Family and Education

1st s. of Thomas Wakefield of Pontefract and Hull by Ann, da. of John Eland of Carleton. m. (1) Jane, da. of Ronyon Bee of Northumb., 2s.; (2) Janet Johnson of Hull, wid. of one Naylor.

Offices Held

Alderman, Hull, sheriff 1578, mayor 1581, 1592.1

Biography

Wakefield was one of the principal burgesses of Hull sent to London in 1583 to answer for the decay of Hull’s ‘castles and blockhouses’. Two years later, with John Thornton and Leonard Willan, he received a grant of authority to search for concealed lands in the town. He and his colleague received a long list of instructions when they were the Hull MPs in 1586. In 1591 he was one of those commissioned to apprehend all suspected priests and Jesuits, and the same year carried a letter from Hull to the Council, on the borough’s differences with the city of York. He died in 1602, his will being proved at York in April that year.2

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: J.J.C.

Notes

• 1. Vis. Yorks. ed. Foster, 139; Clay, Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. iii. 368; Tickell, Hist. Hull, 676-7.
• 2. CSP Dom. 1581-90, p. 130; Hull Deeds, ed. Stanewell, 105, 107, 321; HMC Hatfield, iv. 122; York Wills (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. xxiv), 197.