Wake, Thomas
WAKE, THOMAS (1297-1349), English baron, belonged to a Lincolnshire family which had lands also in Cumberland, being the son of John Wake (d. 1300), who was summoned to parliament as a baron in 1295, and the grandson of Baldwin Wake (d. 1282), both barons and warriors of repute. Among Thomas Wake's guardians were Piers Gaveston and Henry, earl of Lincoln, whose daughter Blanche (d. 1337) he married before 1317. This lady was the niece of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, and her husband was thus attached to the Lancastrian party, but he did not follow Earl Thomas in the proceedings which led to his death in 1322. Hating the favourites of Edward II. Wake joined Queen Isabella in 1326 and was a member of the small council which advised the young king, Edward III.; soon, however, he broke away from the queen and her ally, Roger Mortimer, and in conjunction with his father-in-law, now earl of Lancaster, he joined the malcontent barons. He was possibly implicated in the plot which cost his brother-in-law, Edmund, earl of Kent, his life in 1330, and he fled to France, returning to England after the overthrow of Isabella and Mortimer. Edward III. made him governor of the Channel Islands and he assisted Edward Bruce to invade Scotland, being afterwards sent on an errand to France. In 1341 he incurred the displeasure of the king and was imprisoned, but he had been restored and had been employed in Brittany and elsewhere when he died childless on the 31st of May 1349. His estates passed to his sister Margaret (d. 1349), widow of Edmund, earl of Kent, and her son John (d. 1352), and later to the Holand family. Wake established a house for the Austin canons at Newton near Hull; this was afterwards transferred to Haltemprice in the same neighbourhood.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
