O'Connell.’ His opposition to O'Connell was mainly in regard to the question of the securities which were demanded as a corollary of catholic emancipation. Woulfe was quite ready to accept the crown veto upon the nomination of catholic bishops, and in 1816 published a tract in defence of the veto, being the substance of a speech delivered at Limerick during the Lent assizes of 1816. On 6 May 1829 he followed O'Connell in subscribing the address to the king on the subject of catholic relief (Wyse, Catholic Association, ii. App.) Woulfe's moderate views and ability recommended him to Plunket, who, upon his appointment as lord chancellor of Ireland in 1830, gave Woulfe the lucrative post of crown counsel for Munster. He was appointed third serjeant on 23 May 1835, and having entered parliament as member for the city of Cashel in September 1835, he was appointed solicitor-general for Ireland on 10 Nov. 1836. He retained his seat in parliament until July 1838, but, owing mainly to ill-health, did not make any figure as a debater. He was appointed attorney-general for Ireland on 3 Feb. 1837, and on 11 July 1838, in succession to Henry Joy (1767–1838), he was made chief baron of the Irish exchequer, being the first Roman catholic to be so appointed. Woulfe accepted the honour with some reluctance, but the selection was admitted to be a happy one. A design was stated to have been on foot to get Woulfe to resign in favour of O'Connell, but ‘this job was defeated by Woulfe's high-spirited firmness.’ He is said to have been careless in his attire, awkward and angular in his movements, but very effective in his utterance; no profound lawyer, but a man of quick and shrewd observation. He died at Baden-Baden on 2 July 1840. He married Frances, daughter of Roger Hamill of Dowth Hall, co. Meath, and left issue Stephen Roland, who succeeded his uncle, Peter Woulfe, in 1865 in the estate of Tiermaclane; and Mary, who married in 1847 Sir Justin Sheil, K.C.B.
[Gent. Mag. 1840, ii. 676; Burke's Landed Gentry of Ireland, 1899, p. 491; Times, 10 and 13 July 1840; Sheil's Sketches of the Irish Bar, 1856, ii. 107, 119; Torrens's Memoirs of Melbourne, 1890, pp. 418, 428, 454; Official Return of Members of Parl.]
WRANGHAM, FRANCIS (1769–1842), classical scholar and miscellaneous writer, born on 11 June 1769, was the only son of George Wrangham (1742–1791), who occupied the farm of Raysthorpe, near Malton in Yorkshire, and rented the moiety of another farm at Titchwell, near Wells, Norfolk. From 1776 to 1780 Francis attended a small school at West Heslerton, kept by Thomas Thirlwall, grandfather of Connop Thirlwall [q. v.], afterwards vicar of Cottingham, near Hull. For two summers he was with the Rev. John Robinson at Pickering, and he passed two years under the instruction of Joseph Milner at Hull (Frost, Address at Hull, 1831, p. 41). In October 1786 Wrangham matriculated from Magdalene College, Cambridge, and next year won Sir William Browne's medal for the best Greek and Latin epigrams. They were printed in July 1787 in a single octavo sheet. At the suggestion of Joseph Jowett [q. v.] he migrated to Trinity Hall on 16 Nov. 1787, and on 5 Dec. was elected ‘scholaris de minori formâ.’ He graduated B.A. in 1790, being third wrangler in the mathematical tripos, second Smith's prizeman, and senior chancellor's medallist. In the last competition he beat his friend and rival John Tweddell [q. v.] Wrangham remained at Cambridge taking pupils, and confidently anticipating that he would be elected to a fellowship at Trinity Hall on the first vacancy. He proceeded M.A. on 22 March 1793; in the following June he obtained from the tutors of Trinity Hall letters testimonial to the archbishop of York of his good and satisfactory conduct, and in July he was ordained. Next month a divinity fellowship became vacant at his college, and he applied for it; but another person, not a member of the hall and disqualified as in possession of preferment of too high value, was elected to it. This graduate afterwards resigned the fellowship, but, having dispossessed himself of his preferment, was at once re-elected. Wrangham petitioned the lord chancellor that, in accordance with the statutes of the hall, he was as a minor scholar entitled to the fellowship, but the tutors claimed the right of rejecting him as not ‘idoneus moribus et ingenio,’ and the lord chancellor upheld their view (F. Vesey, jun., Reports, ii. 609). To injure Wrangham ‘reports were circulated that he was a friend to the French revolution, one who exulted in the murder of the king, and that he was a republican,’ but he was in reality a moderate whig (Gunning, Reminiscences, ii. 14–37). The probable explanation of this rejection lay in the suspicion that he was the author of the well-known epigram on Jowett and his little garden.
Wrangham after this injustice abandoned Trinity Hall and became a member of Trinity College. During 1794 and 1795 he served as curate of the parish of Cobham in Surrey, and in conjunction with Basil Montagu took pupils at 200l. per annum each. Sir James Mackintosh said of their long prospectus: ‘A
