the savants of the capital, and was much interested in French clerical affairs. He also collated some Paris manuscripts of the Greek Testament for John Fell, bishop of Oxford. He returned to England in 1685; in 1688 he became preacher at Gray's Inn, and in 1689 he received a canonry of Christ Church, Oxford. In 1693 he was appointed rector of St James's, Westminster. Ten years later he became dean of Exeter, and in 1705 he was consecrated bishop of Lincoln. He was translated to the see of Canterbury in 1716 on the death of Thomas Tenison. During 1718 he negotiated with leading French churchmen about a projected union of the Gallican and English churches to resist the claims of Rome (see J. H. Lupton, Archbishop Wake and the Project of Union, 1896). In dealing with nonconformity he was tolerant, and even advocated a revision of the Prayer Book if that would allay the scruples of dissenters. His writings are numerous, the chief being his State of the Church and Clergy of England … historically deduced (London, 1703). He died at Lambeth on the 24th of January 1736/7.
Sir Isaac Wake (c. 1580-1632), the diplomatist, was a kinsman of the archbishop. He commenced his diplomatic career in Venice, and then he represented his county for sixteen years at Turin; he was knighted in 1619, and after being sent on various special missions by James I. he was British ambassador in Paris from 1630 until his death in June 1632. Among Sir Isaac's writings is Rex plalonicus, a description of the entertainment of James I. at Oxford in 1605; this was published in 1607 and has often been reprinted.
WAKE (A.S. wacan, to " wake " or " watch "), a term now restricted to the Irish custom of an all-night " waking " or watching round a corpse before burial, but anciently used in the wider sense of a vigil kept as an annual church celebration in commemoration of the completion or dedication of the parish church. This strictly religious wake consisted in an all-night service of prayer and meditation in the church. These services, popularly known as " wakes, " were officially termed Vigiliae by the church, and appear to have existed from the earliest days of Anglo-Saxon Christianity. Tents and booths were set up in the churchyard before the dawn which heralded in a day devoted to feasting, dancing and sports, each parish keeping the morrow of its vigil as a holiday. Wakes soon degenerated into fairs; people from neighbouring parishes journeyed over to join in the merry-making, and as early as Edgar's reign (958–975) the revelry and drunkenness had become a scandal. The vigiliae usually fell on Sundays or saints' days, those being the days oftenest chosen for church dedications, and thus the abuse was the more scandalous. In 1445 Henry VI. attempted to suppress markets and fairs on Sundays and holy days. In 1536 an Act of Convocation ordered that the yearly " wake " should be held in every parish on the same day, viz. the first Sunday in October, but this regulation was disregarded. Wakes are specially mentioned in the Book of Sports of James I. and Charles I. among the feasts which should be observed.
Side by side with these church wakes there existed from the earliest times the custom of " waking" a corpse. The custom, as far as England was concerned, seems to have been older than Christianity, and to have been at first essentially Celtic. Doubtless it had a superstitious origin, the fear of evil spirits hurting or even removing the body, aided perhaps by the practical desire to keep away rats and other vermin. The Anglo-Saxons called the custom lich-wake or like-wake (A.S. lic, a corpse). With the introduction of Christianity the offering of prayer was added to the mere vigil, which until then had been characterized by formal mourning chants and recitals of the life story of the dead. As a rule the corpse, with a plate of salt on its breast, was placed under the table, on which was liquor for the watchers. These private wakes soon tended to become drinking orgies, and during the reign of Edward III. the provincial synod held in London proclaimed by its 10th canon the object of wakes to be the offering of prayer for the dead, and ordered that in future none but near relatives and friends of the deceased should attend. The penalty for disobedience was excommunication. With the Reformation and the consequent disuse of prayers for the dead the custom of " waking " in England became obsolete and died out. Many countries and peoples have been found to have a custom equivalent to " waking, " which, however, must be distinguished from the funeral feasts pure and simple.
For detailed accounts of Irish wakes see Brand's Antiquities of Great Britain (W. C. Hazlitt's edition, 1905) under " Irish Wakes."
WAKEFIELD, EDWARD GIBBON (1796–1862), British
colonial statesman, was born in London on the 20th of March 1796, of an originally Quaker family. His father, Edward Wakefield (1774–1854), author of Ireland, Statistical and Political (1812), was a surveyor and land agent in extensive practice; his grandmother, Priscilla Wakefield (1751–1832), was a popular author for the young, and one of the introducers of savings banks. Wakefield was for a short time at Westminster School, and was brought up to his father's profession, which he relinquished on occasion of his elopement at the age of twenty with Miss Pattle; the orphan daughter of an Indian civil servant. The young lady's relatives ultimately became reconciled to the match, and procured him an appointment as attaché to the British legation at Turin. He resigned this post in 1820, upon the death of his wife, to whom he was fondly attached, and, though making some efforts to connect himself with journalism, spent the years immediately succeeding in idleness, residing for the most part in Paris. In 1826 he appeared before the public as the hero of a most extraordinary adventure, the abduction of Miss Ellen Turner, daughter of William Turner, of Shrigley Park, Cheshire. Miss Turner was decoyed from school by means of a forged letter, and made to believe that she could only save her father from ruin by marrying Wakefield, whom she accordingly accompanied to Gretna Green. This time the family refused to condone his proceedings; he was tried with his confederates at Lancaster assizes, March 1827, convicted, and sentenced to three years imprisonment in Newgate. The marriage, which had not been consummated, was dissolved by a special act of parliament. A disgrace which would have blasted the career of most men made Wakefield a practical statesman and a benefactor to his country. Meditating, it is probable, emigration upon his release, he turned his attention while in prison to colonial subjects, and acutely detected the main causes of the slow progress of the Australian colonies in the enormous size of the landed estates, the reckless manner in which land was given away, the absence of all systematic effort at colonization, and the consequent discouragement of immigration and dearth of labour. He proposed to remedy this state of things by the sale of land in small quantities at a sufficient price, and the employment of the proceeds as a fund for promoting immigration. These views were expressed with extraordinary vigour and incisiveness in his Letter from Sydney (1829), published while he was still in prison, but composed with such graphic power that it has been continually quoted as if written on the spot. After his release Wakefield seemed disposed for a while to turn his attention to social questions at home, and produced a tract on the Punishment of Death, with a terribly graphic picture of the condemned sermon in Newgate, and another on incendiarism in the rural districts, with an equally powerful exhibition of the degraded condition of the agricultural labourer. He soon, however, became entirely engrossed with colonial affairs, and, having impressed John Stuart Mill, Colonel Torrens and other leading economists with the value of his ideas, became a leading though not a conspicuous manager of the South Australian Company, by which the colony of South Australia was ultimately founded. In 1833 he published anonymously England and America, a work primarily intended to develop his own colonial theory, which is done in the appendix entitled "The Art of Colonization." The body of the work, however, is fruitful in seminal ideas, though some statements may be rash and some conclusions extravagant. It contains the distinct proposal that the transport of letters should be wholly gratuitous— the precursor of subsequent reform— and the prophecy that, under given circumstances, "the Americans would raise cheaper corn than has ever been raised." In 1836 Wakefield published the first volume of an edition of Adam Smith, which he did not complete. In 1837 the New Zealand Association was established, and he became its managing director. Scarcely, however, was this great undertaking fairly
