He was born in
Queen Square, Bristol, the son of a Bristol merchant, Nathaniel Wraxall, and his wife Anne, great-niece of Sir
James Thornhill, the painter. He entered the employment of the
East India Company in 1769, and served as judge-advocate and paymaster during the expeditions against
Gujarat and
Bharuch in 1771. In the following year he left the service of the company and returned to Europe. He visited
Portugal and was presented to the court, of which he gives a curious account in his
Historical Memoirs. In the north of Europe he made the acquaintance of several Danish nobles who had been exiled for their support of the deposed
Queen Caroline Matilda, sister of
George III. Among them were notably Baron Frederik Ludvig Ernst Bülow (spouse of
Anna Sofie Bülow), and Count
Ernst Schimmelmann (son of
Caroline von Schimmelmann). Wraxall at their suggestion undertook to endeavour to persuade the king to act on her behalf. He was able to secure an interview with her at
Celle Castle in September 1774. His exertions are told in his Posthumous Memoirs. As the queen died on 11 May 1775, his schemes came to nothing and he complained that he was
out-of-pocket, but George III took no notice of him for some time. In 1775 he published his first book,
Cursory Remarks made in a Tour through some of the Northern Parts of Europe, which reached its fourth edition by 1807, when it was renamed
A Tour Round the Baltic. In 1777 he travelled again in Germany and Italy. As he had by this time secured the patronage of important people, he obtained a complimentary lieutenant's commission from the king on the application of
Lord Robert Manners, which gave him the right to wear uniform though he never performed any military service. He published his
Memoirs of the Kings of France of the Race of Valois, to which he appended an account of his tour in the Western, Southern and Interior Provinces of France. In 1778 he went again on his travels to Germany and Italy, and accumulated materials for his
Memoirs of the Courts of Berlin, Dresden, Warsaw and Vienna (1799). In 1780, Wraxall entered
Parliament in the Tory interest, and served as a Member for years. He was first elected from
Hindon in
Wiltshire. On 3 April 1784, he was elected from
Ludgershall. He was still a supporter of Pitt when he was elected for
Wallingford on 16 June 1790. He was defeated at a by-election in March 1794 by
Francis Sykes. Wraxall then immediately began work on his French history in order to publish it the following year. He completed the beginning of a
History of France from the Accession of Henry III to the Death of Louis XIV, but it was never completed. Little is known of his later years except that he was made a
baronet by the
Prince Regent on 21 December 1813. His
Historical Memoirs appeared in 1815, when he subsequently removed to Wraxall House,
Charlton Kings, near Cheltenham. Both they and the
Posthumous Memoirs (1836) are very readable and have real historical value. Wraxall believed that the government of the day, furious at his truthfulness, was behind a libel action which sent him to prison for three months in 1816. Hence the posthumous publication of the later memoirs. He died suddenly at
Dover on 7 November 1831, while travelling to Naples. ==Family==