Thomas, lord Wake, is sometimes (e.g. in the indexes to the ‘Patent’ and ‘Close’ Rolls) confused with his cousin and contemporary, Sir Thomas Wake of Blisworth, the son and successor of Hugh Wake, younger brother of John Wake, his father. Sir Thomas was sheriff of Northamptonshire in 1329 and 1335, and chief forester of Whittlewood Forest. He also possessed lands at Deeping, besides becoming the sole representative of the house in Northamptonshire, where his descendants long flourished at Blisworth.
[Calendars of Close and Patent Rolls; Rymer's Fœdera; Calendarium Inquisitionum post mortem, vols. i. and ii.; Rolls of Parliament, vols. i. and ii. (Record edit.); Parl. Writs; Walsingham's Hist. Anglicana, Chron. Angliæ, 1328–88, Murimuth and Avesbury, Flores Historiarum, Ann. Paulini and Canon of Bridlington in Chron. Edward I and Edward II, Chron. de Melsa, Knighton (all in Rolls Ser.); Chron. de Lanercost (Bannatyne Club); Chron. Galfridi le Baker, ed. E. M. Thompson; Froissart, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, vols. ii. iv. xvii. and xviii.; Dugdale's Baronage, i. 539–42; Dugdale's Monasticon, ed. Caley, Ellis, and Bandinel, v. 519–22; Tanner's Notitia Monastica; Nicolas's Historic Peerage, ed. Courthope, p. 494 (contains some errors); G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage, iv. 350–2; Barnes's Hist. of Edward III; Stubbs's Constitutional History, vol ii.; Hutchinson's Cumberland, ii. 528–9.]
WAKE, WILLIAM (1657–1737), archbishop of Canterbury, born at Blandford in Dorset on 26 Jan. 1656–7, was the son of William Wake (d. 1705) of Shapwick in the same county. His father was a man of considerable property and ancient family [see Wake, Sir Isaac]. A manuscript account of it, drawn up by the archbishop himself, was privately printed in 1833 by his great-granddaughter, Etheldreda Benett (Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. vi. 353). After being educated at the grammar school of his native town under Mr. Curganven (Carlisle, Endowed Grammar Schools, i. 362), he was entered at Christ Church, Oxford, whence he matriculated on 28 Feb. 1672–3. He graduated B.A. in 1676, M.A. in 1679, and B.D. and D.D. by accumulation in 1689.
On leaving the university, Wake was ordained, and in 1682 went to Paris in the capacity of chaplain to Richard Graham, viscount Preston [q. v.], an old Christ Church man, who had been appointed ambassador to the court of France. It was the year in which a synod of the French clergy were engaged in putting forth the ‘Declaratio Cleri Gallicani,’ called by Dorner ‘the most celebrated act of Gallicanism.’ Wake's attention was thus turned to a subject which afterwards formed a chief interest of his life—the affairs of the French church. He also became known as a scholar to many of the savants of the French capital, and was applied to by John Fell (1625–1686) [q. v.], bishop of Oxford, to collate some Paris manuscripts of the Greek Testament for John Mill's projected edition. By detecting some important changes, due to a censure of the Sorbonne, in the second edition of Bossuet's ‘Exposition de la foi catholique’ (1671), Wake was enabled to retort upon the author of the ‘Variations des Églises protestantes.’ This he did in his ‘Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England’ (1686, 4to).
In 1685 he returned home in the suite of Lord Preston, and in 1688 was chosen preacher of Gray's Inn, an office which he held for eight years. It is said that James II tried to prevent an election being made till his pleasure was known (art. in Biogr. Britannica, quoting the Rev. Osmund Beauvoir). On the accession of William and Mary, Wake was made deputy clerk of the closet and chaplain in ordinary to the king and queen. In June 1689 he was appointed to a canonry in Christ Church, Oxford. His protest against resigning this in 1702 is preserved among the Additional manuscripts in the British Museum (747, f. 155). In July 1693 he was presented to the rectory of St. James's, Westminster, which he held till 1706. On 14 Feb. 1702–3 he was made a canon residentiary of Exeter, and installed dean two days later (Le Neve, Fasti, i. 388; the date is often given as 1701, see Le Neve, ii. 520). On 21 Oct. 1705 he was consecrated bishop of Lincoln. In January 1715–16, on the death of Thomas Tenison [q. v.], Wake was translated to Canterbury.
Wake was a man of wide reading, of immense industry, and of a liberal and tolerant spirit. Some of his speeches in parliament may appear inconsistent with this last quality (Abbey and Overton, English Church in the Eighteenth Century, i. 356); as when he argued against Lord Stanhope's bill in 1718 for repealing certain clauses in the Corporation and Test acts; or when, in 1721, he opposed the government measure for granting relief to the quakers. But his opposition was probably due to the spirit in which, as he considered, these changes were demanded (Perry, Hist. of the Church of England, iii. 309, 317). In his personal dealings with nonconformists, whether at home or abroad, he always showed a spirit of comprehensive charity. He advocated some modifications
