cons. 21 Oct. 1705 bp. of LINCOLN; transl. 16 Jan. 1716 abp. of CANTERBURY
First sat 5 Nov. 1705; last sat 25 May 1732
b. 26 Jan. 1657, s. of Col. William Wake (1628-1705), roy. army officer and Amie, da. of Edward Cutler. educ. Blandford Free Sch.; Christ Church, Oxf., matric. 1673, BA 1676, MA 1679, ord. deacon 1681, priest 1682; BD and DD 1689. m. 1 Oct. 1688, Etheldreda (d.1731), 3rd da. and coh. of Sir William Hovell‡, of Hillington Hall, Norf.; 3s. d.v.p., 8da. (1 d.v.p.).1 suc. fa. 29 May 1705.2 d. 24 Jan. 1737; will 12 Feb.-18 Dec. 1732, pr. 1 Mar. 1737.3
R. chap. 1689-1706; dep. clerk of the closet 1689; ld. almoner Nov. 1715-Mar. 1716.
Lecturer, St Martin’s Carfax, Oxf. 1682, St Anne’s Soho, Westminster, 1688; chap., to Richard Graham‡, Visct. Preston [S], Paris 1682-5; preacher, Gray’s Inn 1688-96; canon, Christ Church Oxf. 1689-1702, Exeter 1703; rect. St James Piccadilly, Westminster 1695; dean, Exeter 1701-5.
Sec. Lambeth commn. on liturgy 1688; commr. building 50 new churches 1715-d.;4 lord justice 1719, 1720, 1723, 1725.
Gov. Charterhouse 1716.5
Also associated with: Shapwick, Dorset.
Likenesses: oil on canvas by T. Gibson, c.1715–20, Christ Church, Oxford; oil on canvas by T. Hill, c.1720–5, NPG 22.
Wake’s father was described by Walker as ‘one of the most noted Old Royalists in England’, having been made a prisoner 18 times and condemned to death twice. After his military service he became a clothier and then a farmer of the aulnage.6 Following his ordination, Wake himself quickly acquired a reputation as (as John Evelyn described him in March 1687) ‘that young, most learned, pious and excellent preacher’.7 In May 1687 Roger Morrice described him as an only son, whose father had an estate of £600-700 per annum.8 As the heir to a healthy patrimony, he was able to contract an advantageous marriage, with his wife’s portion reputed by a newsletter to be £10,000.9 Throughout his adult life he managed the family seat at Shapwick, Dorset, he and his father securing a private act in 1692 to make leases. The death of his father occurred in the same year as his elevation to the episcopacy (the income from Lincoln was probably £1,000-1,200 per annum) and this made him independently wealthy.10
Early career, 1682-9
Early in his career, Wake had come under the patronage of John Fell, bishop of Oxford, who secured both his first clerical appointment and a chaplaincy in Paris through his recommendation to Richard Graham‡, Viscount Preston [S]. Preston told Bishop Fell that no man could ‘give a better example or more content to all’ than Wake, and he recommended him to the favour of Thomas Herbert, 8th earl of Pembroke, as a ‘very good and worthy young man’.11 He returned to England in 1685, confirmed in his prejudices against Rome and ready to take part in the defence of Anglican doctrine against James II’s promotion of catholicism.12 It was as a result of his polemical works against catholicism that George Hickes described Wake in April 1687 as ‘the young David, which providence seemeth to have raised up to conquer the giants, which defy our Church’.13 Wake coordinated his efforts with Thomas Tenison, the future archbishop of Canterbury, and Thomas Ken, bishop of Bath and Wells, particularly at the time of the Magdalen College affair.14 Following the death in March 1688 of William Claggett, the benchers of Gray’s Inn chose Wake as their preacher, despite the fact that (as it was alleged) the lord chancellor, George Jeffreys, Baron Jeffreys, had hoped to recommend his own chaplain to them.15
Wake was employed as secretary to the discussions set on foot by William Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, for a revision of the liturgy in the summer of 1688 and involving the most prominent Anglican divines including Tenison, John Sharp, the future archbishop of York, and John Moore, the future bishop of Ely.16 Wake referred to this in November 1702, when dining with William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle, and Charles Trimnell, later bishop of Norwich, amongst others, he talked about Sancroft’s committee and its proposed alterations to the Book of Common Prayer.17 On 26 Sept. 1688, Wake met with Tenison, Dr William Sherlock, Francis Turner, bishop of Ely, and Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon.18 Following his marriage on 1 Oct., Wake spent the next month at Shapwick before returning to London.19
In 1688-9 Wake would become a key apologist for the new regime, and was marked out for preferment. Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, proved to be an early champion, suggesting that should John Tillotson, the future archbishop of Canterbury, become archbishop of York (which was vacant until mid-November), then Wake should succeed to his stall in St Paul’s.20 In earmarking Wake for preferment as a royal chaplain, Burnet described him as ‘the wonderfullest young man in the world, and the most popular divine now in England, and it is an amazing thing to see with what force he has writ against popery’. The appointment followed in due course.21 On 12 Jan. 1689 it was reported that ‘tomorrow the famous Mr Wake of St Anne’s is to preach before the prince at St James’s’.22 He also preached before the prince at St James’s on 30 Jan., ‘wherein he much extolled the pious undertaking of the prince’.23 On 21 May, three days before the royal assent to the Act of Toleration, but with the comprehension bill showing no signs of ever becoming law, Wake preached ‘an exhortation to mutual charity and union among Protestants’ at Hampton Court, not only an attempt to mould public opinion towards the king’s inclusive religious policy (and the legislation introduced to the Lords by Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham), but also to encourage Dissenters to join the Church.24 On 5 June he preached the afternoon fast sermon before the Commons at St Margaret’s, Westminster.25
Clerical career and Convocation, 1689-1705
By April 1691, he had become so prominent as a royal chaplain and, from 1689, a canon at Oxford, that it was rumoured that the vacancy caused by the refusal of Bishop Ken to take the oaths had been offered to Wake. However, Wake refused all positions vacated by the non-jurors, falling out with Archbishop Tillotson as a consequence and experiencing ‘an entire coldness’ from him, which saw him miss out on the deaneries of St Paul’s and Canterbury.26 In July 1692 Wake was talked of (inaccurately) as destined for St Asaph. With Tenison’s promotion to Lincoln, the living of St James’s, Westminster, became vacant (though Tenison was initially allowed to hold it in commendam for six months). In July 1692 Henry Compton, bishop of London, appointed Dr Peter Birch to the vacancy, but this was challenged by the queen who felt that the crown had the right of appointment, and nominated Wake. The case went all the way to the Lords, with the peers on 12 Jan. 1695 confirming a decree of king’s bench against the bishop of London and in favour of Wake.27 As rector of St James Piccadilly Wake was party to a petition to the Commons on 14 Dec. 1695 for a bill to raise money to pay the debts incurred under the original act for building the parish church. He seems to have taken an active part in securing the bill, which had been amended in committee in the Commons, reported and ordered to be engrossed (31 Dec.), but then stopped on the grounds that insufficient notice had been given to parishioners. On 2 Jan. 1696 Wake attended a vestry meeting to discuss the bill; on 7 Jan. the opponents of the bill came before the vestry, and a committee appointed to examine the costs of the building, which reported on the 29th. The vestry met again on 7 Feb., the objectors appeared to have been satisfied and the manager of the bill in the Commons, Charles Montagu, later baron Halifax, promised to expedite the bill. It received the royal assent on 7 March.28
In 1697 Wake’s talent for polemic was employed by Tenison, who had succeeded Tillotson as archbishop of Canterbury in 1694, to combat the new and more virulent forms of clerical and anti-erastian ideology emerging from the Tory highfliers, chief amongst them Francis Atterbury, the future bishop of Rochester. Atterbury opened the debate with A Letter to a Convocation-Man, written in collaboration with Sir Bartholomew Shower‡,, a defence of the lower clergy’s rights in Convocation that undermined the royal supremacy.29 Tenison persuaded Wake to respond with The Authority of Christian Princes over their Ecclesiastical Synods Asserted, a robust defence of the Anglican constitution and the subordination of Church to state, which went so far as to challenge the necessity for Convocation to sit, if the Church was in a settled state.30 Charles Hatton, the brother of Christopher Hatton, Viscount Hatton, commented on the book that Wake’s ‘character of the temper and discretion of many of the present clergy is suitable to their and his desserts. He would make a rare vice-president for an inquisition; and what books and authors his pen cannot answer, fire and faggot should’.31 In 1698 Wake published a further tract, an apology for the royal supremacy which suggested to some that ‘he had writ it for a bishopric’.32 Even his friend, Edmund Gibson†, the future bishop of London, regretted ‘the provocation given’ to the Tory clergy.33 Wake continued his controversy with Atterbury with his definitive history of the assemblies of the English Church, The State of the Church and Clergy of England, in their Councils, Synods, Convocations, Conventions, and other Publick Assemblies, published in 1703, and as dean of Exeter Wake would attend the lower House of Convocation in 1702-5, and helped to co-ordinate opposition to the Tory ‘highfliers’ and champion the position of the bishops.
On the death of Edward Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester on 27 Mar. 1699, Narcissus Luttrell‡ reported that Wake ‘stands fair for a bishopric’. By 5 Apr. Maurice Wheeler, Wake’s former tutor at Christ Church and now master of the cathedral school at Gloucester, had written to Wake that ‘the public newsletters’ in Gloucester had ‘already placed the mitre on your head’. Wheeler seemed to think that Wake would be made bishop of Oxford, and Wake agreed that this was likely when he wrote to Arthur Charlett, the master of University College, Oxford, on 31 Mar., expecting William Lloyd, bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, to be translated to Worcester and John Hough, bishop of Oxford, to be translated to Lichfield and Coventry. Wake, who claimed to have no evidence of his imminent translation to Oxford, wrote that ‘Oxford is the bishopric of all England that I should the least desire to fix upon’, and duly refused it. Tenison wrote to him on 9 Apr. that although ‘no hurt is done, no friendship shall be broken’ by his refusal, it did have implications as ‘this, I think, is a common rule, not to offer a greater thing, after refusal of a less of the same kind, if that be a good subsistence to the person. I speak my whole mind to yourself without any threatening or harsh words’. Although, in September 1701, Wake was mentioned as a possible candidate for the see of Hereford, nothing came of it. 34 A lesser promotion came later in 1701 when the deanery of Exeter, which had been earmarked for Wake as long ago as 1690, became vacant following the death of Richard Annesley, Baron Altham [I] on 16 Nov. 1701. Wake was duly nominated on 27 November. Even then, his desire to hold the deanery in commendam with his Christ Church canonry was thwarted by Queen Anne, who insisted he relinquish the latter in October 1702, despite a ‘remonstrance’ from Wake on the subject. He had done so by December.35
Appointment to Lincoln, 1705
Wake’s political sympathies ensured that in the context of 1705 he would be a candidate for the episcopate should the court wish to show favour towards the Whigs. There were, however, other Whig pretenders, possibly encouraged by Wake’s previous tergiversation and demurs over being raised to the episcopal bench. Indeed, on the death of James Gardiner, bishop of Lincoln, on 1 Mar. 1705, Tenison seemed to favour the elevation of the dean, Richard Willis†, the future bishop of Gloucester. Archbishop Sharp for the Tories backed his protégé Sir William Dawes, the future archbishop of York.36 On 14 Mar. 1705 Tenison wrote to Wake that
your friends hope that you will let them know by me with plainness and without loss of time, whether you would accept of the bishopric of Lincoln with the living [St James’s] in commendam for one year if they can procure it. For they will, this day, make some effort relating to that matter. They will not propose the bishopric without commendam for that time. I am in pain till I hear from you, because I [am] pressed by them. I hope you will not say nolo ep[iscopari].
On 29 Mar. Tenison wrote again to tell Wake that ‘I went over on Sunday [25 Mar.] and was with the good queen. I found nothing declared, but had expectation given that something would be said to me in few days. I have heard nothing since’.37 Others seemed more sanguine than the archbishop, Wheeler writing on 26 Mar. that ‘the public news today reports your designation for the see of Lincoln’, and it had been confirmed by Edward Fowler, bishop of Gloucester, ‘who appears very joyful at the certainty (as he seems assured) of your being assumed into the same sacred order’.38 The delay in the appointment seemed to have been caused by Wake’s desire to retain the living at St James’s, although there may have been an element of political calculation, as a delay would allow Wake to use his influence with the Exeter clergy to support the government’s attempt to unseat Sir Edward Seymour‡ at the parliamentary election at Exeter at the end of May. On 11 Apr. 1705 Lancelot Blackburne†, the future archbishop of York, who, as the current subdean of Exeter, was in line to succeed Wake as dean, told Wake that ‘there are thoughts of Dr [William] Cave instead of you, unless they use it as a feint to bring you not to insist on a two years commendam of St James’s.’ Blackburne thought that Wake was justified in wanting the commendam ‘both from the hardship put on you in your being obliged to part with the canonry of Christ Church, and from your great expenses on the deanery’. Blackburne’s comment on 10 May that Jonathan Trelawny, bishop of Exeter, had ‘a notion that the Sunderland interest, struggling for a present possession to my cousin Trimnell, gives the great stop to your being declared’, probably refers to Trimnell’s ambitions to be rector of St James’s, rather than to the bishopric.39
Wake was offered, and accepted, the bishopric in July 1705, but there was further delay before it was confirmed: the lord treasurer, Sidney Godolphin, Baron (later earl of) Godolphin, informed Tenison on 29 July that ‘I was very sorry to hear yesterday from Lord Halifax that Dr Wake had not then any notice of his being made bishop of Lincoln, though the queen had signed the warrant to the congé d’élire this day fortnight’.40 Wake was duly elected on 4 September. On 22 Sept. both Simon Patrick, bishop of Ely, and Bishop Lloyd wrote to Wake in answer to some queries which show Wake preoccupied with the revenues of his see and how to obtain them without incurring administrative charges.41 On 27 Sept. Wake wrote back to Bishop Lloyd that
I have some hopes that my lord treasurer will procure me the Michaelmas half year of the bishopric, which made me desirous to known how I must proceed to secure myself of a right to it. A privy seal is a very chargeable way, after the excessive fees... which I shall otherwise pay and I now hope that it may be done without me. The Lady Day rents will I conceive, be given to the last bishop’s children. His Lordship dying within a month of that time, I cannot except against such a favour, tho’ God be praised, as he managed matters, his family is far from being in want of it.’42
Wake was consecrated on 21 Oct. 1705 at Lambeth with John Williams, bishop of Chichester, and Bishops Compton, Burnet and Moore attending on the archbishop. After dinner he went with Bishop Burnet to Kensington to pay homage to the queen, noting that Godolphin ‘spoke kindly to me concerning the restitution of my temporalities, which I afterwards discovered to be owing to the kind interposition’ of Halifax and John Somers, Baron Somers, ‘to whom his Lordship promised to procure me the rents of the bishopric from the death of the late bishop.’ However, on the 23rd Wake recorded that Godolphin ‘(or at least his officers) were so far from granting me the temporalities from the death of the late bishop, that they broke in upon the last half-year, and ordered them to be dated from 1 May’. In response Wake wrote to Halifax and Somers, who ‘both promised me their good offices to my lord treasurer, being very confident that this change did not proceed from him’. On the 25th he informed Tenison of his predicament. On the 28th Godolphin ‘ordered the restitution of my temporalities, dated from Lady Day’, thereby overriding the actions of William Lowndes‡, secretary to the treasury, who had altered the date of the restitution to May, having ‘another friend of a different kind to gratify’. ‘That he succeeded not I chiefly owe to my Lord Somers; next to my Lord Halifax and the Bishop of Worcester [Lloyd].’ Even then he met delay, being told that the secretary of state, Sir Charles Hedges‡, would not countersign the queen’s warrant for his temporalities without a further order from the lord treasurer. To Wake the ‘very indifferent usage in that office’ could only be explained by ‘no other reason than this, that I was not a man to their mind’.43 A writ of summons was issued on 31 Oct. and on 5 Nov. 1705 Wake took his seat in the House before processing to Westminster Abbey to preach a ‘hearty sermon against the teachers (of the Roman Church) in sheeps’ clothing, and their dissimulation and treachery’.44 His sermon was well received by William Cowper, Baron Cowper, who said that Wake ‘preached honestly and fervently, to convince of this great truth, that we ought to make our security as great as we can against ’em, not lessen it with any dependence on their oaths, &c. This meant to maintain the Protestant Succession, whatever fair promises the pretended K.J. should make, &c’.45 Wake was thanked by the House the following day.
Bishop of Lincoln, 1705-7
In his first parliamentary session, Wake was present on 67 days, 71 per cent of the total number of sitting days, and was named to 35 committees. On 12 Nov. 1705 he recorded in his diary ‘a long session’ at the Lords, including ‘a debate about addressing to the queen upon the Scots affairs’, after which he got home between four and five in the evening. Three days later he noted ‘the great debate’ over ‘an address to the queen to invite over the presumptive heir of the crown to come and reside here’, which was ‘argued till about 5 a clock and then carried in the negative.’ He took the oaths and the Test in King’s Bench on 19 November.46 If he was still in the House on 20 Nov., he would have been one of the bishops voting against the lord mayor of London being named a lord justice and in favour of the lord treasurer being named one in the regency bill.47 On 23 Nov. he attended both Convocation and the Lords. He recorded on 30 Nov. ‘we sat very late at the House upon the bill for securing the Protestant Succession, which was gone through the next day.’48
At the same time Wake was preoccupied with the partisan rivalries in Convocation. On 1 Dec. he was named to a Convocation committee on the differences between the houses of the clergy and the bishops over the proposed address to the queen on ‘the Church in danger’.49 On 3 Dec., before he went to the Lords, he hosted a meeting at which Dean Willis of Lincoln, White Kennett† (archdeacon of Huntingdon and later bishop of Peterborough) and Dr Gibson (at that point chaplain to Tenison and rector of Lambeth) ‘debated about a protestation to be presented to the upper house of Convocation against the irregular proceedings of the majority in the lower’. The following day, after a short visit to the Lords, Wake discoursed with Bishop Williams and Dr Gee at Bishop Hough’s on ‘what was fit to be done to prevent the increase of popery.’ Wake met Gibson on 5 Dec., to prepare ‘some things for the debate in the House of Lords tomorrow’, and then went to see Somers and Halifax, although he found neither of them. Having waited again on Somers on the morning of the 6th, he attended the Lords from noon to 8 o’clock for the ‘Church in danger’ debate in committee of the whole House, noting that ‘a resolution [was] come to against such as shall insinuate the Church of England to be in danger under her Majesty’s administration. The conclusion of it too harsh; I would have got it qualified, but could not.’ His name appeared on the division list among those voting that the Church was not in danger in the queen’s administration.50 On the following day he recorded ‘I tarried not long at the Parliament’; after dinner that day a committee of bishops met at Wake’s to consider the last paper of the lower house of Convocation, and sat till eight. On 15 Dec. the bishops agreed on a paper of ‘Observations’ in response to the lower house’s paper, with Bishop Trelawny and George Hooper, bishop of Bath and Wells, dissenting. Wake noted how ‘12 of the lower house brought up a protestation against several irregular proceedings against the majority there’, and were formally thanked in a motion made by Burnet ‘for their duty and care to preserve the ancient constitution of the Convocation of this province, to which we agreed’, Bishops Trelawny and Hooper again dissenting. Wake did not attend the Lords on 19 Dec. having ‘a kind of aguish distemper’.51
On 8 Jan. 1706 Wake attended the Lords, where the ‘the cause of St Bride’s parish was heard which kept us till after 4 o’clock,’ a reference to Wilson et al v. Towneley. From thence he went to baptize a child of Scroop Egerton, 4th earl (later duke) of Bridgwater. The following day Wake attended the appeal brought ‘against the bishop of Ely’ (actually Tooke v. Dolben et al.), before returning home at about four o’clock in the afternoon. Wake recorded a visit from Mr Clavering on 16 Jan. to thank him for attending upon the cause of Clavering v. Clavering, where the Lords affirmed the judgment given below in Chancery. Wake attended the House late on 28 Jan. over the cause of Hamilton v. Mohun.52 The following day he recorded that the regency bill had been put off until the 31st, when he duly noted that the Lords ‘sat late’ and repealed the clauses in the bill relating to the Privy Council, and the exclusion of all officers out of the House of Commons. On 4 Feb., showing how informal business might often be transacted at the House, Wake recorded that ‘Mr Park was with me about the composition to be made by the enclosers of the common within his parish’, but since John Hervey, Baron Hervey, was not at the House he could not do anything in relation to the case. On 7 Feb. Wake went to the house of Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, to meet Somers and others ‘about the business of the Convocation’, and the following morning he met with Trimnell to draw up a memorial relating to what was agreed the previous evening, before attending the Lords. He met several other bishops at Archbishop Tenison’s lodgings at the Cockpit on 10 Feb., where they discussed the Bishop of Llandaff’s bill, perhaps because William Beau, bishop of Llandaff, had died that day. Although there was no reference made in the Journal, on 11 Feb. Wake recorded that ‘Dr Woodroffe’s cause was put off till Wednesday’, when there was a hearing of Marbury et al v. Tarbock. He then noted that the reasons to be offered at a conference with the Commons on the place clause to the regency bill were read to the House by Charles Seymour, 6th duke of Somerset: ‘they were unanswerable’. He then added ‘a conference had, at which I was present,’ presumably as an observer as he was not named as a manager. From the House he went with the Burnet ‘to dine with the Lords, bishops, etc. at Serjeants’ Inn with Justice [Robert], Dormer‡’, a celebration of his elevation to the bench as a judge of common pleas. On 13 Feb. he baptized the daughter of Henry Grey, 12th earl (later duke) of Kent, with the queen and the duchess of Marlborough in attendance as godmothers. Five days later Wake did not ‘tarry long at the Lords’, though he did, along with Tenison, ‘try whether we could not get some augmentation made to the vicarage’ in the bill to enable John Williams, an infant, to renew a lease on the rectory of Buckden, which had been brought up to the Lords that day. On the following day he had further discussion on the bill with Williams and Humphrey Humphreys, bishop of Hereford. He noted for 23 Feb. that the bill for William King, archbishop of Dublin, ‘came on’ and that the third reading was adjourned until the 25th. On 27 Feb. Wake recorded giving directions for his house at Buckden and arranging for carriage of goods from London thence. He also went to see the late bishop’s house in Westminster, which he was thinking about buying. The following day he noted that ‘the business of popery and Carolina came on, and was adjourned, the one to Friday [1 Mar.], the other to Saturday [2 Mar.]. I sat out a cause and came home after four a clock’. The cause was probably Kildare v. Shaen.53
On 1 Mar. 1706 Wake attended the prorogation of Convocation, which was met with some defiance by the lower house. He then journeyed to Parliament in Bishop Moore’s coach, where ‘we gave in our returns of papists; but a cause [Seagrave v. Eustace] coming in, and lasting long, nothing more was done that day’. That day Dr Benjamin Woodroffe was with Wake three times, pursuing the bishopric of Llandaff; in the evening Wake went with him to the home of another of his backers, Bishop Lloyd. On 2 Mar. Wake ‘was sent for by my Lord Sunderland to the House’, with the coach of John Evans, bishop of Bangor, being sent to collect him. He ‘found the Lords warm in their debates about the Carolina business’, which concluded with a resolution to hear counsel for John Granville, Baron Granville, in his own and the proprietors’ behalf the following Wednesday (6 Mar.); ‘it is’, he wrote, ‘a very foul business’. On 4 Mar. Wake recorded attending the House at about 1 o’clock, when the bill against popery was read; about an hour later news came that the Commons had cast out the bill in their House by a great majority on its third reading. Five days later Wake reported ‘a long session, till after 6, chiefly about the business of Carolina’.54 Wake was ‘early at the House’ on 11 Mar. for the committee on the bill to vest in the bishop of Lincoln the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the parish of Buckden. The amendment envisaged by Wake at the end of February (to augment the vicarage) appears to have been made in committee on 11 Mar., when Wake was present to signify Tenison’s consent.55 Somers reported from the committee on that day and Wake noted that the bill ‘passed the Lords without any contradiction: in the other House they divided upon it; we carried it by a great majority’: the amendment was carried by 44-30.56 Because of this it was unlikely that he was present in the chamber to be named as a manager of two conferences that day on Sir Rowland Gwynne’s‡ Letter to Thomas Grey, 2nd earl of Stamford, although he was probably present later in the day as he recorded that ‘the case of bankrupts was heard’, a reference to the proceedings in the committee of the whole House on the bill against frauds committed by bankrupts, and that he returned late to dinner. Wake noted the royal assent to the Buckden bill on 19 March. On 12 Mar. Wake reported attending the House where the address upon the business of Carolina was reported by Sunderland and carried 28-12 and ‘about 3 o’clock we were with the address upon Sir R. G.’s letter to the queen’, as ordered the previous day.57
Wake may have left London after the prorogation on 19 Mar. 1706 for on 8 Apr. Charles Bruce, the future Baron Bruce of Whorlton (and 3rd earl of Ailesbury), referred to the imminence of Wake’s ‘intended time’ of coming to town. He was in London on 19 Apr., and expected to dine with Tenison on one of the next two days.58 He was enthroned in person in Lincoln on 18 May, and two days later he began his primary visitation, which continued until 30 June and again from 27 Aug. to 6 September.59 In between Wake was in London in the period 9-26 August. He returned to London on 7 Sept., and on 12 Sept., after meeting with Tenison, Wake waited on Godolphin and then the queen, thanking her for his commendam of St James’s and, apropos his successor there, asking her ‘for a learned, prudent, religious man; and one well-affected to the administration, as well as to her majesty’s person (since some thought fit to separate those) for that our parish would not easily agree with a high-flyer.’ On the 16th he attended a debate about Queen Anne’s Bounty, ‘but the attorney-general [Sir Edward Northey‡] not coming, little was done. Lord Sunderland and Lord Halifax dined there’. Wake attended the prorogation of 17 Sept., where he discussed with Cowper the charges made under the great seal for presentations to poor livings.60
On 1 June 1706 Somers wrote to Wake, ‘you may easily apprehend how well your paper was approved when your Lordship considers the Gazette without my making any observation’, a reference to the address from the bishop, dean and chapter, and clergy of Lincoln congratulating the queen on the victory of John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, which was presented on 28 May and printed in the London Gazette. Trimnell wrote on 15 June that the reason the address ‘was not verbatim in the Gazette’ was because ‘it happened to be presented together with that from the City [of London], the wording of which was not liked well enough to be put in there, which occasioned the suppression of yours’. Somers wrote to Wake on 2 July about another address arising out of his visitation, that ‘it is thought that to defer what you have so successfully brought to pass, will be to lose the grace of it, and therefore the sooner it is presented the more acceptable it will be’, and assured him that ‘I find all your Lordship has done is as well accepted as you could imagine.’ On 23 July Kennett wrote that the Lincoln address presented in May ‘had the honour to be a copy and a standard to most other dioceses’: elsewhere, including Hereford, several of the bishops had experienced greater opposition. 61
During the autumn, Wake was consulted on an enclosure scheme. On 26 Oct. 1706 he wrote
to satisfy everybody, I think the right method would be to get a commission from my Lord Bishop of Oxford to some of the neighbouring clergy to take a view of the exchange proposed; and upon their report to obtain his Lordship’s confirmation of it. With this I should readily join my consent. And both those being had, what remains to be done will go more easily on. But I should think the easiest and best way of settling all would be by an act of Parliament, if Sir Edmund Denton‡ would be at the charge of one.62
Wake attended the prorogations of 22 Oct. and 21 Nov. 1706, and on 23 Nov., shortly before the commencement of the new parliamentary session, Wheeler wrote about alterations to Wake’s residence in Dean’s Yard, Westminster, congratulating him on having ‘seen an end of the trouble of fitting up your new habitation, which (being your own) affords this satisfaction, that tis done once for all; and being so conveniently situated too in respect to the Church, Parliament-house, and (I think) the best neighbourhood also, will ever be preferable to a change’.63
Wake was present when the 1706-7 session commenced on 3 December and attended on 28 days of the session, 33 per cent of the total, and was named to seven committees. On 4 Dec. he noted that ‘our Address agreed to, [the] Lord Chamberlain [Kent], sent to the queen, who will receive it from the House tomorrow,’ whereupon he duly attended the queen the following day. On 6 Dec. it was the turn of Convocation, with Wake recording that he went to the Jerusalem Chamber, where, ‘our address being agreed, at the desire of the Board (and particularly the Bishop of Norwich [Moore] who presided) I copied it fair.’ He was dubious when the lower house agreed to it without any amendment: ‘what is the meaning of this procedure?’ he worried. On 9 Dec. when Wake joined those attending the queen with the address from Convocation, he noted the presence of the deans of Christ Church (Dr Henry Aldrich), and Carlisle (Atterbury): ‘God forgive either their past perverseness, or their present hypocrisy.’ On 26 Dec. Wake went with Bishop Moore to the Lords (which was not sitting) and thence to Lambeth to dine with Archbishop Tenison. On 30 Dec. Wake noted that ‘we sat long while the new Lords were received into the House’.64
On 8 Jan. 1707 Wake dined at Judge Dormer’s with Burnet and William Talbot, bishop of Oxford. Six days later he noted that ‘the affair the Lord Nottingham summoned the House for was to have the treaty of Union laid before it. After several debates the House adjourned and came to no resolution.’ He noted for 15 Jan. ‘I dined and went to the House. The cause being put off no business done’, a reference to the cause Lewes v. Fielding. On 17 Jan. he heard the cause of Randolph v. Brockman and five days later Wake recorded being at the House to hear ‘Mr Fielding’s cause’.65 Tenison informed Somers on 23 Jan. that ‘we met, three or four of us, this morning’, at Bishop Moore’s ‘and drew up a rough draft of an act of security which must needs be imperfect, we being helped only by the Flying Post and other unauthentic papers from Edinburgh, not being able... to procure a true copy of the act’ (the Scottish act for the security of the Presbyterian church).66 Wake’s diary confirms that he was at this meeting, where, he wrote, ‘something was done towards the drawing up of an act of security for the Church of England against Tuesday next, when the Scotch Act for Union will be proposed by the queen’. After dinner, Wake went to the Lords, where he ‘got Mr Lee of Devonshire’s petition presented to the Lords and an order for a bill to renew [leases] with the dean and chapter of Exeter.’ On 27 Jan. he met at Lambeth (with Moore, Gibson and Willis) to settle the bill for the security of the Church. Wake recorded that he was present the following day when the queen passed some bills and communicated the Scots Union to Parliament, whereupon he went to dinner and was sent for back again, presumably because his presence was required when leave was moved for the bill securing the Church. On 29 Jan. Wake attended the House ‘and tarried till the call was over’, then at 5 o’clock Bishop Moore summoned him to Sunderland’s house, where the bill for the security of the English Church was finalized in the presence of Moore, Godolphin, Halifax, Marlborough, Edward Russell, earl of Orford, Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, and Thomas Wharton, earl of Wharton.67 The bill was duly introduced on 31 Jan. and on 3 Feb. Wake recorded that after ‘long and needless debates’, the bill passed its committee stage, a reference to the proceedings in committee when an attempt was made to make certain acts perpetual. The bill received the royal assent on 13 Feb. 1707.
On 1 Feb. 1707 Wake attended the Lords noting that ‘Mr Ward’s case was heard and carried for him’, the affirmation of the decree in Clerke v. Ward. Ward, a clergyman, thanked Wake in person on the 4th. Later that day in the Lords Wake recorded that he got the judges’ report read in Mr Lee’s case, ‘but it not being full was again referred back to them’. On 5 Feb. he added that he got the judges’ additional report in Mr Lee’s case read, and a bill ordered to be brought in upon it (the Journal states that leave was given for a bill on 4 Feb., and it was introduced on the 7th). Wake attended the House for the last time that session on 7 February. He was indisposed for some considerable time, as after the 12th his diary was silent until 6 Mar. and on 1 Mar. he had been reported as still dangerously ill.68 On the 13th he signed a proxy in favour of Bishop Moore. In late March Wake was at Buckden, although, as Wheeler observed, even there ‘the bishop of such a diocese’ must not expect to enjoy a quiet retirement from business.69 In his absence from the House, a private bill for encouraging the rebuilding of Humberstone parish church in Lincolnshire and settling a rent-charge of greater value on the bishop in lieu of the rectory of Humberstone, received the royal assent.70 He did not attend the brief ten-day session later in April 1707. Wake was back in London in May, for on the 23rd, he did the rounds of Whig grandees, visiting Halifax for a long discussion on the state of the Church, Somers (who was away from home) and Sunderland, who was too unwell for company.71
Whig ministry, 1708-10
Wake was not present when the 1707-8 session began on 23 Oct. 1707. He was in the capital on 15 Nov., when he waited on the queen, ‘who spake to me in a very affectionate manner about the prince [Prince George, duke of Cumberland], and to be tender in the business of the fleet.’ Two days later Wake went to the Lords, took the oaths and ‘spoke with’ Archbishop Tenison, Sunderland and others. Overall he attended 43 days of the session, 47 per cent of the total, and was named to 11 committees. After dinner on his first day Archbishop Sharp paid him a visit, whereupon Wake ‘communicated to him what had passed between the queen and me, and what were my resolutions with relation to the next Wednesday’s [19th] business in the House,’ which was the debate on the state of the fleet. On the 19th he attended, recording that the debate lasted until four: ‘I came home very cold.’ Two days later he noted that ‘the affair of the eldest sons of the Scots Lords came; and it was agreed, that the heirs apparent of the 16 who should sit from time to time in the British Parliament, should have the same privileges, as those of our English peers were wont to have’.72 On 29 Nov. Nicolson wrote that he was glad of Wake ‘being in so good health as not to dread a return to Westminster and the services of Parliament.’73 Not that Wake enjoyed perfect health; on 10 Dec. he recorded that ‘it being a fine day I went to the House of Lords, but made little stay, yet enough to increase my cold.’ Two days later he went to the House after dinner, for the debate about the state of the Fleet, and came back late. He repeated his journey after dinner on the 15th, where the House sat on the business of Spain till past four o’clock. He attended the general meeting of the trustees for Queen Anne’s Bounty held on 17 Dec., and afterwards took Bishop Hough to the Lords. The following day he noted that he met the queen at the Lords and talked to the archbishop about several matters. On 19 Dec. he was visited by Dr Josiah Woodward, ‘about prosecuting these late abominable books’, whereupon he went to the Lords ‘and spoke to the Archbishop about them’. On 26 Dec. Wake was present at the Boxing Day dinner at Lambeth.74
On 13 Jan. 1708 Wake recorded that the business of Charles Mordaunt, 3rd earl of Peterborough ‘came on’, and the House sat until nearly seven. On the 27th Wake remarked that the Lords were still reading the papers relating to Peterborough and the war in Spain.75 Ordered by the House on 20 Dec. to preach on 30 Jan., Wake’s sermon impressed Nicolson with its ‘excellent’ arguments ‘against drawing the sword in defence of religion’. The House thanked Wake on the 31st. If he was still in attendance at the time of the division on 5 Feb. 1708, Wake probably voted against retaining the Scottish Privy Council until October. Wake took Bishop Nicolson with him on 6 Feb. to Kensington for the queen’s birthday, noting that Nicolson ‘had the honour of being very hardly treated in his cause before the court of common pleas this morning; but we hope will find some remedy against the violence of some person’s procedure against him’. On 11 Feb. Wake and Bishop Hough waited on Wriothesley Russell, 2nd duke of Bedford, but in such ‘a large, cold room without fire’, that his ‘gout is struck in and I have almost totally lost my voice already’. He then went to the committee for Queen Anne’s Bounty, after which he took Bishop Williams and John Tyler, bishop of Llandaff to the Lords, ‘but soon came home to dinner’. 76
Wake was supportive of Nicolson in his conflict with his dean, Francis Atterbury, and other members of the chapter. To resolve the dispute a bill for avoiding doubts and questions touching the statutes of cathedral and collegiate churches was introduced to the Lords on 3 Feb. 1708. On the 14th, Nicolson ‘secured’ Wake for the committee on the bill that day, but it was subsequently adjourned.77 On 18 Feb. Wake was presented with Nicolson’s printed case in favour of the bill and lent him his coach to facilitate the delivery of more of them. He also attended the committee of the whole on the 19th on the bill and was on hand on the 24th when the bill received its third reading. On 1 Mar. Nicolson visited Wake and talked to him about lobbying Members of the Commons over his bill; on the following day he sent Dr Gee to see Wake about the bill.78 Meanwhile on 2 Mar. Nicolson recorded that he was ‘correcting the Bishop of Lincoln’s Letter’, which was dispersed on the 3rd and may be a reference to A Letter to a Member of the H[ouse] of Commons in Answer to the Reasons against the Church bill.79 On 15 Mar. Wake attended the session for the last time. He left London on the 17th, and by 30 Mar. he was at Shapwick.80
Following the dissolution of Parliament on 15 Apr. 1708, Wake returned to London on 30 April. On 7 May he met Tenison, Bishops Moore and Trimnell, and Deans Willis and Kennett (recently made dean of Peterborough) at the Cockpit to agree ‘several matters’ relating to Convocation.81 In mid-May 1708 he went to Buckden.82 Wake became involved in several elections in his diocese. As arranged with Bedford the previous autumn, Wake and Archdeacon Thomas Frank applied discreet ‘pressure’ to the clerical vote, in favour of Lord Edward Russell‡ and Sir William Gostwick‡, who were returned for Bedfordshire on 19 May 1708.83 In about May 1708 Wake was marked as a Whig on a printed list of the first Parliament of Great Britain.
On 30 Aug. 1708 Tenison told Wake that ‘we often wish you here’ and hoped that the bishop would use the ecclesiastical courts to prosecute John Barnard, a Catholic convert of the reign of James II, who had subsequently been reconciled to the Church of England, and was now a Lincolnshire vicar who was threatening to publicly justify the Latin mass and transubstantiation. If he was not prosecuted, Tenison warned, ‘the clamour of our lukewarmness in relation to popery which is now begun, will grow into an insupportable outcry’. By September, Wake had instigated proceedings, but was warned by Tenison that the ‘spirit of the party... appears as hot as ever; and if we had not in view a good Parliament, they would create trouble enough’. On 17 Sept. Tenison sought Wake’s opinion on Atterbury’s latest pamphlet and the likelihood that George Smalridge, later bishop of Bristol, would be elected prolocutor.84 The approaching Convocation was much in Wake’s thoughts in November. Wake attended a Junto meeting at Sunderland’s house on 9 Nov., moving ‘that the Convocation might by virtue of the queen’s letter be prorogued, and no prolocutor chosen at all’, while on the 11th he visited Bishop Trimnell, where, with Townshend and Bishop Moore, ‘we had a long talk about the approaching Convocation and many things relating to it.’ On 13 Nov. at the Lords he met William Dawes, the new (Tory) bishop of Chester, ‘whom I had not seen before’. On the 14th he had further discussions about Convocation with Bishops Evans and Hough, and similarly, four days later, with Dr Gibson and Bishop Tyler in his own house, and then with Bishops Trimnell and Moore in the Lords.85 On 19 Nov. Convocation assembled and, following Wake’s earlier proposal, it was immediately prorogued to the following spring and never sat to do business.86
On 16 Nov. 1708 Wake attended the House for the first day of the new Parliament. He was present on 46 days, 49 per cent of the total, and was named to 17 committees. On 28 Nov. the mayor of Boston wrote to him with a draft bill, and on 30 Nov. he had a visitor about the ‘bill for Boston, which I have agreed to, a clause being added to secure the ecclesiastical jurisdiction’, a reference to the bill for the repair of Boston Church which failed in the Commons. On 1 Dec. ‘Mr Long came to me about a cause he has now depending in the exchequer, and which he supposes will come before the House of Lords’. Wake travelled on 28 Dec. to Lambeth for the traditional dinner with Archbishop Tenison; 13 were in attendance, where ‘many things of moment were proposed and debated before dinner’.87
On 21 Jan. 1709 Wake voted against the motion that a Scots peer with a British title had the right to vote in the election of representative peers. As he recorded, in a ‘long session’, this was ‘agreeably to the Scots’ acts [the Act of Union] which say that they shall be chosen by the peers whom they represent: which we are assured were put in purposely to exclude all others’. The main argument used for allowing British peers vote for the representative peers, he wrote, ‘was that this was allowed by the last winter’s Act to such as were peers of Scotland and England’, which was answered that this was done to indulge Marlborough (as Baron Eyemouth in the Scots peerage) and John Campbell, duke of Agyll (as earl of Greenwich in the English peerage). Nevertheless, Wake thought that this had been ‘plainly against the Scots act: and done only in consideration of the small number of such Lords (but five in all) and with a known intention not to extend it to any who should afterwards be made a peer of Great Britain.’ On 26 Jan., his birthday, Wake ‘was sent from table to the House: and tho’ very unwilling, and out of order with my left shoulder and arm I went thither. The Scots business came on, I tarried till near six; when the point of minors was settled. The House went on to new points, but I durst not stay any longer.’ The following day, ‘the weather still being very sharp’, Wake ‘durst not venture to the Parliament House.’ On 28 Jan. Wake wrote that ‘the Scots business coming on I was at the House; but came away before the debates ended’. On 4 Feb. Wake went to the House, and ‘sat out Sir John Wolstenholme’s‡ cause, which went unanimously for him’, a reference to the cause of Carteret v. Chapman, Chapman being a lessee of Wolstenholme’s. Two weeks later Wake attended the House, where the Lords ‘tarried late on a cause, and yet did not end it,’ a reference to Lady Falkland and Lady Russell v. Lytton. On 23 Feb. Wake heard the 12 judges ‘upon a plea of quare impedit: seven were of one opinion, four of another: and one of both sides’. This referred to the cause of Shireburne v. Hitch, the judgment on which was upheld, but it was then ordered that the judges consider the laws of advowsons and prepare heads for a bill for the making it easier to plead in actions brought for recovering of presentations to livings. On 25 Feb. Wake attended Convocation for a further prorogation.88
Wake was an investor in the Company of Mine Adventurers and in 1708 he owned sufficient shares to be eligible for election to the general court.89 This led him to engage in the Company’s affairs to the extent that he was involved in discussions about how to reform it. On 1 Feb. 1709 he recorded a visit from Samuel Trotman‡, with whom he had a long discussion about ‘the Mine affair’. On 8 Feb. he noted that John Chamberlayne (also secretary of Queen Anne’s Bounty) had sent him ‘some papers containing what had been done with relation to the payment of the Mine debts’, to which Wake replied and desired that Trotman be invited to their next meeting. On 10 Feb. Wake recorded that Trotman had written to him ‘about the Mine’, whereupon Wake sent Trotman’s servant with a letter to the governor of the Company, Thomas Osborne, duke of Leeds, ‘where the meeting of both parties was agreed to be this afternoon’. On 14 Feb. Wake wrote again about a meeting of the Mine Adventurers the next day. On 17 Feb. Wake recorded that he had subscribed a letter about the Mine affair, and sent it to Trotman to do likewise. On 28 Feb. Wake recorded that he had drawn up ‘some minutes for the Mine adventurers’, which Chamberlayne had collected, and that he had had a discussion with William Digby‡, 5th Baron Digby [I], ‘about the present state of our Mine Affairs’.90 No legislation was introduced in the 1708-9 session.
On 1 Mar. 1709 Wake was visited by Mr Fitch and Dr John Waugh†, the future bishop of Carlisle, about Mr Hayden’s bill, ‘which I promised to farther all I could’. On 2 Mar. Wake attended the committee on the bill for vesting the Devon estate of Gideon Haydon in trustees. After attending at court on 8 Mar. 1709, Wake’s visitors after dinner included the dean of Windsor, Dr Thomas Manningham, soon to become bishop of Chichester, with whom he talked about settling the rectory of Hasely on the deanery of Windsor, and Mr Stafford, who discussed a bill ‘he has now lying before the Lords’: Wake promised ‘to give him all the help I can in it.’ Before Wake attended the House on 11 Mar. he was again visited by Manningham, and drew up a bill for settling Hasely on the deanery of Windsor, which was introduced on 16 March, and passed that session. At the House Wake attended the committee on the bill to enable Anthony Stafford to sell or mortgage some part of his lands in Derbyshire and Cheshire, for the payment of his own and his father’s debts.
Significantly, on 14 Mar. 1709 Wake recorded that when at the House he spoke to the archbishop and bishops about the general naturalization bill.91 More conservative in his Anglicanism than many of his Whig colleagues, Wake joined mainly Tory bishops the following day in the division on an amendment to the bill proposed by Nicolson and Dawes that those eligible for naturalization be required to take the Anglican sacrament rather than merely join ‘some Protestant Reformed congregation’.92 His conduct during the passage of the bill gave the Tory clergy in his diocese pause for thought: it ‘has occasioned the frequent mention of the name of the bishop of Lincoln with much respect here among those that would be thought the best friends of the Church’. Wake was reported from private letters ‘for the public news never said a word of it’, to have ‘made a speech for a limitation to the bill, requiring all so naturalized to receive the sacrament in the communion of the Church’. As a result, Wake was ‘publicly extolled here in the news-houses, and in my hearing, as a true bishop of the Church, but at the same time to the disparagement of others on the same bench, who seemed so indifferent’.93 Wake’s own account was rather laconic: ‘we had a long session about the naturalization bill’, although he did record later in the day a visit from ‘Mr Morris the joiner, who is half crazed at the passing of the naturalization bill.’ He also mentioned a visit from Lady Cooke about her bill for payment of the debts of Sir John Bolles‡, which was reported on the 17th, she having been a petitioner for the bill.94
On 25 Mar. 1709 in committee of the whole House debating the bill for the improvement of the Union, Wake voted with Cowper, Godolphin, and Bishop Burnet, but against Somers, Sunderland and Bishop Trimnell to postpone consideration of the validity of Scottish marriage settlements under the new treason law to the following day, since the Scots Lords wanted further time to consider it. On 28 Mar. he recorded that the ‘treason bill’ had passed the House, ‘where I had a good deal of discourse with the archbishop’.95 On 7 Apr. Wake attended his last sitting that session. On 14 Apr. he left London for Buckden and in May he conducted a visitation of Brasenose College, of which he was visitor as bishop of Lincoln. Wake was at Buckden on 12 May, but at the end of the month he commenced a diocesan visitation, which continued with a few breaks until 9 September.96 Wake’s usefulness to Tenison was underlined on 24 Sept. when Kennett wrote that the archbishop ‘seemed to wish for your Lordship’s return to consult about several affairs... Here is no one bishop in town.’97 Wake returned to London on 5 Oct. and read prayers and assisted at the prorogation the day after his arrival.98 Within a week, Wake’s wife was ‘dangerously ill’ following childbirth and he was unavailable for public business.99
The 1709-10 Session and the Trial of Sacheverell
The duchess of Marlborough thought Wake ‘an honest bishop’ to preach on Thanksgiving Day [22 Nov.] and Tenison also told him that if a bishop was required to preach on that day before the Lords, ‘you, I’m sure, will be agreeable to all’.100 Wake did not attend the consecration of Bishop Manningham on 13 Nov. 1709, endorsing a letter ‘Dr Manningham excuses his not inviting me to his consecration.’ He was present in the Lords when the session began on 15 November. He attended on 60 days, 63 per cent of the total and was named to 23 committees. On 17 Nov. Wake was present when the address was presented to the queen. On 18 Nov. William Farrer‡ waited on Wake ‘on behalf of Mr Stonestreet’, and they discussed the project of an act for toleration in Scotland, and what ‘the Scots committee had done there against episcopal meetings’. In the early months of 1710 Wake was the recipient of much information on attitudes towards episcopalianism in Scotland and the case of James Greenshields, and was in correspondence with Richard Dongworth, Episcopalian chaplain to the duchess of Buccleuch, through the bookseller Richard Sare.101 On 15 Dec. Nicolson wrote to Wake to thank him for accepting his proxy, ‘which could not be more safely lodged than in the hands of one who so generously patronised my late cause in Parliament [the cathedrals bill] and helped to rescue me out of the power of the lion and the bear.’102 On 2 Jan. 1710 Wake and Bishop Trimnell went to Lambeth, where they met Bishops Hough and Moore and ‘had a long conference about the present state of affairs’; Charles Montagu, 4th earl of Manchester, Bishop Burnet and ‘a great deal of company’, he noted, were also dining there. On 4 Feb. Wake attended the Lords, where ‘Mrs Pack’s bill’ to enable trustees to raise part of the portions for the younger children of Cliston Packe, was read the first time. Wake noted ‘I doubt it will not pass,’ and it received the royal assent at the end of the session. On 9 Feb. Wake recorded that the place bill was ‘thrown out’. Five days later John Chamberlayne visited Wake about the Mines Adventurers’ petition before the committee of the Commons: this was a petition presented on the previous day from several creditors and proprietors for leave for a bill to transfer the management of the company. A bill was eventually introduced in this session, but did not get beyond a first reading. On 16 Feb. Wake recorded that Dr Thomas Newey came to him from Bishop Trelawny ‘to bring a private bill into the House’, probably the bill relating to the Tremayne estate, leave for which was granted the following day and which also concerned Lancelot Blackburne, now dean of Exeter.103
Wake was an active participant in the trial of Dr Sacheverell. On 24 Jan. 1710, he visited Sunderland where, with William Cavendish, 2nd duke of Devonshire, Wharton, Orford, Somers, and Bishops Hough, Moore and Trimnell, they discussed the following day’s business in the House when Sacheverell was due to answer the impeachment charges.104 Wake attended the House regularly throughout the proceedings, keeping Nicolson informed of progress and having Nicolson’s sanction to use his proxy ‘wherever there is room for it, your Lordship will give it on the same side of the question with your own’.105 On 20 Feb. he spent the evening with Somers and six days later Wake confided to his diary, ‘tomorrow comes on the unhappy trial of Dr Sacheverell; I pray God bring it to a good conclusion; and direct me to act with all justice and impartiality in my small part in it.’ Wake had thought the ecclesiastical courts a more appropriate place to prosecute Sacheverell, but neither Bishop Trelawny, Sacheverell’s diocesan, nor Bishop Compton, in whose diocese the offending sermon was preached, were thought likely to deal effectively with the offence.106
In the House on 17 Mar. 1710, Wake ‘opened the debate’ by delivering a lengthy speech - the published version, The Bishop of Lincoln his speech in the House of Lords, March the 17th, ran to 20 pages—which dissected Sacheverell’s offending sermon and supported the Commons’ second article of impeachment.107 Indeed, Wake and Trimnell, who seconded him, were accused of monopolizing the Lords’ time.108 According to Rev. Ralph Bridges, Wake
made a very long speech and gave us the history of the comprehension, as ’twas designed at the Revolution, told the Lords Archbishop Sancroft and my Lord of London and himself were concerned in it. ’Twas only to alter things in their own nature alterable and to add several very necessary offices to the Common Prayer and he showed how far and to what persons the Toleration Act extended and said all were not heterodox that did not subscribe all our 39 Articles, nor all false brethren who indulged the dissenters in the several articles excepted in the Act; picked out all the passages in the doctor’s sermon, which he could any ways make to reflect upon the toleration and left out the alleviating passages, which made on the doctor’s behalf. In short, he said several things which, in my poor opinion, might have much better have become the mouth of a lay Whig Lord, than one with an episcopal character.109
Wake’s speech evoked some bitter responses, one claiming that to fall under the ‘resentment’ of ‘our modern bishops’ was worse than falling ‘into the gripping clutches of a Mazarin or a Richelieu’.110 On the other hand, Lady Anne Clavering, Cowper’s sister-in-law, thought that Bishops Wake and Trimnell ‘spoke to the articles like two apostles. Had we ever heard of two St Pauls I should have believed they had now been with us’.111 On 20 Mar. Wake voted Sacheverell guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours. Following the verdict he met with Godolphin and Somers in the Prince’s chamber ‘and agreed upon Dr S. censure. I wish I could have made it lighter: I did all I could for him.’112 In the event, Wake’s view had more support in the House and the sentence was indeed lighter.113
On 22 Mar. 1710 Wake was with William Fleetwood, bishop of St Asaph, when he was sent for to read prayers at the House. While at the House he spoke with Cowper and Sunderland. After attending the Lords on 24 Mar. he dined at Cowper’s along with Richard Cumberland, bishop of Peterborough, Bishops Moore and Trimnell, John Ker, duke of Roxburghe, Thomas Pelham, Baron Pelham and lord chief justice Sir Thomas Parker†, the future earl of Macclesfield. On 26 Mar. Wake recorded that ‘the governors of the hospital came to desire me to help on their bill’, presumably the bill for vesting the estate of Thomas Arnway, in the Green-coat and Grey-coat hospitals in Westminster, which received its first reading on the 28th. Dr Gee also visited: ‘he wants me at the committee for a private bill tomorrow, but I dare not go to the House,’ presumably for the committee on Emerton’s bill which met that day.114 On 2 Apr., Wake preached a sermon at St James’s Church which was said to have ‘caused much discourse upon the account of the low and moderate strain of it’.115 On 4 Apr. he was visited by Bishop Hough, and together they took Bishop Fleetwood to the Lords, where Wake ‘sat upon the booksellers bill’—the bill for vesting copyright of printed books in the authors, which was reported on that day. When Wake attended the prorogation on 5 Apr., he ‘was solicited at the House to print my last sermon’ by Sunderland, Henry D’ Auverquerque*, earl of Grantham, and Lord William Powlett‡: it appeared as The Danger and Mischief of a Mis-guided Zeal.116
On 8 Apr. 1710 Wheeler, now a prebendary of Lincoln, wrote that Wake had become ill attending the Sacheverell trial.117 By 12 Apr. Thomas Bateman had picked up that Wake was one of seven bishops ‘for punishment (which are called extinguishers)’, along with Bishops Burnet, Cumberland, Moore, Trimnell, Talbot and Fleetwood—presumably those marked out for retribution for their role in the prosecution.118 Wake seems to have forgone his usual visit to Dorset, Bishop Nicolson certainly expecting him to be there in May.119 Wake had attended the prorogation on 16 May, in the company of John Pocklington‡. On the 20th he recorded that ‘Mr Sare coming to me, I delivered him sealed the copy of my speech to the House of Lords’, perhaps for publication, which occurred on 9 June. By 25 May he seems to have been back at Buckden, where he still was early in June.120 On 3 June he wrote to Cowper of his concerns that a published account of the Sacheverell trial must include a definition of what the ‘guilty’ verdict actually meant. He had already encountered widespread misunderstanding and misinformation about it.121 Cowper reassured Wake that he would ensure that all the Lords’ proceedings would be printed to show ‘the great care and deliberation with which the Lords proceeded’.122
The Parliament of 1710
The summer of 1710 was busy in anticipation of the imminent general election in which the Sacheverell trial was a key factor. On 2 Oct. 1710 Wake had two hours of private discussions with Manchester, one of the dominant magnates in Huntingdonshire.123 Five days later, the Whigs Pocklington and John Proby‡ were duly returned for the county despite the increased efforts of the Tories. The election at Bedfordshire on 5 Oct. returned its sitting members, Lord Russell and Sir William Gostwick; despite Wake’s commands to Alexander Leith, prebendary of Bedford Minor (and investor in the Mine Adventurers), he voted for the Tory John Harvey‡, along with around 20 other clergy, but they were outnumbered by the clergy who voted for Russell and Gostwick.124 On 11 Oct. Laurence Eachard, prebendary of Louth, informed Wake that he was off to the hustings for the Lincolnshire election, where he would ‘carefully observe’ Wake’s directions.125 Some 300 clergy turned out in strength for the Tories, while only a handful of ‘Hodlean clergymen’ backed George Whichcot‡.126 The election campaign at Lichfield was equally heated. Bishop Lloyd asked Wake to influence George Newell to stay away from the election, and therefore assist the chancellor, William Walmisley‡, but without success.127
Wake was reckoned by Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, as a certain opponent of the Tory ministry in his analysis of 3 Oct. 1710. On 10 Oct. Tenison hoped that Wake would ‘come up before the ways become too bad. We want persons to confer with in this critical juncture’.128 By 8 Nov., Wake was in London, being visited by Dr Gibson and then Dean Willis, where the topic of conversation was the approaching Convocation. As Wake recorded ‘God grant that things may go better than we fear in it.’ Three days later, he attended a meeting at Lambeth with Bishops Fleetwood, Hough, Moore and Evans, Dean Willis and Gibson, where it was resolved: ‘to set up a prolocutor. To get an address ready that shall meddle with no state affairs. To write to our friends to be up against the opening of the Convocation.’ On 23 Nov. Wake and Bishop Fleetwood went to Doctors’ Commons to meet the archbishop and bishops to discuss Colonel Codrington’s benefaction. He duly met Bishops Compton, Hough, Cumberland, Evans and John Robinson, bishop of Bristol.129
On 25 Nov. 1710, the first day of the parliamentary session, Wake attended Convocation at St Paul’s, rather than the Lords. When Atterbury rather than Willis was elected prolocutor, Wake drew up a formal petition to Tenison asking that he void the election as Atterbury was ‘not only a disturber of the peace of the Church but indeed the principal enemy of our order and authority’.130 When the chapter house was called over, Wake drew the attention of the archbishop to what he termed a ‘mistake’ in the mandate of the archbishop and the bishop of London, ‘in which the ardua[?] Ecclesiae negotia, were quite left out, and only ‘Regni’ taken notice of’.131
Wake attended the Lords for the first time on the third day of the session, 27 Nov. 1710, but soon came out and sat in the lobby, because of the heat and the crowd. He was present on 35 days, 31 per cent of the total, and was named to 12 committees. He attended for only three days before the New Year, because of the importance of his presence in Convocation. On 6 Dec. Wake recorded that he went to the Convocation, where Dr Smalridge presented Prolocutor Atterbury and ‘made a noble panegyric upon him’, though, he wrote, the subject matter was such that it was not clear whether he really intended to ‘praise or abuse him’.132 A few days later Gibson was extolling Wake’s ‘staunchness’ to Gibson.133 On 13 Dec. the upper house of Convocation sat late, expecting the concurrence of the lower house to their address to the queen, and Wake hoped for ‘a good issue of these troublesome meetings.’ On the evening of 14 Dec. Bishops Moore, Trimnell and Fleetwood, Dean Willis and Dr Gibson ‘met upon business’ at Wake’s house.134 On that day Nicolson recorded a visit to Wake who was hard at work answering the queen’s letter to Tenison warning against allowing procedural disputes in Convocation to disrupt its business.135 Between 19 and 21 Dec. Wake was engaged in visits with Bishops Nicolson, Fleetwood, Hough and Trimnell, Dean Willis and Dr Gibson among the higher clergy and Somers and Cowper among the lay peers. On 26 Dec. Wake attended the traditional dinner at Lambeth, in the company of two archbishops and 16 bishops.136
On 8 Jan. 1711 Wake was late at the House as the Lords were occupied with debating the failures of the war in Spain. On 9 Jan. he voted against the ministry in the division on whether Peterborough had given a ‘just’ account of the council of war at Valencia before the battle of Almanza, the House sitting until after 9 o’clock. Two days later, he signed a protest against the Lords’ vote to reject petitions from Henri de Massue de Ruvigny, earl of Galway [I], and Charles O’Hara, Baron Tyrawley [I], over their conduct during the campaign and, later in the day, again protested against the committee’s resolution that the defeat at Almanza could be blamed on Galway, Tyrawley and James Stanhope†, the future earl Stanhope. On the 12th, the House sitting until 10 o’clock, he signed a protest against the censure of the previous ministry for sanctioning an offensive strategy in Spain. 137 On 3 Feb. he signed two further protests against the resolution that two regiments on the Spanish establishment were not supplied as they should have been and against the resolution that by not supplying the deficiencies in men, the ministers had neglected their service. On 9 Feb. he further entered a protest against the last paragraph of the resolution of 3 Feb. being expunged.
On 15 Jan. 1711 Wake was at the House, and on that and the following day had encounters with Bishops Fleetwood, Moore, Hough, Evans and Trimnell, Dean Willis and Dr Gibson. Wake went on 17 Jan. to Convocation ‘where I received the Archbishop’s commission, and prorogued the Convocation to this day sevennight’, and then went to the House after dinner.138 Matters in Convocation came to a head when the queen issued a new royal licence for the sitting of Convocation on 24 Jan.; it omitted to designate Tenison as president of Convocation and it named Bishops Compton and Hooper as part of the quorum, thereby infringing upon Tenison’s rights to commission bishops to preside in his absence and threatening his (and Whig) control. Wake was named to a committee on 24 Jan. to look into this question.139 On 25 Jan. he was not at the Lords, but went to Lambeth with Bishops Hough, Moore and Trimnell and the following day he went to Convocation, and returned with Bishop Trimnell. He was visited by Bishop Moore and then Archbishop Tenison, and then Wake and Trimnell went to the Lords. On the evening of 28 Jan. Wake and Bishop Hough went to Ely House to meet Bishop Trimnell, Somers and Cowper. On 13 Feb. 1711 Wake and Trimnell visited Somers ‘about the Convocation affairs’, and three days later Wake prorogued Convocation. He then received visits from Bishops Evans and Trimnell, then Hough, and then Dr [William] Lloyd, Dr [William] Worth, Dr [Richard] West ‘all these about the Convocation matters, they being members of the lower house.’ On 19 Feb. ‘Mr Jones in the evening desired me to be at the committee at Paul’s tomorrow’, and he duly attended until after 7 o’clock. Wake attended the Lords on the 20th for the first time for a week. On 21 Feb. Wake went to Convocation, returning with Bishop Trimnell and being joined by Bishop Trelawny, and two days later Wake was visited by Bishops Evans, Moore, Trimnell and Fleetwood, who all went to Convocation together, the two latter dining with Wake.140 On 24 Feb. Trelawny wrote to Wake that he had stayed away from Convocation the previous day, and wanted to see Wake’s precedents asserting the rights of the archbishop to appoint a president when absent, ‘for I find I will be called on to assert the queen’s power of that nomination.’141 On 24 Feb. he was visited by Bishops Burnet, Tyler and Fleetwood, ‘to review our Convocation reports’, Philip Bisse, bishop of St Davids then joining them.142 Eventually, Wake and Somers negotiated with Bishop Bisse on the new licence, following Bisse’s offer to negotiate ‘expedients’ that might satisfy both sides in the dispute. The resultant proposals proved an acceptable compromise, and the queen agreed to amend the offending licence.143
On 26 Feb. 1711 Bishops Nicolson and Evans visited Wake ‘where’, in Nicolson’s account, ‘we hoped to have concerted the matter of the Scotch case with him’, that is, James Greenshield’s appeal against the judgment of the Edinburgh magistrates. The following day Wake attended another meeting with Somers, Cowper and Bishops Nicolson, Evans and Trimnell to discuss how to deal with the Greenshields case, so that it remained a civil cause and did not touch the authority of the Kirk. On 1 Mar. Wake went to the House, where he ‘heard Mr Greenshield’s cause’, and ‘came late back’. 144 A division on the regularity of the appeal was carried, with all the bishops voting to support it; then the sentence of the Edinburgh magistrates and the lords of session was reversed with little debate and without a division.145 On 10 Mar. Greenshields, together with three other Scottish ministers, came to thank Wake for his support. On 2 Mar. Wake went to Convocation, and after dinner went to the Lords, returning home at about four o’clock. On 5 Mar. he again went to the House, returned home and about four o’clock went to the committee of Convocation at the Jerusalem Chamber. After attending at court to honour the queen’s birthday on 6 Mar., Wake and Bishops Moore and Trimnell ‘went to Mrs Moor’s lodgings’ and finished a short report for the following day’s session of Convocation, presumably a reference to the report on regulating procedures in excommunications.146
Wake found time to deal with other matters. As early as 4 Dec. 1710 he had recorded in his diary that he had met ‘Mr Williams’ at the House of Lords, and had given him ‘the act for setting Stepney parish’, the bill for confirming the purchase by Brasenose College of the advowsons of Stepney and other churches. On 26 Jan. 1711 the college principal visited Wake, perhaps in regard to the petition introduced on 12 February. On 20 Feb. he paid Wake another visit in the morning, and later that day the judges reported on the college’s petition for a bill, which was ordered to be introduced. On 9 Mar., when the bill was before the House, Wake went to the Lords ‘where I spoke to Mr Principal of Brasenose, and had before engaged divers Lords to attend their committee tomorrow morning’. The bill was reported from committee on the 10th. On 17 Dec. 1710 Wake had been visited by George Mordaunt, the precursor of another visit on 8 Feb. 1711 ‘about his trial tomorrow’. On 13 Feb. Wake visited Bishop Trimnell ‘about Mr Mordaunt’s cause’ (probably the clandestine marriage case of Mordaunt v. Mordaunt, affecting George Mordaunt). Wake was called from the House of Lords by Mordaunt and his brother: ‘it being the Lord Chief Justice’s opinion that our testimony would be proper, we went into Westminster Hall, and declared what each of us knows of his conduct in the change of his religion.’147
After 7 Mar. 1711 Wake did not attend the Lords again until 15 Mar., but in the interim he did attend the committee of Convocation on the 8th and 12th. On 17 Mar. ‘the committee of bishops upon Mr [William] Whiston’s case’—Bishops Hough, Moore, Evans, Hooper, Tyler, Trimnell, and Bisse—met at Wake’s in the morning. Wake was at the committee of Convocation and then the House on 26 March. He did not attend again until 14 May, visiting Dorset between 2 Apr. and 10 May; he registered his proxy in favour of Trimnell on 23 Apr.; it was vacated with his return on 14 May. On 18 May, Wake went with Bishop Evans to the Convocation, and after dinner went to the Lords for his last attendance this session, where he ‘tarried out the bishop of London’s cause’ which ended with a decree confirmed in favour of the bishop against the inhabitants of Hammersmith. He then took his leave of the queen at Kensington. On 19 May Wake was visited by Trotman about the bill for the relief of the creditors and proprietors of the Company of Mine Adventurers, which had been committed to a committee of the whole House two days previously (Wake claimed that he was owed £345 by the Mine Adventurers). On this occasion the bill made it on to the statute book, but Wake was not much help on this occasion as he set off for his diocese on 20 May. 148 By the time of the prorogation on 12 June he was at Buckden.149
On 24 Oct. 1711 Wake arrived safely in London. His youngest daughter died on the 26th. On 12 Nov. he received visits from Bishops Talbot, Hough and Trimnell, and from Kennett, who had come from Lambeth ‘and desired me to meet them at the House of Lords tomorrow’. On the following day Wake prorogued Convocation and then went to the Lords for the prorogation, where he also ‘treated’ with Wharton about a Mr Kost’s affair.150 In response to a letter of 12 Nov. he reflected upon the lessening of ecclesiastical authority caused by
unhappy divisions amongst us, and not only as to the open Dissenters, but with those of our own communion; the controversies between the presbyters and their bishops; the harsh charges brought by many against those who not only entirely communicate with us, but love and support our church as much as any that uncharitably censure them.151
On 26 Nov. Wake met Bishops Evans, Talbot, Nicolson and Trimnell ‘about the business tomorrow’ and on that day Wake prorogued Convocation again and attended another prorogation of Parliament, where he ‘met many friends’. On 1 Dec. Wake was given an account of the present state of the Episcopal congregations in Scotland by Greenshields.152
On 7 Dec. 1711 Wake accompanied Bishops Evans and Trimnell to Convocation, where he was named to a committee to examine the minutes of the previous session. After dinner he went to the House for the first day of the new parliamentary session and the ‘great question about the peace’: he presumably voted for the addition to the address that no peace was safe or honourable while Spain remained in Bourbon hands. On the 8th he was listed as voting for retaining the ‘No Peace without Spain’ clause of the address in the abandoned division of that day, in which Oxford (as Robert Harley had become) sought to reverse the vote of the previous day. Wake attended on 32 days of the session, 30 per cent of the total, and was named to five committees. He was forecast on 19 Dec. as likely to oppose the right of James Hamilton, 4th duke of Hamilton [S], to sit in the House by virtue of his British dukedom of Brandon, and the following day he voted accordingly. On 26 Dec. he took Bishop Cumberland to Lambeth for the Boxing Day dinner.153
After attending the adjournment on 2 Jan. 1712, Wake attended the next sitting on the 14th. His diary for January and February generally merely noted attendance at the Lords or Convocation, but provided few details. On 6 Feb., after dinner, Bishops Tyler, Evans, Trimnell and Fleetwood ‘met here upon Convocation business’.154 Later, Wake and Bishops Nicolson and Fleetwood went to court, it being the queen’s birthday.155 On 8 Feb. he was visited by Greenshields and ‘Mr Davis from House of Lords’, as well as Bishops Evans and Trimnell: ‘I went with these to the Convocation.’156 Wake being absent from the Lords on 11 Feb., Nicolson paid him a visit to report on the ‘transactions’ of the day.157 On 18 Feb. Bishops Trimnell and Fleetwood visited in the afternoon ‘upon a committee of Convocation’, probably that relating to excommunication, which reported to Convocation on 20 February. On that latter day Bishops Moore and Fleetwood visited, and they ‘all went early to Convocation’. On 21 Feb. Bishops Evans, Trimnell, and Fleetwood were ‘here upon the article of marriage from the upper house of Convocation’, which was a committee appointed the previous day. On 25 Feb. Bishops Talbot, Evans, Blackall, Trimnell, Fleetwood were again ‘here upon a committee’, one having been appointed to meet at Wake’s house to consider the proposal of the lower house that ‘whatever head of business was entered upon before the royal prorogation be now begun de novo’, and which reported to Convocation on 27 February.158
On 26 Feb. 1712, Wake and Evans appear to have cajoled Nicolson into voting against the Commons’ amendments to the episcopal communion in Scotland bill, contrary to his own convictions.159 On the same day, a private bill to establish the income of the Buckinghamshire rectory of Gothurst was given a first reading in the Lords. Wake had been asked for his help to sort this matter out in February 1710, and according to the petition for the bill he had indeed facilitated an agreement. His papers contain several copies of the bill and a note that the committee was scheduled for 13 March, although he was not nominated to the select committee following the second reading on 27 February.160 On 29 Feb. Wake attended Convocation in the morning and then, after dinner, went to the Lords, which sat late, where he received an account of the lower house of Convocation. A committee was appointed to meet at Wake’s on 3 Mar. to consider methods of proceeding there. On 8 Mar. Wake noted that ‘Mr Hill with me about a private bill’, presumably Nathaniel Hill, a clergyman, whose petition for an estate bill was reported upon favourably by the judges and ordered to be brought in on 14 March. Wake went to Convocation on 12 Mar., where the bishops discussed the attorney general Sir Edward Northey’s opinion on whether a prorogation brought business to an end. On 13 Mar. Wake was visited by Bishop Trelawny and ‘went to the committee’, presumably that on Gothurst rectory, where he signalled his consent to the bill. 161 Possibly because he was preparing to leave London, on the morning of 18 Mar. he waited on Archbishop Tenison. On 19 Mar. he was visited by Bishops Tyler, Evans, Talbot and Trimnell before going to Convocation. Wake was absent from Parliament from 20 March. He registered his proxy with Bishop Talbot on 22 Mar. and went into Dorset three days later, returning to London on 10 May.162 He was in the House again on 12 May, when his proxy was vacated.
On 11 May 1712 Sir Streynsham Master and his wife came to see Wake about their cause before the Lords: two days later Wake was in the Lords for Master’s appeal, which was dismissed. He attended a meeting on 15 May at Sunderland’s home in the company of Bishops Fleetwood, Evans and Talbot, where they met Somers, Townshend and Halifax, and agreed that nothing had been done in Convocation on 14 May that could fall within the statute of Henry VIII relating to the royal supremacy in the Church, which might have been infringed by the bishops seeking to clarify lay baptism. On 16 May Wake went to Bishop Fleetwood’s and met Bishops Tyler, Burnet and Evans, possibly on the same matter. Wake continued to work on this politically provocative issue and in the autumn presented the results of the latest historical scholarship on baptism. On 19 May he attended the Lords for the last time that session, and on the following day he registered his proxy in favour of Trimnell and took his leave of the queen, departing from London on 22 May. 163
Wake now embarked on his triennial visitation, beginning with confirmations at Hertford on 22 May 1712 and ending at Spalding on 24 July. In his charge to the clergy Wake made reference to a clause to prevent clandestine marriage which was tacked onto the act to levy duties on soap and paper. He was subsequently involved in correspondence with his ‘official’, John Crawley, over the interpretation of the clause. On 26 Sept., John Chamberlayne wrote to Wake about a bill that was planned to be brought into Parliament as soon as it sat concerning the augmentation of poor livings, though the initiative seems to have lost urgency in the long interval before the session began.164 Experiencing another bout of illness, on 9 Oct. Wake counselled Moore to care for his own health in the hope that ‘we may disappoint the hopes of our enemies, and not give them the double satisfaction of getting rid of us, and coming themselves into our places’. Although the parliamentary session was delayed by the continuing peace negotiations, Wake was in London in time to attend the traditional St Stephen’s dinner at Lambeth on 26 Dec., with eight other bishops. In January 1713, in preparation for the forthcoming session, Bishop Nicolson sent his proxy to Wake, via Gibson. On 24 Feb. Wake conducted the marriage of James Stanhope to the daughter of ‘Governor’ Thomas Pitt‡. 165 Meanwhile, he attended the House on seven occasions between January and March for repeated prorogations; on the latter six occasions he prorogued Convocation first.166
Before the 1713 session began, Wake was considered by Swift (on a list amended by Oxford) as expected to oppose the ministry in the forthcoming session. He was present in the House on 9 Apr. for the start of business, reporting ‘I prorogued Convocation till next Wednesday [15 Apr.]. I went to the House’. He attended on only 11 days of the session, 17 per cent of sittings, and was named to three committees. On 14 Apr. Bishop Trimnell and Dean Willis met with Wake in the afternoon, when ‘they agreed upon an address for tomorrow’ in Convocation. On 15 Apr. Wake duly went to Convocation as he did again a week later. After dinner on the latter day, he went on to the Lords (though he was not listed as attending in the Journal). On 28 Apr he was put off by the cold from taking his leave at Lambeth before attending the Lords. On the following day he met Bishops Moore, Hough, Trimnell and Fleetwood, before attending Convocation and on the 30th he left for Dorset, where he remained for part of May.167 He attended the Lords on only one day in May, the 11th. Wake did not sit in the Lords again until 22 June, but about 13 June it had been estimated by Oxford that Wake would oppose the bill confirming the eighth and ninth articles of the French commercial treaty. He last attended the House for the session on 7 July. Wake was at Buckden when it was suggested to him on 12 Oct. that two parishes in Grantham could now be united, which would require an act of Parliament to accomplish, although no bill was ever introduced in the succeeding Parliament. 168 On 7 Dec John Rogers wrote to Wake hoping that he had arrived safely in London and congratulating him on ‘the happy dispatch’ of his daughters, although Wake appears to have actually arrived in London on 9 December.169
The Parliament of 1713 and after
On 26 Jan. 1714 Wake recorded the arrival of his parliamentary writ. On 29 Jan., well before the start of the session, Bishop Trimnell seems to have assigned his proxy to him. On 8 Feb. Archbishop Tenison, who had been seriously ill, thanked Wake for his ‘assistance at this needful time’ regarding Convocation and the important question of the number of commissioners to be named in his absence.170 Wake was present when Parliament sat to do business on 16 Feb., and attended on 39 days of the session, 51 per cent of the total, and was named to five committees. On 19 Feb. Wake went with the other bishops to wait on the queen and after dinner he paid visits to John Manners, 2nd duke of Rutland, Cowper and Bishop Trimnell. On 24 Feb. Bishop Trimnell ‘came about Convocation business’. After attending on 2 Mar., Wake was, according to the Journal, absent until 9 Apr., but on 3 Mar. he himself recorded that after attending Convocation he dined with Bishop Trimnell and that they then went to the House, and on 4 Mar. that ‘Mr Batteley came from Bishop of Rochester about his demand in Convocation’ and he then went to the House. He attended Convocation on 5 and 6 Mar., and on 8 Mar. he went to court, it being the queen’s accession day. The following day Wake went to St James’s to help with the confirmation of Archbishop Dawes of York, dined with ‘the archbishop’ and received a visit from Wharton in the evening. On 10 Mar. he went to Convocation, signing a proxy in favour of Bishop Evans; on the same day he signed a proxy for the Lords in favour of Bishop Nicolson. On 11 Mar. he left for Shapwick, returning on 8 April. Wake recorded on 9 Apr. that he went to the House (thus vacating his proxy) and returned about five o’clock with Bishop Fleetwood.171 It is likely that Wake voted against the court in the division on 13 Apr. concerning the queen’s reply to their address against the pretender, as only two of 16 bishops present voted with it. After his return from Dorset, Wake continued to attend Convocation and regularly and was closely involved in its management. On the morning of 29 Apr. he was visited by Bishop Smalridge and the Prolocutor, Dr George Stanhope, and then went to the Jerusalem Chamber to attend. On 30 Apr. he attended Convocation and then the Lords where he heard a cause, probably Roper v. Hewett, which lasted until ‘between six and seven at night’. He then went to Bishop Fleetwood to give him an account of it. On 4 May he went to the House and heard another cause, probably Wasteneys v. Chappel. On 5 and 7 May he went to Convocation, where on the latter day the issue of excommunication was under debate. On 8 May his visitors included ‘two Scots brothers (Gardens)’ whose case, Garden v Anderson, was to be heard in the Lords. On 11 May he went to the House, where the case of Tyrwhit v Trotman was heard, both men having visited Wake about it on 3 May. 172
On 13 May 1714 he noted that Bishop Smalridge had sent his secretary to him ‘with the act about excommunication’, in other words the schism bill. Wake recorded on 2 June that he was involved in at least one meeting about the bill. On 3 June he was at the House and then at Lambeth with Bishop Fleetwood; the following day he went to Convocation and Parliament. He was forecast by Nottingham at the end of May or beginning of June as an opponent of the schism bill. On 9 June he went to Convocation, dined, and went to the House where he ‘tarried’ till seven o’clock. He voted on 11 June against extending the schism bill to Ireland. The following day he received Nicolson’s proxy and on the 14th that of Bishop Cumberland for use in the Lords. On the same day he received the proxies of Bishops Cumberland and Fowler for use in Convocation.173 On 15 June he voted in the Lords against the passage of the schism bill and signed the subsequent protest, forwarding to Trimnell an account of the Lords’ proceedings. It is significant that on this issue he used Cumberland’s proxy to oppose the bill, but cast Nicolson’s proxy in support, honouring Nicolson’s wishes.174 On 16 June Wake ‘went to the Convocation, though in great pain in my side and back’. On 30 June he again recorded going to Convocation, where Dr Samuel Clarke was under attack from the lower house for his views on the Trinity: ‘all confusion, and heat, and clamour: nothing concluded’. He then went on to the Lords where he ‘endeavoured’ with Bishop Trelawny ‘to put an end to this unhappy controversy, such as may neither provoke the L[ower] H[ouse] nor offend the Ch[urch] of God.’ On 2 July Wake and Bishops Trelawny, Evans, Tyler, Fleetwood and Smalridge went to Convocation, where Wake hoped the matter would ‘end peaceably’ following a declaration issued by Clarke to the upper house. After dinner he went to the Lords, ‘which sat very late’, about the Spanish commercial treaty. Two days later he held discussions about Clarke’s ‘explanatory paper’, which clarified his previous declaration; all, he wrote, were troubled at it. Bishops Smalridge and Fleetwood wrote to Clarke to persuade him not to stick to it, and Wake enclosed their missive in another letter to him against it. On 5 July he went to Convocation with Bishop Robinson and discussed Clarke’s papers, then dined and went to the House, recording ‘not many friends there’. On 8 July he was at the Lords until almost nine o’clock. He was present when the House was prorogued on 9 July, and prorogued Convocation on 10 July. On 14 July Wake took his leave of Archbishop Tenison. 175
Wake set out for his diocese on 16 July 1714, and was thus at Buckden when he heard of the queen’s death. He returned to London on 18 Aug. and so was able to attend the last two days of the session convened upon the queen’s demise, qualifying himself by taking the oaths on the 20th and attending the giving of royal assent to the money bills on the 21st. He attended the queen’s burial on 24 Aug. and six days later went to Lambeth. On 31 Aug. he met Stamford, Manchester and Sir Peter King†, later Baron King. He set off for Shapwick on 2 Sept. and then returned to London on 16 Oct., one of his daughters having married on the 6th. On 18 Oct. Bishop Burnet called on him and together they went to court ‘and waited on the King, Prince and Princess of Wales and the young princesses’. Two days later Kennett accompanied Wake to the Lords from where they attended the coronation, Wake returning home at between four and five o’clock. On 26 Oct. Wake waited on Halifax, Somers, and Sunderland, but saw none of them. Wake reportedly then went to Dorset ‘by no means satisfied with the conduct of Lord Townshend’ over the recent appointment of John Wynne†, as bishop of St Asaph.176
Wake preached before the new king on 30 Jan. 1715, and clearly stood in an ideal position for translation to a more prestigious bishopric. In March, upon the death of Bishop Burnet, he asked Cowper to recommend his translation to Salisbury:
the burden of a large diocese which I have endeavoured to bear as well as I could for almost ten years past; and have more than once endangered my life by the fatigue of it; joined to the great convenience of the bishopric of Sarum to my small estate and family, which is just in the neighbourhood of it; have at last constrained me, contrary to my natural temper, and to the whole conduct of my past life, to become an humble petitioner to your lordship for your favour to procure such a translation for me.177
Later in the month, the newspapers wrote confidently of his translation, but Cowper had already backed Bishop Talbot, who was translated to Salisbury in April. By May, the coffee houses were equally sure that Wake would succeed Tenison at Lambeth, as he did when Tenison died in December 1715. 178 A full account of his career in the House after 1715 will be provided in the subsequent volumes to this series. Wake died at Lambeth on 24 Jan. 1737 and was buried on 9 Feb. beside his wife in the south chancel of Croydon parish church. His lengthy will provided for his seven surviving daughters; his daughter Mary, married to John Lynch, dean of Canterbury, was his residuary legatee.179
Wake, preaching a faith that relied on a fashionable appeal to reason more than religious enthusiasm, engaged Tory highfliers in heated published exchanges and contributed to the polarization of the Church into rival political parties of ‘low’ and ‘high’ churchmen. His elevation to the episcopate in 1705 was a result of growing Whig ascendancy in the queen’s councils. His extensive diary shows his range of social and political contacts: a political ally of Somers, Sunderland and Cowper among the lay peers, he was particularly close with the Whig bishops in the second half of Anne’s reign. After 1710 he rarely socialised with high churchmen except on formal occasions.180 Wake’s house in Dean’s Yard, close to the palace of Westminster and the court, was such a convenient location for both political and social meetings that it was a very frequent recourse for his fellow bishops attending both the House and Convocation. Another advantage of accepting Wake’s hospitality in London was the access it provided to his extensive library, which Nicolson described in glowing terms.181 Indeed in August 1710 one of Wake’s correspondents noted that his `writings and learning are known to be so exact’. Burnet summed the bishop up as ‘a man eminently learned, an excellent writer, a good preacher, and, which is above all, a man of an exemplary life’.182
B.A./S.N.H.- 1 LPL, ms 1770 (Wake diary), f. 58r; Christ Church Lib. Wake mss 23/225.
- 2 Vis. London 1687 (Harl. Soc. n.s. xvii), 526.
- 3 TNA, PROB 11/682.
- 4 The Commissions for Building Fifty New Churches ed. Port (London Rec. Soc. xxiii), pp. xxxv-vi.
- 5 G.S. Davies, Charterhouse in London, 355.
- 6 Vis. London 1687, 526.
- 7 Evelyn Diary, iv. 543; Bodl. Ballard 7, f. 100.
- 8 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 47.
- 9 HMC Rutland, ii. 120.
- 10 HLQ, liii. 125, 129.
- 11 HMC 7th Rep. 292, 297.
- 12 Burnet, iii. 105-6.
- 13 Ballard 12, f. 23.
- 14 Christ Church Lib. Wake mss 17, ff. 19, 20, 21, 25, 26.
- 15 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 251.
- 16 R. Beddard, ‘Observations of a London Clergyman’, Guildhall Misc. ii. 414.
- 17 Nicolson, London Diaries, 128.
- 18 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 190.
- 19 Guildhall Misc. ii. 414.
- 20 Add. 32681, ff. 317-18.
- 21 Sidney Diary, 285, 287.
- 22 HMC Le Fleming, 232.
- 23 HMC Portland, iii. 427.
- 24 T. Claydon, William III and the Godly Revolution, 166-7.
- 25 Add. 70270, R. Harley to wife, 4 June 1689; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. v. 131.
- 26 N. Sykes, William Wake, i. 51-52.
- 27 Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 520-1, iii. 326; HMC Lords, n.s. i. 399-400.
- 28 LPL, ms 942, no. 114.
- 29 F. Atterbury, A Letter to a Convocation-man (1697).
- 30 G.V. Bennett, Tory Crisis in Church and State, 51; N. Sykes, Edmund Gibson, 53.
- 31 Hatton Corresp. ii (Cam. Soc. n.s. xxiii), 227.
- 32 Wake, An Appeal to all the True Members of the Church of England, in behalf of the King’s Ecclesiastical Supremacy; Wake mss 23, f. 129.
- 33 Ballard 6, f. 13.
- 34 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 499, 503; Wake mss 23/131, 134B, Wake mss 17, f. 115; Ballard 3, f. 34.
- 35 Sykes, Wake, i. 74-77; Clarendon Corresp. ii. 425; Wake mss 17, ff. 116-17.
- 36 Longleat, Bath mss, Portland misc. ff. 214-5; Wake mss 17, f. 88.
- 37 Wake mss 1, ff. 1-2.
- 38 Ibid. 23, f. 148.
- 39 Ibid. 17, ff. 86-98; HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 143.
- 40 LPL, ms 930, no. 15.
- 41 Wake mss 1, ff. 10-11.
- 42 Glos. Archives D3549/2/1/18, pp. 129-30.
- 43 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 5-6; Cowper Diary, 9.
- 44 HMC Lords, n.s. v. 302; Nicolson, London Diaries, 298.
- 45 Cowper, Diary, 11.
- 46 LPL, ms 1770, f. 7v.
- 47 Nicolson London Diaries, 307.
- 48 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 7-8.
- 49 Sykes, Wake, i. 122-3.
- 50 WSHC, 3790/1/1, p. 60; C. Littleton, ‘Three (More) Division Lists’, PH, xxxii. 262.
- 51 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 8-9; Sykes, Wake, i. 123-4.
- 52 Nicolson, London Diaries, 364-5.
- 53 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 10-12.
- 54 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 12-13.
- 55 HMC Lords, n.s. vi. 428.
- 56 CJ, xv. 191.
- 57 LPL, ms 1770, f. 13.
- 58 Wake mss 17, ff. 151, 162.
- 59 Sykes, Wake, i. 246-7.
- 60 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 23-5.
- 61 Wake mss 1, ff. 53-55, Wake mss 17, f. 152; London Gazette, 27-30 May 1706.
- 62 Wake mss 1, f. 79.
- 63 Wake mss 23/163; C. Jones, ‘The London Topography of the Parliamentary Elite’, London Top. Rec. xxix. 54.
- 64 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 31-3.
- 65 Ibid. f. 34.
- 66 Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/D12.
- 67 LPL, ms 1770, f. 34; Nicolson, London Diaries, 412.
- 68 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 35-6; Ballard 7, f. 7.
- 69 Wake mss 1, f. 99, Wake mss 23/171.
- 70 Ibid. 3, ff. 138, 141-2.
- 71 LPL, ms 1770, f. 39.
- 72 Ibid. ff. 51-2.
- 73 Wake mss 17, f. 182.
- 74 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 53-4; Nicolson, London Diaries, 437.
- 75 LPL, ms 1770, f. 55.
- 76 Nicolson, London Diaries, 447-8; Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 341-2; LPL, ms 1770, ff. 56-7.
- 77 Nicolson, London Diaries, 438, 452-3, 455.
- 78 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 57-8.
- 79 Nicolson, London Diaries, 458-9.
- 80 LPL, ms 1770, f. 59r; Wake mss 1, f. 142.
- 81 LPL, ms 1770, f. 61.
- 82 Wake mss 1, f. 151.
- 83 HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 7.
- 84 Wake mss 1, ff. 166, 172.
- 85 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 68-9.
- 86 Bennett, Tory Crisis, 100; Add. 72494, f. 90.
- 87 Wake mss 1, f. 178; LPL, ms 1770, ff. 70-2.
- 88 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 73-5.
- 89 A List of the Names of the Governor and Company of the Mine Adventurers of England (1708).
- 90 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 74-5.
- 91 Ibid. ff. 75-76.
- 92 Nicolson, London Diaries, 486.
- 93 Wake mss 23/193.
- 94 LPL, ms 1770, f. 76.
- 95 Nicolson, London Diaries, 489; LPL, ms 1770, f. 77.
- 96 Nicolson, London Diaries, 497; Wake mss 1, f. 199; Wake mss 17, ff. 203, 212; Sykes, Wake, i. 247-8.
- 97 Wake mss 17, f. 232.
- 98 LPL, ms 1770, f. 85.
- 99 Add. 72494, ff. 133-4.
- 100 Add. 61443, ff. 30-31; Wake mss 17, f. 234.
- 101 LPL, ms 1770, ff.87-92; Wake mss 5, ff. 2, 11-14.
- 102 Wake mss 17, f. 237.
- 103 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 90-2; CJ, xvi. 310-11.
- 104 LPL, ms 1770, f. 91.
- 105 Wake mss 5, ff. 9-10.
- 106 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 92-3; Holmes, Trial of Doctor Sacheverell, 82, Add. 6116, f. 18.
- 107 State Trial of Doctor Henry Sacheverell, ed. B. Cowan, 90.
- 108 Add. 72499, ff. 132-33; Holmes, Trial of Doctor Sacheverell, 220-1.
- 109 Add. 72494, ff. 169-70.
- 110 A Letter to the Bishop of Lincoln, occasion’d by his Lordship’s Speech in the House of Lords on the Second Article of the Impeachment (1711), 4.
- 111 Clavering Corresp. ed. Dickinson (Surtess Soc. clxxviii), 72.
- 112 LPL, ms 1770, f. 93.
- 113 Bennett, Tory Crisis, 117.
- 114 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 93v.-94r.
- 115 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs 46, ff. 277-8.
- 116 LPL, ms 1770, f. 94r.
- 117 Wake mss 23/205.
- 118 Add. 72499, ff. 144-5.
- 119 Add. 6116, f. 22.
- 120 LPL, ms 1770, f. 95; State Trial of Dr Henry Sacheverell, 40; Wake mss 1, ff. 234-5.
- 121 Herts. ALS, DE/P/F62, Wake to Cowper, 3 June 1710.
- 122 Wake mss 17, f. 252.
- 123 LPL, ms 1770, f. 99.
- 124 Wake mss 1, f. 256; HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 7, 299-302.
- 125 Sykes, Wake, ii. 93-94.
- 126 HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 356.
- 127 Wake mss 17, f. 266, Wake mss 2, f. 62.
- 128 Wake mss 17, f. 267.
- 129 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 100-1.
- 130 Bennett, Tory Crisis, 127; Sykes, Wake, i. 124-5.
- 131 LPL, ms 1770, f. 101; Sykes, Wake, i. 124-5.
- 132 LPL, ms 1770, f. 101.
- 133 Nicolson, London Diaries, 520.
- 134 LPL, ms 1770, f. 102.
- 135 Nicolson, London Diaries, 521.
- 136 LPL, ms 1770, f. 102.
- 137 Nicolson, London Diaries, 531; LPL, ms 1770, f. 103.
- 138 LPL, ms 1770, f. 103.
- 139 Sykes, Wake, i. 125-6.
- 140 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 102-5.
- 141 Wake mss 17, f. 271.
- 142 LPL, ms 1770, f. 105.
- 143 Sykes, Wake, i. 129-30.
- 144 Nicolson, London Diaries, 551; LPL, ms 1770, f. 105.
- 145 NLS, Advocates’ mss, Wodrow pprs. Letters Quarto, 5, f. 148.
- 146 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 104-6.
- 147 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 101, 105.
- 148 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 105-8; HMC Lords, n.s. ix. 151-4; An Alphabetical List of the Creditors of the Company of Mine-Adventurers of England (1712).
- 149 Wake mss 17, ff. 275, 277-8.
- 150 LPL, ms 1770, f. 113.
- 151 Wake mss 1, f. 287.
- 152 LPL, ms 1770, f. 114.
- 153 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 114-15; Recs. of Convocation ed. Bray, x. 148.
- 154 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 115-18.
- 155 Nicolson, London Diaries, 584.
- 156 LPL, ms 1770, f. 117.
- 157 Nicolson, London Diaries, 586.
- 158 LPL, ms 1770, f. 118; Recs. of Convocation, x. 160-4.
- 159 Ballard 36, f. 122.
- 160 Wake mss 3, ff. 282-6; 4, ff. 63-66.
- 161 LPL, ms 1770, f. 119; Recs. of Convocation, x. 168, 170-1; HMC Lords, n.s. ix. 201, 221-2.
- 162 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 119-20.
- 163 LPL, ms 1770), f. 120; Wake mss 1, f. 322, 323.
- 164 Wake mss 1, f. 316, Wake mss 2, ff. 110, 126; Sykes, Wake, i. 248-9; LPL, ms 1770, ff. 123-4.
- 165 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 128-30; Bodl. Add. A.269, p. 20; Cambs. RO, 17/C1, Wake to Moore, 9 Oct. 1712.
- 166 Recs. of Convocation, x. 213-17; LPL, ms 1770, ff. 130-1.
- 167 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 131-2; Wake mss 1, f. 349.
- 168 NLW, Ottley Corresp. 1632.; LPL, ms 1770, f. 138; Wake mss 1, ff. 364-6, Wake mss 4, f. 90.
- 169 Wake mss 4, f. 201; LPL, ms 1770, f. 138.
- 170 LPL, ms 1770, f. 139; Add. Ch. 76125; Wake mss 6, ff. 167-8.
- 171 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 140-2; Recs. of Convocation, xi. 30.
- 172 LPL, ms 1770, f. 141-3; Cobbett, Parl. Hist. vi. 1343; Recs. of Convocation, xi. 47-48.
- 173 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 145; Nicolson, London Diaries, 612; Recs. of Convocation, xi. 67.
- 174 Wake mss 18, f. 375; Add. 70070, newsletter, 15 June 1714; Nicolson, London Diaries, 607.
- 175 LPL, ms 1770, f. 146-7; Sykes, Wake, ii. 155-9.
- 176 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 147-50; Bodl. Add. A. 269, p. 36.
- 177 Herts. ALS , DE/P/F62, Wake to Cowper, 18 Mar. 1715.
- 178 Wake mss 5, f. 119, Wake mss 20, f. 1, Wake mss 23, f. 274; Ballard 31, f. 146.
- 179 PROB 11/682; Hasted, Kent, xii. 484-515; Sykes, Wake, ii. 256.
- 180 Pols. in Age of Anne, 21, 299.
- 181 Nicolson, London Diaries, 363-4.
- 182 Wake mss 1, f. 252; Burnet, v. 190.