WAKE, WILLIAM: Archbishop of Canterbury; b. at Blandford (16 m. n.e. of Dorchester), Dorset, Jan. 26, 1656-67; d. at Lambeth Palace, London, Jan. 24, 1736-37. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford (B.A., 1676), and after being ordained, went to Paris in 1682 as chaplain to Viscount Preston. Here Wake came into close touch with Gallicanism, for it was in that year that the famous Declaratio cleri Gallicani (see Gallicanism, § 2 ) was formulated, and it was thus that he gained his lasting interest in the French church, and came to indulge in hopes of its ultimate union with the Anglican church (see Unity of the Churches, A, 1, § 5). In 1865 he returned to England with Viscount Preston, and was later preacher at Gray's Inn (1688-1696), canon of Christ Church, Oxford (1689-1705), deputy clerk of the closet and chaplain in ordinary to William and Mary (1689), rector of St. James's, Winchester (1693-1706), and canon residentiary and dean of Exeter (1703-05). On Oct. 21, 1705, he was consecrated bishop of Lincoln, and in Jan., 1716, on the death of Thomas Tenison (q.v.), he was elevated to the archdiocese of Canterbury.

In an age of marked latitudinarianism Wake was a defender of the true principles of the Anglican church in her noblest attitude toward those without her fold. Toward Protestants, on the one hand, he was courteous and willing even to make certain modifications in the Prayer Book to remove some of their honest scruples; and though he opposed Quaker relief and the repeal of certain clauses in the Corporation and Test Acts (qq.v.), his motive was not opposition to those things themselves, but alarm at a very suspicious alliance with Bolingbroke and other deists. In like spirit, he was eager for union with the Gallican church, to form, with the Anglican, independent national churches; but submission to Rome he would not dream of. It was with union in mind that he carried on a long correspondence with Louis Ellies Du Pin (q.v.); it was on the requirement of submission, set forth by Piers de Girardin, that the negotiations finally met with wreck. It is worth noting that from this long correspondence sprang the defense of Anglican orders by Pierre Francois Le Courayer (q.v.). Wake himself was a vigorous champion of the historic position of the Anglican Church, and in a period which cared little for such things he ardently advocated the value of patristic studies. As the more important of his writings the following may be noted: Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England (London, 1686), Defense of the Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England (1686), A Second Defense of the Exposition (2 parts, 1687-88; all these forming Wake's defense of Anglicanism against Jacques Bdnigne Bossuet [q.v.]), Genuine Epistles of the Apostolieal Fathers, S. Barnabas, S. Clement, S. Ignatius, S. Polyearp, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Martyrdom of St. IgnatilNS and St. Polycarp (2 parts, 1693; 5th ed., 1817; reprinted in Lord Avebury's Hundred .Best Books, 1893), The Authority of Christian Princes over their Ecclesiastical Synods Asserted (1697), Principles of the Christian Religion Explained in a brief Commentary upon the Church Catechism (1699; 13th ed., 1812), State of the Church and Clergy of England in their Councils, Synods, Convocations, Conventions, and other their Assemblies, historically deduced from the Conversion of the Saxons to the present Times (1703; a work that is still of value). A number of his polemics against the Roman Catholic Church are accessible in E. Gibson's Preservative against Popery (3 vols., London, 1738; new ed., by J. Gumming, 18 vols., 1848-49), Nature of Idolatry (ed. Gumming, vi. 148 sqq.), Real Presence and Adoration of the Host (x. 1 sqq.), Discourse of Purgatory and of Prayers for the Dead (xi. 1 sqq., 82 sqq.), and the Exposition and its defenses (xii. 47 sqq.). His correspondence with Du Pin was edited by "F. G." under the title D'un Projet d'union entre les eglises gallieane et anglicane (Oxford, 1864).

Bibliography: DNB, lviii. 44548 (with further literature); J. H. Overton, in Lincoln Diocesan Magazine, 1891; J. H. Lupton, Archbishop Wake and the Project of Union (171Y-20) between the GalZican and Anglican Churches (London, 1898); J. H. Overton and F. Relton, English Church from the Accession of George 1. to the End of the Eighteenth Century, London, 1908, pp. 21-29.