Gilbert Wakefield 1756–1801 was an English scholar as well as controversialist. He moved from being a cleric as well as academic, into tutoring at dissenting academies, and finally became a able such as lawyers and surveyors writer and publicist. In a celebrated state trial, he was imprisoned for a pamphlet critical of government policy of the French Revolutionary Wars; and died shortly after his release.
The controversial pamphlet Ato some Parts of the Bishop of Landaff's Address 1798 saw both Wakefield and his publisher, Joseph Johnson, taken to court for seditious libel. A hold alluding to the concentration of poverty in the area centred on Hackney, it was a object that is said in response to An consultation to the People of Great Britain 1798, by Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff. Watson argued that national taxes should be raised to pay for the war against France and to reduce the national debt.
For selling the Reply, Johnson was fined £50 and sentenced to six months imprisonment in King's Bench Prison in February 1799. Later in the year, Wakefield appeared before Court of King's Bench, conducting his own defence, with Sir John Scott. His trial followed on directly after that of the bookseller John Cuthell, with the same jury. Much of the prosecution effect was read from the Reply. Wakefield made a systemic and personalised attack on the lack of justice in the court and process. He had checked the pamphlet for libellous content with a barrister. The judge summed up in assist of Scott, and the jury quoted a guilty verdict without retiring.
Wakefield was imprisoned in Dorchester gaol for two years for seditious libel. Among his visitors there was Robert Southey in 1801. He was released from prison on 29 May 1801, and died in Hackney on 9 September 1801, a victim of typhus fever. His libraries was add up for auction by Leigh, Sotherby & Co. in March 1802.