WAKE, Thomas

The Wakes are a family of great antiquity and documented Norman ancestry. The senior line failed on the death of Thomas, Lord Wake, in 1349 when the main family estates passed to the Holand earls of Kent through his sister, Margaret. By this date, however, two junior branches of the family had taken root: one resided at Winterbourne Stoke in Wiltshire and the other at Blisworth in south Northamptonshire. The latter was the most prominent. The first of the line, Sir Hugh Wake† (d.c.1315), sat as an MP for Northamptonshire in as many as seven Parliaments, and his son, Sir Thomas, served as a knight of the royal household, holding office as Edward III’s chief falconer before seemingly meeting his death during the siege of Calais in 1347. In the next generation the family’s original endowment, principally the manor of Blisworth and that of East Deeping in south Lincolnshire, was greatly augmented by marriage. Sir Thomas’s son, another Sir Thomas (our MP’s great-grandfather) took as his wife Alice (d.1398), one of the four sisters and coheirs of Sir William Patteshull (d.1361) and through her mother one of many coheirs of Sir Thomas Grandison (d.1375). She brought the family manors at Middleton near Corby and Collingtree near Blisworth, Chells in Stevenage (Hertfordshire), North Crawley (Buckinghamshire), and Bromham and Cardington (Bedfordshire) together with more distant properties at Lambourn in Berkshire (which our MP’s father sold in 1411) and Dymock in Gloucestershire.3 CP, xii (2), 295-305; VCH Northants. Fams. 313-19; Knights of Edw. I (Harl. Soc. lxxxiv), 135-6; CIPM, x. 520; Peds. Plea Rolls ed. Wrottesley, 151; CFR, viii. 338; CCR, 1409-13, pp. 296, 304. The wealth such property brought underpinned the active career of our MP’s father in administration in his native county – between 1407 and 1419 he sat three times in Parliament and served twice as sheriff – and our MP enjoyed a long career of equal prominence.

By the death of his father early in 1424 Thomas Wake was of age and his inheritance was soon united in his hands.4 The enrolment of the writ of diem clausit extremum issued on 16 Feb. is in the name of John Wake, but there can be little doubt that this is an error for Thomas: C60/231, m. 21. In the Northants. visitation of 1564 our MP is called ‘the Great Wake’, although nothing in his career justifies such an appellation: Vis. Northants. ed. Metcalfe, 53. Since, however, this ped. describes him as ‘of the counsell and Privy chamber’ of Edw. IV, it is clear that family tradition attached the name to his more politically prominent son and that the ped. erroneously conflates the two. His mother predeceased his father and the only other significant charge on the estate was extinguished by the death of his grandmother, Maud Pigot, in April 1425. The total value of this patrimony is difficult to determine. In the tax returns of 1412 his father had been assessed at an annual income of £40 in Northamptonshire and £20 in Lincolnshire.5 Feudal Aids, vi. 482, 496. He is to be distinguished from his distant cousin and namesake of Winterbourne Stoke, assessed at as much as £90 p.a.: ibid. 421, 454, 541; VCH Wilts. xv. 278. His grandmother’s inquisitions post mortem valued her lands in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire at about £18 p.a.6 CIPM, xxii. 411-13. Since these valuations, particularly the latter, are likely to be conservative and to have excluded some of the family’s lesser properties, it is a fair estimate that Wake inherited lands worth about £100 p.a., sufficient to rank him among the gentry elite of his native county.

These valuable lands Wake further supplemented by marriage to an heiress, Agnes Lovell. Their marriage took place shortly before 27 Sept. 1426 when Wake’s feoffees, Thomas Wydeville*, Richard Wydeville*, Richard Bamme, the son of Sir John Philipot’s widow, and John Roger (d.1450), the bride’s maternal uncle (and the elder brother of John Roger I*), settled the manors of Collingtree, Middleton and North Crawley with lands at Chicheley (Buckinghamshire) on the couple.7 C139/172/19. The main explanation for our MP’s marriage to a Somerset heiress lies in his neighbour Thomas Wydeville’s marriage to her widowed mother. Wydeville’s presence among the trustees for the settlement is a sure indication of his role in brokering the match. Agnes’s close kinship with the main branch of the Lovells, a baronial family with significant landed interests in Northamptonshire, is probably also to be accounted a factor. Significantly, her maternal grandfather, the very wealthy merchant John Roger, had had recent business dealings with the baronial Lovells, purchasing from them several west-country manors, and Wake was to number among William, Lord Lovell’s retinue during Henry VI’s coronation expedition of 1430-2.8 CPR, 1422-9, p. 263; DKR, xlviii. 277.

Wake’s father had attested five successive parliamentary elections between 1420 and 1423 and it was thus appropriate that his own first recorded activity in local affairs should have been his attestation of an election, that held on 25 Aug. 1429. Soon thereafter, however, his participation in the coronation expedition ensured a prolonged absence from his native shire. On 23 May 1430, a month after the King’s departure, he sued out letters of protection as about to embark for France in Lovell’s retinue. He does not appear again in the records until shortly after the King’s return when, in April 1432, he once more attested a parliamentary election.19 C219/14/1, 3; DKR, xlviii. 277.

A few months later Wake took some steps towards the rationalization of his scattered inheritance. In the following June he conveyed his small part of the manor of Dymock to Henry Bourgchier, count of Eu, and others, and there can be little doubt that this marks the sale of a property too small and distant to be woven into the main fabric of his interests.110 CCR, 1429-35, p. 184. His wife’s manor at Clevedon was a different matter: although even more distant than Dymock, it was an important property and he was understandably anxious that his legal estate in it should not be terminated by his wife’s premature death. It was presumably to this end that, in September 1432, her maternal grandfather, as a feoffee of her late father, conveyed the manor to the couple and Agnes’s issue. It is a reasonable speculation that another purpose of this conveyance was to divide the Lovell inheritance between Agnes and her sister, Margery, on the occasion of the latter’s marriage to Edward Hull*, an esquire of the royal household. This inference is supported by a settlement made in the following year: the Lovell properties at Milton, near Bruton, and Wanstrow in Somerset were settled on John Roger for life with successive remainders in tail general to the Hulls and the Wakes.111 C139/107/32; 177/43.

In the following summer Wake’s public career began in earnest with his election to represent his native county in Parliament. In the common pattern this service brought him to the notice of the Crown and he was appointed to the shrievalty in 1434. As sheriff he conducted the election of September 1435 and was himself returned at the next election in January 1437.112 C219/14/4, 5; 15/1. A few months after the conclusion of this assembly he entered an interesting engagement: on 9 Oct. 1437 the elderly dowager, Joan Stafford, widow of Thomas Holand, earl of Kent (d.1400), quitclaimed to him, ‘pro laudabili servicio’, and, more significantly, for the sum £100, all her right and title in both the annual fee farm of £10 due to her from his manor of Blisworth and the advowson of the church there. Since the countess’s interest in this property, which had passed from the senior line of the Wakes to the Holands, was for term of life only, this seems an unfavourable bargain from our MP’s point of view, but it was no doubt part of a scheme to secure the permanent extinction of the fee farm.113 Add. Ch. 21543. In the early 1440s the countess was pursuing him for a debt of over £20, presumably in connexion with his agreement: CP40/722, rot. 59; 724, rot. 355d.

Two years later Wake was elevated to the Northamptonshire bench. It would be wrong to assume that this period of intense administrative activity owed anything to the patronage of a greater man, but there can be no doubt that he was well connected. He continued to be on friendly terms with Lord Lovell, who until 1438 had an interest in the manor of North Crawley, presumably as one of his feoffees. At this date he is also first found in association with Lovell’s brother-in-law, Ralph, Lord Cromwell, then treasurer of England, a relationship which was to become stronger later in his career. Early in 1438 he was named to a commission of oyer and terminer concerning an entry into Cromwell’s recently-acquired park at Collyweston in the far north of the county.114 Add. Ch. 5164; CPR, 1436-41, p. 147.

Far closer, however, was another important association formed shortly afterwards. By the early 1440s Wake had found a place, and seemingly an intimate one, in the service of John Beaufort, earl of Somerset. Their connexion can only have been formed recently for the earl was not released from a long captivity in France until 1438, but the earl’s estates in Northamptonshire, south Lincolnshire and Somerset made it a natural one (indeed, Wake himself numbered among the earl’s tenants with respect to his own property at East Deeping). From late in 1441 a considerable part of his time was given over to the earl’s service as his attorney in the Exchequer. For example, on 31 Oct. 1441 he was there receiving assignments on the earl’s behalf, and 12 days later he was vainly trying to secure for him payment of a tally secured on the issues of the shrievalty of Norfolk and Suffolk.115 E403/743, m. 3; 745, mm. 4, 6; 747, mm. 1, 4; E13/142, rot. 33d. He was also closely concerned in other aspects of the earl’s life. On 30 Dec. 1442 he was named alongside the earl as a feoffee of Elizabeth, Lady Grey of Codnor, and at about the same time he was among those who made a jointure settlement on the earl’s belated marriage to Margaret Beauchamp. On 10 June 1443 he was among the earl’s servants to whom John Bellers* conveyed the manor of Sawtry in Huntingdonshire, and on the following 17 July he joined Bellers in mustering at Portsdown in Somerset’s retinue for what was to prove an ill-fated expedition to France.116 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 313-14; CPR, 1441-6, p. 349; CIPM, xxvi. 187; HMC Hastings, i. 211-12; E101/54/5, m. 2. His removal from the bench in the following autumn was probably connected with this renewed military service for it was certainly not the consequence of a loss of royal favour. From 1443 (if not earlier) he numbered among the esquires of the royal household, a position he no doubt owed to his Beaufort patron and perhaps also to his wife’s brother-in-law, Hull.117 E101/409/11.

Although Wake’s connexion with Beaufort was a very close one, he was too important a man in his own right for his patron’s death in May 1444 to have any adverse effect on his career. He maintained his place in the Household until the failure of the relevant records in 1452. On 4 Sept. 1444, in an expression of his high standing in his native county, he granted his manor of Blisworth to a distinguished group of Northamptonshire landholders, headed by Henry Green*, Thomas Green, son and heir apparent of Sir Thomas Green*, and Thomas Tresham*. On 1 Nov. 1446 he took the precaution of suing out a general pardon, and three days later he was once more appointed to the shrievalty. It is likely that the two events were connected, with Wake agreeing to take the office in return for a pardon of fines and debts due to the Crown from his earlier service in local administration.218 E101/410/9; C139/172/19; C67/39, m. 18.

Soon after this second term as sheriff of Northamptonshire Wake came to play a part in the affairs of the distant county of Somerset, where his wife’s lands lay. Here he was probably acting at Hull’s behest. This surmise is supported by his return to represent the county in Parliament at an election conducted by Hull on 20 Jan. 1449. The timing here is significant: in the previous summer Hull had opened a campaign to win the valuable Norfolk manor of Titchwell, to which their wives had a claim, from Sir John Fastolf. Wake’s election to a Parliament from which Hull was disqualified by his office of sheriff was probably part of their pursuance of this dispute.219 C219/15/6; P.S. Lewis, ‘Fastolf’s Lawsuit over Titchwell’, Historical Jnl. i. 3; C139/131/18. Wake was thus part of the large household contingent in this assembly and he was rewarded, on the following 1 Mar. while Parliament was in session, with an inspeximus and confirmation of a charter of Henry II granting his wife’s ancestors free warren in Clevedon.220 CPR, 1446-52, p. 216. He was added to the Somerset bench, again presumably at Hull’s instigation, soon after the end of the Parliament, and he was appointed to two commissions of array there in the following year. At the same time he benefited from Hull’s aggressive pursuit of their wives’ hereditary interests. In Trinity term 1450 he and his wife joined the Hulls in an action designed to recover from Walter, brother of Thomas Norton*, the manor of Stathe (Somerset), which Sir Edmund Clevedon† (their wives’ great-great-grandfather) had lost on a mortgage. In the following Michaelmas term the Hulls and Wakes surrendered their title to Norton, but probably only after receiving some undisclosed consideration.221 CP40/758, rot. 243; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 244-5; Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 114.

None the less, despite this brief dalliance with the affairs of Somerset, Wake’s main interests continued to lie in his native Northamptonshire. His pricking as sheriff there for a third term on 3 Dec. 1450 leaves no doubt on this score. Nor can there be any doubt that his appointment had a political significance for it came at a time of the acute dislocation in national politics occasioned by the duke of York’s return from Ireland. In general the sheriffs appointed late in 1450 were royal servants and the duke of York’s influence seems to have made itself felt only with respect to the appointments in Herefordshire and Shropshire (Sir John Barre* and Thomas Herbert†). In view of Wake’s household service at this date and beyond he must be accounted with the royal servants, and yet his political loyalties may not have been so clear cut. It is perhaps unlikely that in Northamptonshire, where York’s interests were significant, someone unacceptable to him would have been appointed, and a more detailed examination of Wake’s associations at this date reveals some indirect connexions on the Yorkist side. Although his friend Hull was a prominent Household man, he was also the constable of York’s castle at Bridgwater; and Wake himself was distantly related to the duke through his kinswoman, Eleanor, sister of Edmund Holand, earl of Kent (d.1408). There was also another link: John Wake, who was one of the our MP’s feoffees of 1441 and may have been his younger brother, spent part of the 1440s in York’s service in France.222 P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 92-93; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, fr. 25777/1690, 1731; nouv. acq. fr. 8637/57. This may have endowed our MP with a certain ambivalence in the political conflicts of the 1450s, particularly since his closest association among the magnates was Lord Cromwell, whose own sympathies were uneasily balanced between the rival factions.223 At an unknown date he borrowed 100 marks from Cromwell, a sum still owing at the latter’s death in 1456: Magdalen Coll. Oxf. Cromwell pprs. Misc. 303. Either he or his son, as a former servant of that lord, is said to have plundered goods worth £174 10s. from his executors: ibid. Misc. 357, m. 4.

This may explain why Wake appears to have maintained a low profile during the early 1450s, for he makes few appearances in the records during these years. In May 1452 he acted as an arbiter in the dispute over the Holt lands that had resulted in the murder of William Tresham* in 1450; and two months later he was restored to the bench in Northamptonshire. In the following October he sat on a grand jury before a powerful commission of oyer and terminer investigating treasons associated with the duke of York’s Dartford rising, but it would be unwise to interpret this as a firm indication of his opposition to the duke’s pretensions.224 Add. Ch. 62431; KB9/94/1/12d; 278/51. On 22 Mar. 1453 he stood surety in the Exchequer on behalf of another of Cromwell’s associates, the lawyer John Chevercourt. Here he is described as ‘of Norfolk’, although if this was an indirect reference to his claim to the manor of Titchwell the claim was effectively terminated with Hull’s death four months later. There is nothing to indicate that he played any direct role in the conflict of 1455, but he did sue out a general pardon in October of that year (presumably in connexion with debts owing from his last shrievalty).225 CFR, xix. 28; C67/41, m. 26.

Thereafter, the pace of Wake’s political activity seems to have quickened once more. This is implied by his addition to a third county bench (in Kesteven) shortly after the end of the duke of York’s second protectorate and not long before his younger son, John, was appointed to the bench in Huntingdonshire. His elder, Thomas, joined him on that for Kesteven. Clearly the family still had the trust of the Lancastrians, but by the late 1450s Wake had unequivocal connexions on the Yorkist side. On 20 May 1457 he stood surety in Chancery for John Browe*: not only was Browe associated with the duke of York but so too were the other sureties, Walter Blount* and William Hastings. Taken together with his removal from the Northamptonshire bench very shortly before his death, this implies identification with the Yorkist interest. The affiliations of his son and heir support this implication: in December 1457 the younger Thomas had been among those supporting the entry of Humphrey Bourgchier*, the duke’s nephew, into valuable manors in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in defiance of the staunchly Lancastrian John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury.226 CCR, 1454-61, p. 208; KB9/288/22; 289/78. In Easter term 1458 our MP stood surety for the payment of small fines by some of those indicted with his son for these entries: KB27/788, fines rot.

Nonetheless, these indications should not be pressed too far. Wake maintained his place on the benches of Somerset and Kesteven until his death and was even appointed post mortem to the Lancastrian commission of array and the bench in the latter. Further, in the spring of 1458 he had favour enough to secure a pardon of all fines to the Crown he had incurred before September 1454.327 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 560, 670; C66/488, m. 14d; E159/234, brevia Trin. rot. 15d. In any event, whatever his sympathies, he did not live long enough to make the difficult choices of the civil war of 1459-61. He last appears in an active role in the summer of 1458 when he was one of several leading Northamptonshire landowners entrusted by Henry Green with the implementation of the agreement for the marriage of Constance, his daughter and heiress-presumptive, to John, third son of Humphrey, duke of Buckingham.328 R. Halstead, Succinct Gens. 196-9; CP25(1)/293/73/431. Wake died on the following 10 Dec. and writs of diem clausit extremum were issued to the relevant escheators nine days later. The inquisitions taken in response to these writs suggest that he died sole seised of no lands: his real property was either held jointly with his wife, who survived him, or else by feoffees, headed by his friend Henry Green, under conveyances made in 1441 and 1444. His will does not survive, although it is clear from later pardons that his wife and elder son were among its executors.329 CFR, xix. 212; C139/172/19; 177/43; C67/46, m. 5; 49, m. 29.

It was left to Wake’s sons to make a firm commitment to the new Yorkist regime. In November 1461 Thomas was appointed to the Northamptonshire shrievalty and his brother John to the office of escheator in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. Clearly, whatever may have been the confused state of our MP’s loyalties in his last years, his sons had correctly discerned where the political future lay and committed themselves to York. The elder son’s association with Bourgchier was probably one determining factor here, and Thomas was soon to add a new association with a greater Yorkist lord, namely Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, from whom he held his manor at Clevedon. It is not known when this connexion began, but by the late 1460s it had become a close one. The earl’s patronage appears to have been a factor in Wake’s marriage, in about 1464, to Margaret (d.1466), widow of Sir William Lucy* and John Stafford II*. Later, in July 1469, Wake’s son and heir, the issue of an earlier marriage, met his death in the earl’s cause in the battle of Edgcote, and he himself was one of those implicated in the murder of the earl’s enemy Earl Rivers.330 S.J. Payling, ‘Widows and the Wars of the Roses’, in The Fifteenth Cent. XIV ed. Clark, 108-12. His place in the earl’s retinue was also the context for the third and grandest of his marriages. At some date in the early 1470s he married Elizabeth, the elderly widow of Warwick’s uncle, the deranged George Neville, Lord Latimer, and one of the three daughters of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, by the Berkeley heiress. Latimer died in the last days of 1469, and it may be that her marriage to Wake took place during the Readeption and was the earl’s way of forwarding a favoured retainer.31 CP, vii. 480.

After the election of our MP’s younger son John to represent Huntingdonshire in the Parliament of 1478, no member of the family is known to have sat in the Commons until 1624. The Wakes were raised to the baronetage in 1621 and still survive in the male line.32 The Commons 1604-29, vi. 642-3; Complete Baronetage ed. Cokayne, 180-1.