Wise was educated at Cambridge, rather than the geographically more convenient Oxford, the choice of college reflecting his father’s puritan leanings. He was admitted to Sidney Sussex alongside his brother Edward, but stayed to complete his degree when his elder sibling departed in 1621 to Lincoln’s Inn.
Wise became heir to his father’s estates following his elder brother’s premature death. In 1629 he married into the Devon aristocracy, and the next year succeeded to his patrimony. He seems to have preferred his secondary seat of Mount Wise, near Plymouth, to his more remote ancestral home at Sydenham. Wise possessed little administrative experience when he became sheriff in 1637, and struggled to raise the full £9,000 demanded by the government in Devon’s third Ship Money writ. Around £1,200 remained outstanding in April 1639, of which half was never collected.
Wise apparently enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, and in his will, made on 2 Jan. 1641, he estimated his debts at £3,000. He entrusted both the will’s execution and his son’s wardship to his kinsman and ‘best friend’, Francis Buller*, on the grounds that his wife lacked the necessary experience, and would lose control of her own affairs if she remarried. This foresight was rewarded. Buller proved the will on 24 Mar., and by the end of the year the widow had found a new husband, John Harris III*. Wise’s son Edward sat for Okehampton from 1659 until his death in 1675.