Relationship to: Steve Wakely of NSW Australia - Paternal 13th/14th Century Ancestor

of Phillyholme, Hawkchurch, Dorset

Forenames : RICHARD de

Date of Birth: Last quarter of 13th Century c.1275 on

Place of Birth : Wakeley, a small Hertfordshire Manor

Married (Spouse): ALICE

Other information:

Richard is assumed to be the fore-father of all West Country Wakelys and was probably born in the last quarter of the thirteenth century and to have migrated from the Hertfordshire Manor of Wakeley.

In 1327, the first year of the reign of Edward III, Richard de Wakeleg' contributed two shillings and sevenpence to the subsidy voted to the King for that year, Richard was then one of forty-two heads of household in the tithing of Vynlegh in the Parish of Hawkchurch who were all rich enough to pay tax. Judging by contemporary evidence from the small port of Bridport to the South, the total number of households including those of the poor, might have been about one hundred and twenty so giving a population for the tithing of about six hundred. Vynlegh, the name of Richard's tithing, later became corrupted to Fynle, and then Philly before achieving its final form of Phillyholme. It is the same tithing where we find that the next recorded Wakely and Wakelys still lived there for three hundred and fifty years after Richard.

Richard was the fourth largest of the forty-two taxpayers, and therefore a man of note in his community. The subsidy in 1327 was assessed at the rate of one twentieth of the value of a person's removable property. This value was usually very much understated, and the property covered was essentially restricted to livestock and produce. Household goods, implements and the contents of the larder were not counted. So, with disposable goods worth in excess of fifty-one shillings, Richard was well-off for a farmer of his time.

The next surviving subsidy was in 1332 and Richard is found to be paying less tax and to have dropped to ninth place in the league table. The table itself had mysteriously shrunk to a little over half the size of five years before. It is interesting to note that Richard shared this ninth place with a neighbour - Edith Davis - who was top in 1327. It is difficult to be sure but the basis in the later 1334 subsidy was totally changed because of serious corruption and underpayments in the subsidy of 1332 - had Richard and Edith found ways of understating their wealth?

The only other source of information about Richard is his surname. In 'The First Wakely's and their times: 1300 - 1500' it is argued that he came from Wakeley in Hertfordshire. In documents relating to the 13th Century the spelling of the village is Wakeleg'. In the 14th Century it had changed to Wakeley and Richard's own name, by the 1332 subsidy, was given as 'de Wakeleye'. The continued use of the prefix 'de' is the main reasan for thinking Richard was the first of his family to come to Dorset from Hertfordshire; the changes in spelling also suggest that the connection was maintained. The big move from one country area to another one hundred and fifty miles away was difficult but not as unusual as it might seem. At the start of the 14th Century the old manorial world was changing, the market in land was getting freer, and opportunist farmers were willing to travel far in an effort to find better, more extensive lands and prospects. Studies of wage levels indicate that Dorset was a prosperous county. Hawkchurch where most of the land was held by the two distant abbeys of Cerne and Abbotsbury, may have been in the van of the movement in which manorial demesne lands were being leased out by those able to afford them instead of being tilled or pastured by the Lord's villeins. Newcomers like Richard were a sign of the times and itis probable he had at least one Hertfordshire neighbour whose name was Alicia Totteriches - probably from Totteridge in South Hertfordshire - who paid subsidy with him in 1327.

A later fourteenth century deed shows that Richard also had land in Axbridge in Somerset before 1327 and that his wife was called Alice.

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