(1773 - 1861) of Mount Hall, Yorks, 2nd surv. s. of Richard Wilbraham Bootle of Rode Hall, Ches.; m. 1 1798 Laetitia Rudd (d. 1805).
1797 - 8 [dep. London 12 Dec. 1793] Sicily (8 Aug. - Oct. 1797), Naples (26 Nov. 1797), Rome (Jan. 1798), Siena (9 Feb.), Florence (by 14 Feb.), Leghorn, Bologna (5 Mar.), Mantua, Verona, Venice (10 Mar.) [Innsbruck 17 Mar.; London 16 Apr.]
Randle Wilbraham spent nearly five years abroad, the first three in Germany and the Middle East. He went as far as Persepolis and returned through the Holy Land and Greece to Sicily, where he landed at Messina on 8 August 1797.1 He came to Naples on 26 November, finding the English 'muster pretty strong here' (26 Nov.). By this time he was looking forward 'with no little impatience' to returning home to England, and well aware that 'the longer I stay out of England the more John Bullish I become'. He visited Caserta and the S.Carlo theatre and had had the opportunity to talk 'Lancashire' with Emma Hamilton, but the weather was awful (11 Dec. 1797). After a delay in obtaining a passport (16 Jan. 1798), he came to Rome at the end of January 1798. Although he found the city tranquil he commented (with splendid pedantry) that 'the present situation of affairs does not render this place much calculated in the present moment for so long a residence as a traveller would wish to make in it', and he left after some two weeks 'more from the fear of detention than from any apprehension of danger' (4 Feb. 1798). He was in Florence by 14 February having encountered the French army on the road some twenty miles from Rome, but the soldiers had behaved 'with great moderation' (14 Feb. 1798). He was impatient with the Carnival in Florence, and visited Leghorn before going on north to Venice, 'perhaps the most singular place I have seen, but the French have reduced it to a wretched state by plundering the churches & the Arsenal in which latter they have left nothing but the wrecks of ships & the shattered remains of the Buccentaur. As in all the north of Italy they have behaved most shamefully' (12 Mar. 1798). He prepared his mother for his arrival home by describing how he had cut his hair short '? la Brutus' at Naples and wore it without powder; he was now 'somewhat taller, a great deal stouter than when I left England, & extremely sunburnt' (12 Mar. 1798).
1. Notes from Wilbraham's travel jnl., Dec. 1793 - Nov. 1797 (which provides the itinerary), and letters to his mother (both priv. coll. 1964); dates in brackets refer to letters.