Whether, as alleged by some, Waynflete fled and hid himself during the period covered by the battle of Wakefield and Edward's fist parliament in 1461, is very doubtful.
He unsuccessfully contested Blackburn in 1900 and Wakefield in 1902, and in 1903 he became chairman of the Independent Labour party.
On the shores of the Gulf St Vincent, again, from 1835 to 1837, South Australia was created by another joint-stock company, as an experiment in the Wakefield scheme of colonization.
His father, Edward Wakefield (1774-1854), author of Ireland, Statistical and Political (1812), was a surveyor and land agent in extensive practice; his grandmother, Priscilla Wakefield (1751-1832), was a popular author for the young, and one of the introducers of savings banks.
Wakefield was for a short time at Westminster School, and was brought up to his father's profession, which he relinquished on occasion of his elopement at the age of twenty with Miss Pattle, the orphan daughter of an Indian civil servant.
