Bright was a Wiltshire yeoman, who, early in the 18th century, removed to Coventry, where his descendants remained, and where, in 1775, Jacob Bright was born. Jacob Bright was educated at the Ackworth school of the Society of Friends, and was apprenticed to a fustian manufacturer at New Mills. He married his employer's daughter, and settled with his two brothers-in-law at Rochdale in 1802, going into business for himself seven years later. His first wife died without children, and in 1809 he married Martha Wood, daughter of a tradesman of Bolton-le-Moors. She had been educated at Ackworth school, and was a woman of great strength of character and refined taste. There were eleven children of this marriage, of whom John Bright was the second, but the death of his elder brother in childhood made him the eldest son. He was a delicate child, and was sent as a day-scholar to a boarding-school near his home, kept by Mr William Littlewood. A year at the Ackworth school, two years at a school at York, and a year and a half at Newton, near Clitheroe, completed his education. He learned, he himself said, but little Latin and Greek, but acquired a great love of English literature, which his mother fostered, and a love of outdoor pursuits. In his sixteenth year he entered his father's mill, and in due time became a partner in the business. Two agitations were then going on in Rochdale?the first (in which Jacob Bright was a leader) in opposition to a local church-rate, and the second for parliamentary reform, by which Rochdale successfully claimed to have a member allotted to it under the Reform Bill. In both these movements John Bright took part. He was an ardent Nonconformist, proud to number among his ancestors John Gratton, a friend of George Fox, and one of the persecuted and imprisoned preachers of the Society of Friends. His political interest was probably first kindled by the Preston election in 1830, in which Lord Stanley, after a long struggle, was defeated by "Orator" Hunt. But it was as a member of the Rochdale Juvenile Temperance Band that he first learned public speaking. These young men went out into the villages, borrowed a chair of a cottager, and spoke from it at open-air meetings. In Mrs John Mills's life of her husband is an account of John Bright's first extempore speech. It was at a temperance meeting. Bright got his notes muddled, and broke down. The chairman gave out a temperance song, and during the singing told Bright to put his notes aside and say what came into his mind. Bright obeyed, began with much hesitancy, but found his tongue and made an excellent address. On some early occasions, however, he committed his speech to memory. In 1832 he called on the Rev. John Aldis, an eminent Baptist minister, to accompany him to a local Bible meeting. Mr Aldis described him as a slender, modest young gentleman, who surprised him by his intelligence and thoughtfulness, but who seemed nervous as they walked to the meeting together. At the meeting he made a stimulating speech, and on the way home asked for advice. Mr Aldis counselled him not to learn his speeches, but to write out and commit to memory certain passages and the peroration. Bright took the advice, and acted on it all his life.
This "first lesson in public speaking," as Bright called it, was given in his twenty-first year, but he had not then contemplated entering on a public career. He was a fairly prosperous man of business, very happy in his home, and always ready to
