Unusual Suspect, Unlikely Hero: A Life in the Reign of Alarm Francis ‘Ornament’ Wrangham (1769–1842)

Like many other young liberals of the 1790s victimized by William Pitt’s ‘Reign of Alarm’, Francis Wrangham is remembered today, if at all, only as a footnote to a more famous life: in his case, William Wordsworth’s. Wrangham was a year ahead of Wordsworth at Cambridge, a far more successful student than the poet, indeed a sometime victorious rival over the academic star of the Class of ‘90, the brilliant John Tweddell. Wrangham won the Brown Prize at Magdalen in 1787 and graduated third Wrangler from Trinity Hall in 1790. He was a brilliant classicist and liked the competition: he won five more prizes as an alumnus, between 1794 and 1812. It was as a classicist that he entered Wordsworth’s life. Between 1795 and 1797 the two of them collaborated on an imitation of Juvenal’s eighth satire, on the theme of true nobility – ‘virtue’ is its ‘one and only’ name. This is Juvenal’s rough satire (his tonal signature among the great Roman satirists) on the corrupt nobles of his time, who so little deserve their titles. Wrangham and Wordsworth translated and updated Juvenal, producing an outspoken diatribe against the behavior of the most ‘noble’ personages in England, not quite touching the King, but coming close: the Prince of Wales, and the dukes of Northumberland, Norfolk, and Manchester all come in for rough handling – especially in the parts composed by Wordsworth. The satire is very up-to-date for 1795, including snide remarks about Pitt’s spy system, especially its alarmist attacks on ordinary people, while grand dukes and duchesses are allowed to get away scot-free with the illegal gambling tables they ran at home for their friends: