WRAXALL, Sir NATHANIEL WILLIAM (1751–1831), baronet, author of historical memoirs, only son of Nathaniel Wraxall (1725–1781), who married in 1749 Anne (d. 1800), daughter of William Thornhill of Bristol, and great-niece of Sir James Thornhill [q. v.], was born in Queen's Square, Bristol, on 8 April 1751, and ‘was educated in his native city.’ His grandfather, Nathaniel Wraxall (1687–1731), merchant, was sheriff of Bristol in 1723, eight years previous to his death on 24 March 1731 (Gent. Mag. 1731, p. 125). The historian subsequently claimed to be a representative of the ancient family which derived its name from the parish of Wraxall, six miles west of Bristol, but this connection it would be impossible to trace (Collinson, Somerset, iii. 159).
Nathaniel, whose love of travel was persistent from an early age, went out to Bombay in 1769, having obtained employment in the civil service of the East India Company, and he was appointed judge-advocate and paymaster of the forces in the Guzerat expedition, and that against Baroche in 1771. He left the service of the East India Company in 1772, and, having returned to England, visited Portugal and then the northern courts of Europe. In September 1774 he had an interview with Caroline Matilda [q. v.], sister of George III, at Zell (Celle). He proceeded from Zell to Altona, where he seems to have given frank expression to his sympathy for the banished queen. At Hamburg, hard by, there resided a group of noble Danish exiles. Two of their leaders, Barons Schimmelman and Bulow, recognised in Wraxall a fitting agent of communication between the queen whom they sought to replace upon the throne of Denmark and George III, whose concurrence in the movement they felt it indispensable to obtain. As accredited intermediary in this affair Wraxall made several arduous journeys, the incidents of which lose nothing by his reporting in the pages of his ‘Posthumous Memoirs’ (i. 378 sq.). He had private interviews with the queen in the library and Jardin Anglais at Zell, and conveyed to her on 15 Feb. 1775 a paper containing George III's qualified sanction of the scheme devised by her partisans. He returned to England in April, in the hope of obtaining a personal interview with the king, and a more definite assurance that he would countenance such action as might prove necessary at Copenhagen. But while he was anxiously waiting in Jermyn Street, London, for a favourable answer, the news reached him on 19 May of the sudden death of Caroline Matilda (see Correspondence of George III and Lord North, 1867, ii. 359).
He appears to have been living in London in 1776, and he mentions meeting Dr. Dodd in this year, together with Wilkes, Sir William Jones, and De Lolme, at the house of Dilly the bookseller. Dodd invited the company to dine with him at his house in Argyll Street, and the invitation was accepted. In the following year Dodd, while lying in Newgate, made an urgent appeal to Wraxall to exert himself to procure a pardon through Lord Nugent. In the summer of 1777 Wraxall made some stay at The Hague, where he was presented to the Prince of Orange. Before leaving England he had received from George III a lieutenant's commission, granted upon the application of Lord Robert Manners [q. v.], who then commanded the third regiment of dragoon guards. In the uniform of this regiment Wraxall visited the theatre at Florence in 1779 and saw Prince Charles Edward. The chevalier was semi-intoxicated; but when ‘he approached near enough to distinguish the English regimental, he instantly stopped, gently shook off the two servants who supported him, one on each side, and, taking off his hat, politely saluted us.’ He visited Dresden in 1778 and Naples in 1779. There he met Sir William and Lady Hamilton. Upon her authority he introduces into his ‘Memoirs’ some curious anecdotes of private executions, which have been frequently cited (cf. Chambers, Book of Days, ii. 555).
In 1780 he returned to England, and was elected M.P. for the borough of Hindon in Wiltshire. In 1781 he was appointed on a committee to inquire into the causes of war in the Carnatic. Lord North was a member of this committee, and in June 1781 he unexpectedly asked Wraxall to spend the day with him at Bushey Park. The minister there told him that the king was most anxious to acknowledge in a proper manner his important services to the late queen of Denmark. Before entering parliament his persistent applications for recompense had been unanswered. The sum of a thousand guineas for his expenses was now awarded him and paid with alacrity, while he also obtained a promise (unfulfilled, owing to North's retirement) of a post in the administration. Early in this same year (1781) Horace Walpole, whose antipathy to rival memoir writers was instinctive, wrote to Mason of Wraxall as ‘popping into every spot where he can make himself talked of, by talking of himself; but I hear he will come to an untimely beginning in the House of Commons’ (Corresp. ed. Cunningham,
