Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/10

 Together they urged that the reformation of the church should be immediately dealt with. Sigismund and the German nation emphasised the English demand. But the cardinals declared that the next work of the council should be the papal election. On 4 Sept. Hallam died. The cardinals chose this moment to bring forward on 9 and 11 Sept. protests urging a papal election (ib. i. 921). The English party, for some unexplained reason, suddenly changed its front, deserted Sigismund, and appointed deputies to confer with the cardinals on the manner of election (ib. iv. 1426). Henry V himself seems to have been content with the change of policy of September 1417, and to have consented to [q. v.] (afterwards cardinal) visiting Constance to strengthen the diplomatic compromise which Wakering and his allies had established. Wakering was one of the English deputies for the conclave (ib. iv. 1474) which on 11 Nov. 1417, St. Martin's day, elected Oddo Colonna pope. Lassitude now settled down on the council, and some of its leading members returned home. Before leaving Constance, Wakering obtained from Martin that papal ratification to his appointment which had been so long delayed (Anglia Sacra, i. 417). He was back in England before 26 March 1418, when he held an ordination at Norwich. It was his first appearance in his diocese.

Wakering mercilessly sought out lollards throughout his diocese, though in no case was a heretic actually put to death (, Actes and Monuments, bk. vi.). In the nine years of Wakering's episcopate 489 deacons and 504 priests were ordained in the diocese, most of them, however, by his suffragans, for Wakering was chiefly non-resident, being first in Constance and, after 1422, much in London. Appropriation of church property by the religious houses had been stopped by statutes of the previous reign, but that this had already been rife in the diocese of Norwich is clear from Wakering's report to the exchequer in 1424, which states that sixty-five benefices in his diocese had been despoiled for the benefit of ‘poor nuns and hospitallers’ alone. He put Wymondham under an interdict because the bells were not rung in his honour when he visited the town (, iii. 301). He completed a fine cloister, paved with coloured tiles, leading from his palace to the cathedral, and a chapter-house adjoining (, De Præsul. Angl. pp. 438, 439). Both are now destroyed. He presented his cathedral with many jewels, and was famous for generosity (cf., Anglia Sacra, i. 417).

Wakering, however, was soon summoned to matters outside his bishopric. On 3 Nov. 1422 he accompanied the funeral cortège of Henry V from Dover to London (Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, iii. 5). On 5 Nov. he was present at a royal council on the day before the meeting of parliament (ib. iii. 6). In the parliament of 9 Nov. Wakering was appointed one of the seventeen lords who were to undertake ‘the maintenance of law and the keeping of the peace’ (ib.) During 1422 and 1423 he was frequently a trier of petitions (Rot. Parl. iv. 170, 198 a). On 20 Oct. 1423 he was an assistant councillor of the protectorate and a member of the king's council (ib. 1756, p. 201 a). His routine work as member of council kept him busily engaged in London (Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, iii. 69, 74–7, 118, 137, 143, 144, 146, 147, 149–52, 165, 166). On 3 March 1425 Wakering offered the king ‘in his necessities’ the sum of five hundred marks (ib. pp. 167, 168). He died on 9 April 1425 at his manor of Thorpe (, Fasti, ii. 466). He was buried in his own cathedral on the south side of the steps before the altar of St. George. He established in the cathedral a perpetual chantry of one monk (, Anglia Sacra, i. 417;, Norfolk, ii. 376). The long stone seat, with a panelled seat and small figures, now at the back of the choir, opposite the Beauchamp chapel, was part of Wakering's monument, which was shattered during the civil war. His will, which was dated 29 March 1425, was proved on 28 April. 

WAKLEY, THOMAS (1795–1862), reformer, born at Membury in Devonshire on 11 July 1795, was the youngest son of Henry Wakley (1750–1842) of Membury. He was educated at the grammar schools of Chard and Honiton, and at Wiveliscombe in Somerset. When fifteen years of age he was apprenticed to a Taunton apothecary named 