has merely an illustrative value, but there is still extant a code of laws issued by him in a council held at a place called Berghamstyde (Barham?) during the fifth year of his reign (probably 695).
See Bede, Hist. Eccl., ed. C. Plummer (Oxford, 1896); Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Earle and Plummer (Oxford, 1899).
WILBERFORCE. ROBERT ISAAC (1802-1857), English
clergyman and writer, second son of William Wilberforce, was
born on the 19th of December 1802. He was educated at Oriel
College, Oxford, taking a double first in 1823. In 1826 he was
chosen fellow of Oriel and was ordained, among his friends and
colleagues being Newman, Pusey and Keble. For a few years
he was one of the tutors at Oriel, but the provost, Edward
Hawkins, disliked his religious views, and in 1831 he resigned
and left Oxford. In 1832 he obtained the living of East Farleigh,
Kent, which in 1840 he exchanged for that of Burton Agnes,
near Hull. In 1841 he was appointed archdeacon of the East
Riding. About this time Wilberforce became very intimate with
Manning, and many letters on theological and ecclesiastical
questions passed between them. In 1851 Manning joined the
Church of Rome, and three years later Wilberforce took the same
step. He was preparing for his ordination when he died at
Albano on the 3rd of February 1857. He left two sons, the
younger of whom, Edward Wilberforce (b. 1834), became one
of the masters of the Supreme Court of Judicature. Edward's
son, Lionel Robert Wilberforce (b. 1861), was in 1900 appointed
professor of physics in the university of Liverpool.
R. I. Wilberforce assisted his brother Samuel to write the Life and to edit the Correspondence of his father. His other writings include: Church Courts and Church Discipline (1843); Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (1853); Doctrine of the Incarnation in Relation to Mankind and the Church (1848 and later editions); The Five Empires, a Sketch of Ancient History (1840); A Sketch of the History of Erastianism (1851); An Enquiry into the Principles of Church Authority (1854); and a romance, Rutilius and Lucius (1842).
WILBERFORCE, SAMUEL (1805-1873), English bishop,
third son of William Wilberforce, was born at Clapham Common,
London, on the 7th of September 1805. In 1823 he entered
Oriel College, Oxford. In the “United Debating Society,”
which afterwards developed into the “Union,” he 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, taking a first class in mathematics and a
second in classics. After his marriage on the 11th of 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. 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 Eucharistca (from the old English divines), to which
he wrote an introduction, Agathos and other Sunday Stories, and
a volume of University Sermons, and in the following year Rocky
Island and other Parables. In November 1839 he was installed
archdeacon of Surrey, in August 1840 was 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 Prince Albert, an appointment he owed to
the impression produced by a speech at an anti-slavery 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 Hampden's appointment to the bishopric of Hereford. He also endeavoured to obtain satisfactory assurances from 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 (afterwards Cardinal) Manning, and then of his brothers, as well as his only daughter and his son-in-law, Mr and Mrs J. H. Pye, 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. His diary reveals a tender and devout private life which has been overlooked by those who have only considered the versatile facility and persuasive expediency that marked the successful public career of the bishop, and earned him the sobriquet of “Soapy Sam.” 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 J. W. 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 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 translated by Gladstone to the bishopric of Winchester. He was killed on the 19th of July 1873, by the shock of a fall from his horse near Dorking, Surrey.
Wilberforce left three sons. The eldest, Reginald Carton Wilberforce, being the author of An Unrecorded Chapter of the Indian Mutiny (1894). His two younger sons both attained distinction in the English church. Ernest Roland Wilberforce (1840-1908) was bishop of Newcastle-on-Tyne from 1882 to 1895, and bishop of Chichester from 1895 till his death. Albert Basil Orme Wilberforce (b. 1841) was appointed canon residentiary of Westminster in 1894, chaplain of the House of Commons in 1896 and archdeacon of Westminster in 1900; he has published several volumes of sermons.
