Samuel Wilberforce

Anglican clergyman, born in London, UK, the third son of William Wilberforce. He studied at Oxford, and was ordained in 1828. He became Bishop of Oxford in 1845, instituted Cuddesdon Theological College in 1854, and was appointed Bishop of Winchester in 1869. He initiated the modernization of the language of the King James Bible, and wrote along with his brother, Robert, the life of his father (1838).

Samuel Wilberforce (7 September 1805 – 19 July 1873) was an English bishop, third son of William Wilberforce.

Wilberforce was born at Clapham Common, London.

In 1830 he was presented by Bishop Sumner of Winchester to the rectory of Brighstone in the Isle of Wight.

Although a High Churchman Wilberforce held aloof from the Oxford movement, and in 1838 his divergence from the "Tract" writers became so marked that JH 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 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 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. 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 JH Pye, brought him under further suspicion, and his revival of the powers of convocation lessened his influence at court;

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 1854 he opened a theological college at Cuddesdon, now known as Ripon College (Cuddesdon), which was afterwards the subject of some controversy on account of its alleged Romanist tendencies.

In 1860, he took part in the famous debate at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History with Thomas Huxley, criticising the theories in Darwin's book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

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 JW 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. Huxley reportedly commented that Wilberforce's brains had at last come into contact with reality, and the result had been fatal.

Wilberforce left three sons. The eldest, Reginald Carton Wilberforce, being the author of An Unrecorded Chapter of the Indian Mutiny (1894). Ernest Roland Wilberforce (1840–1908) was bishop of Newcastle-upon-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;

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 (1879–1882), vol. by his son RG Wilberforce, who also wrote a one-volume Life (1888). One of the volumes of the "English Leaders of Religion" is devoted to him, and he is included in Dean Burgon's Lives of Twelve Good Men (1888).