His father, a canon of Christ Church and master of St. John's Hospital in Northampton, was rector of Great Billing in Northamptonshire until 1573, when he was deprived for nonconformity;[2] he afterwards lived for many years in Jersey.
In March 1612, his leave of absence from Merton College was extended for three years; but in the following November he came to England for a few months, during which he pronounced a funeral oration on Sir Thomas Bodley.
At the end of 1618 he came to London, being "much courted" by the French ministers on his way through Paris, and was knighted on 9 April 1619 at Royston, Hertfordshire, where the king lay ill in bed.
Immediately afterwards he was sent back to Turin with an offer of support to the duke in his candidature for the imperial crown, and at the same time with an informal mission to Frederick V, Elector Palatine, whom he saw at Heidelberg on his way out.
Wake was in England again in December 1623, when he married Anna, daughter of Edmund Bray of Barrington, and stepdaughter to Sir Edward Conway, the secretary of state.
for Oxford University in January 1624, and attended parliament closely[9] until his departure in May as ambassador to Savoy and Venice, with special instructions to endeavour to gain the assistance of those states for the recovery of the palatinate.
Towards the end of 1626 he was employed on a mission to Bern and Zurich on behalf of the Grisons; and in 1627 he endeavoured to mediate, at the king of Denmark's request, between that monarch and the Duke of Savoy.
[16] A letter to Trumbull from April 1618 mentions pictures for the Earl of Arundel, one large and fragile requiring a special case for transport.
[18] He was the father of four sons and six daughters, of whom the eldest, Anna Wake (1605-before 1669) married the Antwerp merchant and art-collector Peeter Stevens.