A baronial name, first mentioned in Normandy in the early part of the eleventh century. “There is a charter to Bernay in the Mem. Anti. Norm. IV. 381, granted it would seem, by Duke Richard II. at the great council at which he, in 1027, made disposition of his duchy in favour of his son. Besides dignitaries of the church, it is signed by one hundred and twenty-one viscounts, barons, &c., and among them is Goffredus Wac.” - Taylor's Wace. He held Rebercil (now Rebercy) in the arrondissement of Bayeux, and was in all probability the father of the “Sire de Rebercil” who figures in the Roman de Rou as one of the five knights that challenged Harold to come forth and cross swords with them in the battle. It is strange that the name should not be written in Domesday; but we find the Wakes seated at Dowlish-Wake, in Somersetshire early in the ensuing century. - Collinson. Dugdale commences the pedigree with Hugh Wac (probably the same Hugh that founded the Abbey of Longues in Normandy and endowed it with the church of Rebercil in 1168), who married a great Lincolnshire heiress, Emma de Gand. She was a descendant of the famous outlaw Hereward, that defended the Isle of Ely against the Conqueror; and from him the English Wakes, repudiating their Norman ancestry, have gloried to derive their name. Through him they have been traced back by some fanciful genealogist to “Oslac, general and butler to King Athelwulf in 849 f and they retain as their crest the Wake knot Two interlaced rope-girdles, such as are worn by monks, assumed to show that Hereward was “a monk’s knight, and not a king’s,” as he had been knighted by the Abbot of Peterborough on the eve of a projected attack, to give him the rank necessary for taking the command. “The belt and sword of knighthood could, until 1102, be bestowed even by abbots. The new knight was required to be a freeman, but there was no limit as to age, and, like the Hungarian nobles to this day, he was freed from all taxes by Henry I.” - Blaauw's Barons' Wars. that is traditionally said to have been his badge. Yet Mr. Freeman avers that “the surname of Le Wake is not given to Hereward in any authentic writing, though it is given him in writings that are not of yesterday.” Neither his only child and heiress, Torfrida, nor her husband Hugh de Evermue, assuredly ever bore it. Torfrida, again, had no son; and her baronies of Bourne and Deeping were conveyed by her daughter to Richard de Rollos, whose father, Richard de Rullos or de Ruelles, had been Chamberlain to William the Conqueror. He had two sons; of whom the younger, Richard, left an heiress named Adelidis, married to Baldwin Fitz Gilbert or De Gand, who founded Bourne Abbey (in 1156) as well as Deeping Priory. Their daughter and sole heir, Emma, was the wife of Hugh Wac. It thus seems clear, that the first authentic appearance of the name of Wake in the descendants of Hereward was through an intermarriage with a Norman family nearly one hundred years after his death.

Emma de Gand must have been Hugh’s second wife, as his son Geoffrey (mentioned in his charter to Longues), did not succeed to her estates. This may have been the same Galfrid or Geoffrey Wacto whom King John granted Ebbesborne- Wake in Wiltshire, where his posterity continued only till the time of Henry III.

The son of Hugh and Emma, named after his grandfather Baldwin, and endowed with his mother’s two Lincolnshire baronies, attended Cœur de Lion’s coronation, and was one of the hostages given for his ransom. He was followed by two more Baldwins, treading so quickly on each other’s heels, as to suggest the interpolation of a generation. According to Dugdale’s dates, the first Baldwin died in 1201, his son in 1206, and his grandson before 1213. The last- named married Isabel de Bruere, and their son Hugh inherited Torbay, and a great estate when her brother William de Bruere died s. p. in 1232. Hugh’s own wife was one of the richest heiresses in the north of England, Joan de Stuteville, dowered with Cottingham, &c., in Yorkshire, and the Barony and Forest of Lydal in Cumberland. When she was left a widow in 1241, she resumed her maiden name, and paid a very heavy fine (9000 marks) to obtain the wardship and marriage of her son, and “liberty for herself to take to Husband whom she should think fit.” This proved to be Hugh Bigot, Lord Justice of England.

Her son Baldwin was in arms against Henry III. in the Baron’s War, and twice taken prisoner; first at the storming of Northampton, and then with young Simon de Montfort at Kenilworth. How he made his escape on either occasion, “I have,” says Dugdale, “not seen; but having been an active person in the North against the King, he was one of those, who after the Battel of Evesham made head again, with Robert Earl Ferrers in Derbyshire; and was with him at the Battel of Chesterfield. Whence (though Ferrers had the fate to be there taken, and many of his party slain) he fled; and after that, with young Simon Montfort and some others, got to the Isle of Ely; where having held out as long as they could, he at length rendred himself; and submitting himself to the King’s mercy, obtain’d pardon and restitution of his Lands.”

These had been increased by his marriage with one of the co-heiresses of Robert de Quincy of Colne-Quincy in Essex and his wife the Welsh princess Helen; and in this parish - since known as Colne-Wake - a very ancient building still bears the name of Wake’s Hall.

John, the next heir, who had served in France and Gascony, had summons to parliament as a baron in 1294; and dying a few years afterwards, was succeeded first by a son of his own name who did not long survive him, and then by another, Thomas, Lord Wake, for seventeen years one of the most potent nobles of the realm.

He early showed an independent spirit, for in 1317, “being still in Ward, he refused to marry the person tendered to him, taking another Wife without the King’s License,” for which he was mulcted of 1000 marks. The offence was of course aggravated by the high rank and Royal blood of this chosen bride, who was the daughter of the Earl of Lancaster, Lady Blanche Plantagenet. “In 19 Ed. II., when most of the Nobility forsook the King, and took part with Queen Isabell, he joyned with her in raising an Army: which causing the King (with those his Favourites, who had occasioned that unhappy breach), to flee into Wales, she took upon her the whole sway of the Realm; and thereupon shortly after, in the King’s name, constituted this Thomas, Lord Wake, Justice of all the Forests South of Trent, and Constable of the Tower of London.” After the King’s deposition, he was further appointed Constable of Hertford, with licence to castellate at Cottingham; and served Edward III. in his Scottish wars, where he sought to recover some lands that had been wrested from him by Robert Bruce. In 1329 he was Governor of the Channel Islands, and in 1339 the Guardian of the Lincolnshire coast. Yet he was far from having always been on cordial terms with his Royal master, who had entertained suspicions of his loyalty; and in this latter year, “the King, returning from Brabant, came about midnight to the Tower of London, and finding no more than three servants there, and his own Children, grew so highly offended, that he presently caused the Lord Mayor of London, as also this Thomas, several of the Judges, and other persons of note, to be sent for, and committed them to several prisons.”

Lord Wake died childless in 1349; and his sister Margaret, then the widow of Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, inherited the barony, with a long list of possessions in Yorkshire, Bedfordshire, Cumberland, Westmorland, Norfolk, Essex, Hertfordshire, Derbyshire, and Lincolnshire. She, too, died shortly after; and as the last of her two sons, John Earl of Kent, followed her to the grave within three years, the Wake barony passed with the Earldom to her daughter Joan. This was the beautiful Plantagenet heiress, who has gone down to posterity as the Fair Maid of Kent, and after being twice married and twice divorced, became the wife of the Black Prince and the mother of Richard II.

There yet remained the descendants of the first Lord Wake’s younger brother Sir Hugh, who had by his father’s gift Blisworth in Northamptonshire with Deeping in Lincolnshire, and is the immediate ancestor of the present house. Sir Thomas, the next, distinguished himself under the Black Prince at Najara and elsewhere, and was Seneschal of Rouergue. He married an heiress, as did his grandson and great grandson; and the latter, a gentleman of Ed. IV’s bed­chamber, who was five times sheriff and three times knight of the shire for Northampton, was styled the “Great Wake”from the extent of his property. Other wealthy alliances brought the family into Somersetshire: and in 1621 “King James thought fit to fix Baldwin Wake of Clevedon in that co. somewhat nearer the rank of his ancestors by creating him a baronet.” His son raised a troop of horse for Charles I., and mortgaged his estate to serve him. The sixth baronet took the name of Jones on inheriting Courteen Hall - still the family seat in Northamptonshire - and Waltham Abbey in Essex: but he left no children, and it was discarded by the cousin who succeeded him. It would have been a grievous lapse from the stately baronial name they have the honour to bear, which has enjoyed the exceptional distinction of being perpetuated by an unbroken and unquestioned descent in direct male line, from the distant time when it was first heard in England.

Baynard’s Castle, in the East Riding, was among the multifarious possessions of the Wakes; and there is a local tradition that it was burnt down by the owner on the very night that he had received intimation of the coming of Henry VIII. The King, who was then at Hull, signified his intention of paying him a visit: and Wake, who had a remarkably handsome wife, and was unable to decline the proffered honour, “preferred the loss of his house to the risk of the King’s admiration.”