The Wreys took their name from a small property near Moretonhampstead, Devon, which they held in the fifteenth century. By the time Wrey’s father, William, succeeded his elder brother in 1597, the family had accumulated broad estates not only in Devon but also in Cornwall, where their principal seat was located. William, who was knighted in 1603, added to this inheritance, and when he died in 1636 he owned over 6,000 acres, including four Cornish manors and a share in four others.
Given his background, it is surprising that Wrey attended neither university nor the inns of court. He doubtless owed his election to Parliament at Liskeard in 1624 to his father’s prominence within the borough. Wrey is not known to have participated in Commons’ debates, and received just one committee appointment, on 23 Mar., to scrutinize Sir Richard Lumley’s private land bill, a measure of no obvious interest to him. On 27 Apr., if he was present in the House, Wrey had to endure the embarrassment of his mother’s appearance in a report on recusancy. The information was provided by his cousin William Coryton, who hastened to confirm that Sir William Wrey, and by implication Wrey himself, were not similarly tainted.
Wrey’s later life is notable only for its obscurity. Despite the scale of his family’s estates, his marriage into the West Country aristocracy, and his inheritance of a baronetcy in 1636, he failed almost completely to emulate his father’s record of gentry leadership. Unless he possessed character defects which have gone undocumented, the most plausible explanation for this is that he was suspected of being a Catholic. His mother certainly maintained her allegiance to Rome in later life. Wrey himself was never formally identified as a recusant, but in 1634 he leased lands which had been confiscated by the Crown from John Trevelyan, one of Cornwall’s most obstreperous Catholics, and subsequently managed the property as if he was holding it in trust for Trevelyan.