Thomas Wright was born into a Catholic family in 1561, and began his training for the priesthood at Douai in 1577. He trained there and at the English College in Rome, and was admitted to the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1580. He was subsequently ordained priest, and taught at Jesuit schools throughout Europe, including in Valladolid, Spain . While there he wrote a pamphlet justifying English Catholics who fought against Spain . This point of view brought him into conflict with the Jesuit hierarchy, and he voluntarily became a secular priest in 1595. He surrendered to Anthony Bacon, secretary to the Earl of Essex , and was placed under house arrest in the charge of the Dean of Westminster ; he was subsequently imprisoned in Gatehead and, in 1597, in Bridewell. It was there that he wrote The Passions of the Mind in General , for the second edition of which Jonson contributed a commendatory poem. Wright sought to promulgate a version of Catholicism whereby Catholic orthodoxy was not incompatible with English citizenship and patriotic loyalty: this meant that he was treated with tolerance by the authorities of the day, and had great freedom of movement (essentially, parole) in London . It is unclear whether Wright knew Jonson before he began visiting him in prison in 1597, although it has been suggested that they may have been introduced by William Alabaster, an Anglican priest and classicist whom Wright converted, who had been at Westminster with Jonson .