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Encyclopedia Britannica

WAKE (A.S. wacan, to " wake " or " watch ")

This article appears in Volume V28, Page 249 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: VIR-WAT

WAKE (A.S. wacan, to " wake " or " watch ") , a term now restricted to the Irish custom of an all-night " waking " or watching round a corpse before burial, but anciently used in the wider sense of a vigil kept as an annual church celebration in commemoration of the completion or dedication of the parish church. This strictly religious

wake

consisted in an all-night service of prayer and meditation in the church. These services, popularly known as " wakes," were officially termed Vigiliae by the church, and appear to have existed from the earliest days of Anglo-Saxon Christianity. Tents and booths were set up in the churchyard before the dawn which heralded in a day devoted to feasting, dancing and sports, each parish keeping the morrow of its vigil as a holiday. Wakes soon degenerated into fairs; people from neighbouring parishes journeyed over to join in the merry-making, and as early as Edgar's reign (958975) the revelry and drunkenness had become a scandal. The vigiliae usually fell on Sundays or saints' days, those being the days oftenest chosen for church dedications, and thus the abuse was the more scandalous. In 1445 Henry VI. attempted to suppress markets and fairs on Sundays and holy days. In 1536 an Act of Convocation ordered that the yearly "

wake

" should be held in every parish on the same day, viz. the first Sunday in October, but this regulation was disregarded. Wakes are specially mentioned in the Book of Sports of James I. and Charles I. among the feasts which should be observed.
Side by side with these church wakes there existed from the earliest times the custom of " waking " a corpse. The custom, as far as England was concerned, seems to have been older than Christianity, and to have been at first essentially Celtic. Doubt-less it had a superstitious origin, the fear of evil spirits hurting or even removing the body, aided perhaps by the practical desire to keep away rats and other vermin. The Anglo-

Saxons

SAXONS

called the custom lich-wake or like-wake (A.S. lic, a corpse). With the introduction of Christianity the offering of prayer was added to the mere vigil, which until then had been characterized by formal mourning chants and recitals of the life story of the dead. As a rule the corpse, with a plate of salt on its breast, was placed under the table, on which was liquor for the watchers. These private wakes soon tended to become drinking orgies, and during the reign of Edward III. the provincial synod held in London proclaimed by its loth canon the object of wakes to be the offering of prayer for the dead, and ordered that in future none but near relatives and friends of the deceased should attend. The penalty for disobedience was excommunication. With the Reformation and the consequent disuse of prayers for the dead the custom of " waking " in England became obsolete and died out. Many countries and peoples have been found to have acustom equivalent to " waking," which, however, must be distinguished from the funeral feasts pure and simple.
For detailed accounts of Irish wakes see Brand's Antiquities of Great Britain (W. C. Hazlitt's edition, 1905) under " Irish Wakes." WAKEFIELD, EDWARD GIBBON (17961862), British colonial statesman, was born in London on the loth of March 1796, of an originally Quaker family. His father, Edward Wake-field (177418J4), author of Ireland, Statistical and Political (1812), was a surveyor and land agent in extensive practice; his grandmother, Priscilla Wakefield (17511832), was a popular author for the young, and one of the introducers of savings banks. Wakefield was for a short time at Westminster School, and was brought up to his father's profession, which he relinquished on occasion of his elopement at the age of twenty with Miss Pattle, the orphan daughter of an Indian civil servant. The young lady's relatives ultimately became reconciled to the match, and pro-cured him an appointment as attache to the British legation at Turin. He resigned this post in 182o, upon the death of his wife, to whom he was fondly attached, and, though making some efforts to connect himself with journalism, spent the years immediately succeeding in idleness, residing for the most part in Paris. In 1826 he appeared before the public as the hero of a most extraordinary adventure, the abduction of Miss Ellen Turner, daughter of William Turner, of Shrigley Park, Cheshire. Miss Turner was decoyed from school by means of a forged letter, and made to believe that she could only save her father from ruin by marrying Wakefield, whom she accordingly accompanied to Gretna Green. This time the family refused to condone his proceedings; he was tried with his confederates at

Lancaster

assizes, March 1827, convicted, and sentenced to three years' imprisonment in i`lewgate. The marriage, which had not been consummated, was dissolved by a

special

SPECIAL

act of parliament. A disgrace which would have blasted the career of most men made Wakefield a practical statesman and a. benefactor to his country. Meditating, it is probable, emigration upon his release, he turned his attention while in prison to colonial subjects, and acutely detected the main causes of the slow progress of the Australian colonies in the enormous size of the landed estates, the reckless manner in which land was given away, the absence of all systematic effort at colonization, and the consequent discouragement of immigration and dearth of labour. He proposed to remedy this state of things by the sale of land in small quantities at a sufficient price, and the employment of the proceeds as a fund for promoting immigration. These views were expressed with extraordinary vigour and incisiveness in his Letter from Sydney (1829), published while he was still in prison, but composed with such graphic power that it has been continually quoted as if written on the spot. After his release Wakefield seemed disposed for a while to turn his attention to social questions at home, and produced a tract on the Punishment of Death, with a terribly graphic picture of the condemned sermon in Newgate, and another on incendiarism in the rural districts, with an equally powerful exhibition of the degraded condition of the agricultural labourer. He soon, however, became entirely engrossed with colonial affairs, and, having impressed John Stuart Mill, Colonel Torrens and other leading economists with the value of his ideas, became a leading though not a conspicuous manager of the South Australian Company, by which the colony of South Australia was ultimately founded. In 1833 he published anonymously England and America, a work primarily intended to develop his own colonial theory, which is done in the appendix entitled " The Art of Colonization." The body of the work, however, is fruitful in seminal ideas, though some statements may be rash and some conclusions extravagant. It contains the distinct proposal that the transport of letters should be wholly gratuitousthe precursor of subsequent reformand the prophecy that, under given circumstances, " the Americans would raise cheaper corn than has ever been raised." In 1836 Wakefield published the first volume of an edition of Adam Smith, which he did not complete. In 1837 the New Zealand Association was established, and he became its managing director. Scarcely, however, was this great undertaking fairly
commenced when he accepted the post of private secretary to Lord Durham on the latter's appointment as

special

SPECIAL

commissioner to Canada. The Durham Report, the charter of constitutional government in the colonies, though

drawn

DRAWN

up by Charles Buller, embodied the ideas of Wakefield, and the latter was the means of its being given prematurely to the public through The Times, to prevent its being tampered with by the government. He acted in the same spirit a few months later, when (about July 1839), understanding that the authorities intended to prevent the despatch of emigrants to New Zealand, he hurried them off on his own responsibility, thus compelling the government to annex the country just in time to anticipate a similar step on the part of France. For several years Wakefield continued to direct the New Zealand Company, fighting its battles with the colonial office and the missionary

interest

INTEREST

, and secretly inspiring and guiding many parliamentary committees on colonial subjects, especially on the abolition of transportation. The company was by no means a financial success, and many of its proceedings were wholly unscrupulous and indefensible; its great object, however, was attained, and New Zealand became the Britain of the south. In 1846 Wakefield, exhausted with labour, was struck down by apoplexy, and spent more than a year in complete retirement, writing during his gradual recovery his Art of Colonization. The management of the company had meanwhile passed into the hands of others, whose sole object was to settle accounts with the government, and wind up the undertaking. Wakefield seceded, and joined Lord Lyttelton and John Robert Godley in establishing the Canterbury settlement as a Church of England colony. A portion of his correspondence on this subject was published by his son as The Founders of Canterbury (Christ-church, 1868). As usual with him, however, he failed to retain the confidence of his coadjutors to the end. In 18J3, after the grant of a constitution to New Zealand, he took up his residence in the colony, and immediately began to act a leading part in colonial politics. In 1854 he appeared in the first New Zealand parliament as extra-official adviser of the acting

governor

GOVERNOR (from the Fr. gouverneur, from gouverner, O. Fr. governer, Lat. gubernare, to steer a ship, to direct, guide)

, a position which excited great jealousy, and as the mover of a resolution demanding the appointment of a responsible ministry. It was carried unanimously, but difficulties, which will be found detailed in W. Swainson's New Zealand and its Colonization (ch. 12), prevented its being made effective until after the mover's retirement from political life. In December 1854, after a fatiguing address to a public meeting, followed by prolonged exposure to a south-east

gale

, his constitution entirely broke down. He spent the rest of his life in retirement, dying at Wellington on the 16th of May 1862. His only son, Edward Jerningham Wakefield (1820-1879), was a New Zealand politician. Three of Wakefield's brothers were also interested in New Zealand. After serving in the Spanish army William Hayward Wakefield (18031848) emigrated to New Zealand in 1839. As an agent of the New Zealand Land Company he was engaged in purchasing enormous tracts of land from the natives, but the company's title to the greater part of this was later declared invalid. He remained in New Zealand until his death on the 19th of September 1848. Arthur Wakefield (17991843), who was associated with his brother in these transactions about land, was killed during a fight with some natives at Wairau on the 17th of June 1843. The third brother was

Felix

Wakefield (18071875), an engineer.
Wakefield was a man of large views and lofty aims, and in private life displayed the warmth of heart which commonly accompanies these qualities. His main defect was unscrupulousness: he hesitated at nothing necessary to accomplish an object, and the conviction of his untrustworthiness gradually alienated his associates, and left him politically powerless. Excluded from oarliament by the fatal error of his youth, he was compelled to resort to indirect means of working out his plans by influencing public men. But for a tendency to paradox, his intellectual powers were of the highest order, and as a master of nervous idiomatic English he is second to Cobbett alone. After every deduction it remains true that no contemporary showed equal genius as a colonial statesman, or in this department rendered equal service to his country.
For an impartial examination of the Wakefield system, see Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation chez les peuples modernes (3rd ed. pp. 5682-5875 and 696-700). See also R. Garnett's Life of Wakefield

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JCSM is a 501(c)(3), non-profit organization. Copyright © 1997-present.