During the seventeen years in which he remained at Covent Garden he played the principal parts in comedy and many important characters in tragedy and romantic drama.

Back at Covent Garden, he was seen as Flaminius in ‘Herod and Mariamne,’ Shore in ‘Jane Shore,’ Alonzo in the ‘Revenge,’ Phocion in ‘The Grecian Daughter,’ Laertes, Pedro in ‘Much Ado About Nothing,’ Oakly in ‘The Jealous Wife,’ Juba in ‘Cato,’ Aimwell in ‘The Beaux' Stratagem,’ Lord Randolph in ‘Douglas,’ Lovemore in ‘Way to keep him,’ Bassanio, Amphitryon, Castalio in the ‘Orphan,’ Fainall in ‘The Way of the World,’ Romeo, Sir George Airy, Henry V, Hotspur, Kitely, Banquo, Ford, Tancred, Archer, Lear, Young Mirabel, Othello, Charles I, Wellborn in ‘A New Way to Pay Old Debts,’ Jaffier, Proteus in ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona,’ Darnley, Iachimo, Truewit in ‘Silent Woman,’ Colonel Standard, Evander, Plain Dealer, and Apemantus.

Among very many original parts which Wroughton enacted at Covent Garden, only the following call for mention: Prince Henry in ‘Henry II, King of England,’ by John Bancroft (dramatist) or Mountfort, on 1 May 1773; Lord Lovemore in William Kenrick's ‘Duellist’ on 20 Nov.; Elidurus in William Mason's ‘Caractacus’ on 6 December 1776; Earl of Somerset in ‘Sir Thomas Overbury,’ altered from Savage by Woodfall, 1 February 1777; Douglas in Hannah More's ‘Percy,’ 10 December.

In 1786–7 Wroughton disappeared from the bills, his parts at Covent Garden being assigned to Farren, and on 29 September 1787, as Douglas in ‘Percy,’ he made his first appearance at Drury Lane.

He played with the Drury Lane company at the Haymarket in 1792–3 Charles Surface, Clerimont, and other parts, and at Drury Lane enlarged his repertory by many new characters, including the Ghost in ‘Hamlet’ and Hamlet himself, King in ‘Henry IV’ and in ‘Richard III,’ Antonio in ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ the Stranger in ‘Douglas,’ Leontes, Jaques, Careless in ‘The Double Dealer,’ Jaques, Tullus Aufidius, Macduff, Moody in ‘Country Girl,’ Sciolto, Belarius, Kent and Edgar in ‘Lear,’ Sir Peter Teazle, and Leonato.

In 1798 he retired from the stage and settled in Bath, but in 1800, on the death of John Palmer and the illness of Aikin, in answer to an invitation of the Drury Lane management he came back, and was seen in a new series of parts including: Don Pedro in William Godwin's Antonio, 13 December 1800; Provost in William Sotheby's ‘Julian and Agnes,’ 25 April 1801; Casimir Rubenski in Dimond's ‘Hero of the North,’ 19 February 1803; Maurice in Cobb's ‘Wife of Two Husbands,’ 1 November; Sir Rowland English in Francis Ludlow Holt's The Land We Live In, 29 December 1804; Balthazar in John Tobin's ‘Honeymoon,’ 31 January 1805; Conrad in Theodore Hook's ‘Tekeli,’ 24 November 1806; and Cœlestino in ‘Monk’ Lewis's ‘Venoni,’ 1 December 1808.