WILBERFORCE, Samuel (1805-1873), bishop of Oxford and afterwards of Winchester, was the third son of William Wilberforce (see below), and was born at Clapham Common near London on 7th September 1805. Until he entered Oriel College, Oxford, in 1823 he was educated privately. In the “United Debating Society,” which afterwards developed into the “Union,” Wilberforce distinguished himself as a zealous advocate of liberalism. The set of friends with whom he chiefly associated at Oxford were sometimes named, on account of their exceptionally decorous conduct, the “Bethel Union”; but he was by no means averse to amusements, and specially delighted in hurdle jumping and hunting. He graduated in 1826; and the summer and autumn of 1827 were spent in a Continental tour. After his marriage on 11th June 1828 to Emily Sargent, he was in December ordained and appointed curate-in-charge at Checkenden near Henley-on-Thames. In 1830 he was presented by Bishop Sumner of Winchester to the rectory of Brightstone in the Isle of Wight. In this comparatively retired sphere he soon found scope for that manifold activity which so prominently characterized his subsequent career. In 1831 he published a tract on tithes, “to correct the prejudices of the lower order of farmers,” and in the following year a collection of hymns for use in his parish, which had a large general circulation; a small volume of stories entitled the Note Book of a Country Clergyman ; and a sermon, The Apostolical Ministry. He now began to be sought for as a preacher and declined several offers of appointments. In February 1836 he was made a rural dean. At the close of 1837 he published the Letters and Journals of Henry Martyn. Although a High Churchman Wilberforce held aloof from the Oxford movement, and in ...1838 his divergence from the “Tract” writers became so marked that J. H. Newman declined further contributions from him to the British Critic, not deeming it advisable that they should longer “co-operate very closely.” In 1838 Wilberforce published, with his elder brother Robert, the Life of his father and two years later his father’s Correspondence. In 1839 he also published Eucharistica (from the old English divines), to which he wrote an introduction, Agathos and other Sunday Stories, and a volume of University Sermems, and in the following year Rocky Island and other Parables. In November 1839 he was installed archdeacon of Surrey, in August 1840 collated canon of Winchester, and in October he accepted the rectory of Alverstoke. In 1841 he was chosen Bampton lecturer, and shortly afterwards made chaplain to the Prince Consort, an appointment he owed to the impression produced by a speech at an antislavery meeting some months previously. In October 1843 he was appointed by the archbishop of York to be sub-almoner to the queen. In 1844 appeared his History of the American Church. In March of the following year he accepted the deanery of Westminster, and in October the bishopric of Oxford.
The bishop in 1847 became involved in the Hampden controversy, and signed the remonstrance of the thirteen bishops to Lord John Russell against Dr Hampden’s appointment to the bishopric of Hereford. He also endeavoured to obtain satisfactory assurances from Dr Hampden; but, though unsuccessful in this, he withdrew from the suit against him. The publication of a papal bull in 1850 establishing a Roman hierarchy in England brought the High Church party, of whom Wilberforce was the most prominent member, into temporary disrepute. The secession to the Church of Rome of his brother-in-law, Archdeacon (now Cardinal) Manning, and afterwards of his two brothers, brought him under further suspicion, and his revival of the powers of convocation lessened his influence at court; but his unfailing tact and wide sympathies, his marvellous energy in church organization, the magnetism of his personality, and his eloquence, both on the platform and in the pulpit, gradually won for him recognition as without a rival on the episcopal bench. In the House of Lords he took a prominent part in the discussion of social and ecclesiastical questions. He has been styled the “bishop of society”; but society occupied only a fraction of his time. The great bent of his energies was ceaselessly directed to the better organization of his diocese and to the furtherance of schemes for increasing the influence and efficiency of the church. In 1854 he opened a theological college at Cuddesdon, which was afterwards the subject of some controversy on account of its alleged Romanist tendencies. His attitude towards Essays and Reviews in 1861, against which he wrote an article in the Quarterly, won him the special gratitude of the Low Church party, and latterly he enjoyed the full confidence and esteem of all except the extreme men of either side and party. On the publication of Colenso’s Commentary on the Romans in 1861 Wilberforce endeavoured to induce the author to hold a private conference with him; but after the publication of the first two parts of the Pentateuch Critically Examined he drew up the address of the bishops which called on Colenso to resign his bishopric. In 1867 he framed the first Report of the Ritualistic Commission, in which coercive measures against ritualism were discountenanced by the use of the word “restrain” instead of “abolish” or “prohibit.” He also endeavoured to take the sting out of some resolutions of the second Ritualistic Commission in 1868, and was one of the four who signed the Report with qualifications. Though strongly opposed to the disestablishment of the Irish Church, yet, when the constituencies decided for it, he prudently advised that no opposition should be made to it by the House of Lords. After twenty-four years’ labour in the diocese of Oxford, he was named by Mr Gladstone for the bishopric of Winchester. His unremitting labours had, however, seriously told on his constitution, and the change to a new diocese, entailing a repetition of the work of organization which he had completed in the old one, proved too much for his health. The result was a severe affection of the heart, which on more than one occasion threatened to prove fatal. He was killed on 19th July 1873 by the shock of a fall from his horse near Dorking, Surrey.
Besides the works already mentioned, Wilberforce wrote Heroes of Hebrew History (1870), originally contributed to Good Words, and several volumes of sermons. See Life of Samuel Wilberforce, with Selections from his Diary and Correspondence, vol. i., ed. by Ashwell, and vols. ii. and iii., ed. by his son Reginald G. Wilberforce.
WILBERFORCE, William (1759-1833), whose name is chiefly associated with the abolition of the slave trade, was descended from a Yorkshire family which possessed the manor of Wilberfoss in the East Riding from the time of Henry II. till the middle of the 18th century. He was the only son of Robert Wilberforce, member of a commercial house at Hull, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Bird of Barton, Oxon, and was born at Hull on 24th August 1759. It was from his mother that he inherited both his feeble frame and his many rich mental endowments. He was not a diligent scholar, but at the grammar school of Hull his skill in elocution attracted the attention of the master. Before he had completed his tenth year he lost his father and was transferred to the care of a paternal uncle in London; but in his twelfth year he returned to Hull, and soon afterwards was placed under the care of the master of the endowed school of Pocklington. Here his love of social pleasure made him neglectful of his studies; but he entered St John’s College, Cambridge, in October 1766. Left by the death of his grandfather and uncle the possessor of an independent fortune under his mother’s sole guardianship, he was somewhat idle at the university, though he acquitted himself in the examinations with credit; but in his serious years he “could not look back without unfeigned remorse” on the opportunities he had then neglected. In 1780 he was elected to the House of Commons for his native town, his success being due to his personal popularity and his lavish expenditure. He soon found his way into the fast political society of London, and at the club at Goosetrees renewed an acquaintance begun at Cambridge with Pitt, which ripened into a friendship of the closest kind. In the autumn of 1783 he set out with Pitt on a tour in France; and after his return his eloquence proved of great assistance to Pitt in his struggle against the majority of the House of Commons. In 1784 Wilberforce was elected for both Hull and Yorkshire, and took his seat for the latter constituency.
A journey to Nice in the autumn of the same year with Dr Isaac Milner led to his conversion to Evangelical Christianity and the adoption of more serious views of life. The change had a marked effect on his public conduct. In the beginning of 1787 he busied himself with the establishment of a society for the reformation of manners. About the same time he made the acquaintance of Thomas Clarkson, and began the agitation against the slave trade. Pitt entered heartily into their plans, and recommended Wilberforce to undertake the guidance of the project as a subject suited to his character and talents. While Clarkson conducted the agitation throughout the country, Wilberforce took every opportunity in the House of Commons of exposing the evils and horrors of the trade. In 1788, however, a failure of his digestive powers compelled him to retire for some months from public life, and the introduction of the subject in parliament therefore devolved on Pitt, whose representations were so far successful that an Act was passed providing that the number of slaves carried in ships should be in proportion to the tonnage. On 12th May of the following year Wilberforce, in co-operation with Pitt, brought the subject of abolition again before the House of Commons; but the friends of the planters succeeded in getting the matter deferred. On 27th January following Wilberforce carried a motion for referring to a special committee the further examination of witnesses, but after full inquiry the motion for abolition in May 1791 was lost by 163 votes to 88. In the following April he carried a motion for gradual abolition by 238 to 85 votes; but in the House of Lords the discussion was finally postponed till the following session. Notwithstanding his unremitting labours in educating public opinion and annual motions in the House of Commons, it was not till 1807, the year following Pitt’s death, that the first great step towards the abolition of slavery was accomplished. When the anti-slavery society was formed in 1823, Wilberforce and Clarkson became vice-presidents; but before their aim was accomplished Wilberforce had retired from public life, and the Emancipation Bill was not passed till August 1833, a month after his death.
In 1797 Wilberforce published A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes of this Country Contrasted with Real Christianity, which within half a year went through five editions and was afterwards translated into French, Italian, Dutch, and German. Shortly after the appearance of this work he occupied himself with a plan for a religious periodical which should admit “a moderate degree of political and common intelligence,” the result being the appearance in January 1801 of the Christian Observer. He also interested himself in a variety of schemes for the advancement of the social and religious welfare of the community, including the establishment of the Association for the Better Observance of Sunday, the foundation, with Hannah More (q.v. ∖ of schools at Cheddar, Somersetshire, a project for opening a school in every, parish for the religious instruction of children, a plan for the education of the children of the lower classes, a bill for securing better salaries to curates, and a method for disseminating, by Government help, Christianity in India. In parliament he was a supporter of parliamentary reform and of Catholic emancipation. In 1812, on account of failing health, he exchanged the representation of Yorkshire for that of a constituency which would make less demands on his time, and was returned for Bramber. In 1825 he retired from the House of Commons, and the following year settled at Highwood Hill, “just beyond the disk of the metropolis.” He died at London on 29th July 1833, and was buried in Westminster Abbey close to Pitt, Fox, and Canning. In Westminster Abbey a statue was erected to his memory, and in Yorkshire a county asylum for the blind was founded in his honour. A column was also erected to him by his townsmen of Hull.
See Life of William Wilberforce, by his sons, 1838, 5 vols.; Correspondence, 2 vols., 1840.
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