Bishop Wilberforce

Contents

CUAP. PAGE

r. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER ... ... ... 1

II. EARLY YEARS AND TRAINING ... ... ... 9

Chapter I. Introductory

Dean Burgon, in liis work entitled Lives of T'lvclve Good Men, describes and speaks of Samuel Wilberforce as the remodeller of the episcopate. It will be the aim of these pages to endeavour to present his life, work, character, and influence mainly from the point of view thus suggested. We owe a great debt of gratitude to those who will give us right and high ideas of the duties and possibilities that any important rank or position involves. The debt is increased when the true ideal, though once grasped and understood, has been lost, lowered, and obscured by the heavy pressure of unfavourable conditions, acting unrelieved over a long period. Since the Reformation, and more still since the Revolution, conditions of appointment, and the common opinion, had led men too little to seek the office of a bishop in the Church of England as " a good work." It was too much the reward of political service, valued for its secular rather than its spiritual opportunities, favouring an attractive combination of

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dignity and case. A great apathy fell on the Church iu England, partially deprived, under the circumstances just characterized, of her proper leaders. In a critical moment of awakening, the subject of this memoir will be seen, as Bishop of Oxford, to have been largely instrumental in putting a new life into the order to Avhich he belonged. There was a truth in words written of him by his colleague, the Bishoi3 of Rochester, towards the close of his life — " You have introduced such a system into the episcopate that one has time for nothing." ^

Nothing strikes us more than the immense variety of talent and power that was displayed by Bishop Wilberforce in his life and work. Take in hand what he would, he might be relied on to face the public with success, and carry through his undertaking without the heavy disability that is incurred, especially in introducing apparent novelties, by seeming to fail. Other men, from timidity, or want of confidence in themselves or their calling, had hesitated to attempt all that their oflfice and position really required them to do. It is not difficult to copy, or even to make improvements on, that which has once been done ; and if it is, as Bishop Wilberforce's biographer says, " that his idea of true episcopacy is now a familiar one, and to those of a younger generation a matter of course," - it is largely because his gifts enabled him to give a practical illustration of the way in which its many and various requirements might be met. There were few parts of the work that belongs to the episcopal offi-ce, on which he did not fearlessly and boldly embark, considering its

1 Life, iii. p. 375.

INTRODUCTORY.

relation, not only to his own diocese, but to the whole state of England, and the Church at large.

Thus it is, as it has been said, that the life of Bishop Wilberforce touches all the great ecclesiastical, and most of the great social, questions of his day. "No ecclesiastic within living memory — scarcely any Englishman— has enjoyed a larger share of personal celebrity than he. It would be easy to recall the names of men who eclipsed him by their achievements, or by the brilliancy of their writings; but it remains a fact notwithstanding, that as a public man, Samuel Wilberforce, by the general suffrage of English society, was without a peer." ^ In all parts of the country, and amongst all classes, he was known, not merely by reputation, but personally. His power of moving about was extraordinary ; it was not uncommon for the morning of one day to find him in London, the afternoon in his diocese, and the evening at some house in the neighbouring county — the centre of great and important labours during the working hours, and the chief attraction of some social gathering at their close. We may say of him that he Avas amongst the first to show in railroad days how much might be made of time, and how little might be made of distance, by one who combined power to do what was suggested to him by a high idea of the call made on his energies by the office he held, with a really unusual capacity of mind and body for hard and continuous labour. He was often suffering from severe illness, and in his diaries entries such as "in much suffering all day," " the pain great," are by no means uncommon.'' His domestic afflictions also were from many causes un- ' Burgon, Lives of Twelve Good Men, ii. p. 2. ^ Life, i. p. 348.

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usually great and painful. We find him, however, rising superior to these hindrances, and in the very midst of them, though obviously a man of deep feeling and keen sensibility, keeping stedfastly to work with an unabated courage and vigour.

We shall see that his ideal of what a bishop might be, and should be, was not merely left as a tradition peculiar to the diocese in which he worked. It has become the inheritance of the Church and the world ; and gives a reality to the leadership under which it is appointed that the Church should work, such as has not failed to give a new enthusiasm and thoroughness to the labours of all subordinate ranks. Oxford, by position and circumstance, was, as Canon Ashwell has pointed out,^ singularly adapted to make this new reading of a long otherwise understood story far-spread and widely known. The accessibility of London, the flood of thinking men constantly pouring forth from the University, Avhich he could not fail to influence, made his personality and his ideas a power with many. Beginning his occupation of his see at a comparatively early age, he had time before him, and was able to start on needed changes and reforms without undue haste. We may then accept the estimate which speaks of his career "as offering an example of that which is too rarely seen — the concurrence of capacity and opportunity."

This career began at a time of crisis in the history of the Oxford diocese, and in the history of the Church of England. Dr. Pusey, in a letter written to the Bishop-elect, after his election by the Christ Church chapter, characterizes Oxford as a See which at that

INTRODUCTORY.

time most of all requires " supernatural gifts." i Dr. Newman's secession had brought about a time of intense anxiety, and a great unsettlement. In his letter, Dr. Pusey summarizes the position in these words : — " As far as I can see, what is chiefly at work is not attraction towards Rome, but despondency about ourselves." To the task of reassurance the new bishop was called. He has said of himself that " he could not have borne to be the bishop of a party," and very early in his career, while he was yet Archdeacon of Surrey, we find him thus expressing his feelings on this point in a letter to Sir Charles Anderson : — " Hook's letter pained me deepl}'. It is the very opposite of his own ' Call to Union,' and it seems to me really quite dreadful that he should avow that he thinks it a duty to split into a party. For this is really the force of his words, whereas it is our very blessedness in the Church to know no other party or leader, but to be content in her to take the good of all, and be followers of none beside."'- He was keenly alive to the advantage that it might have been to him to be a party man. "You do not suppose," he writes in a letter to the Rev. C. P. Golightly in 18.57, "that I am so blind as not to see perfectly that I might have headed the Evangelical body and been seated by them at Lambeth." ^ An everincreasing number of imitators of his methods of government and administration, and of his principles, attest the correctness of the anticipations contained in a letter to the Oxford Journal, written by one of his old clergy just after his death. "No one," says that letter, " strove more than he to point out the true

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position which our Church occupies. No one resisted more strongly than he did the importation of doctrines or acts foreign to her spirit. Doubtless this feature of his character will come out more strongly as years roll onward ; and the debt which Churchmen owe to him will be more fully acknowledged. The picture which by his life he has drawn of the Church of England, both in her adherence to scripture and to Catholic antiquity, will be felt to be a true one."

As regards the materials available for a sketch of his life and influence, a large number of his friends now alive agree in saying that there is little to add to the facts already collected and published in the Life of Bisliop Wilhcrforcc, issued in three volumes by Murray, and written by Canon Ashwell and R G. Wilberforce. Their opinion also decides that " Dean Burgon's is by far the best short sketch." The Dean succeeds in making the great Bishop live again before us, and lets us see him as he was to those who knew him best.

It was originally intended that the three-volume Life should have been entirely completed by Canon Ashwell. He died, however, after publishing the first volume, and arranging the plan of the other two. He found that the Bishop's life naturally divided into three well-marked stages of different character and complexion.^ The first of these, which exhibits Bishop Wilberforce " in the making," and in the full tide of growth, progress, and success, ends with the Hampden Controversy at the close of 1847, and the opening of 1848. The second extends from this date to 1860; in it the Bishop encountered a storm of opposition in his dioceso, and outside it, as being " one who favoured the 1 Life, Introduction, p. xxxiii.

INTRODUCTORY.

unpopular school of the Oxford theology," At the end he came out from the ordeal witli success, and was henceforth looked up to by Churchmen as " a leader ■whose grasp of first principles was firm, and who not only liad the courage of his convictions, but the capacity to give them effect." In the third period, from 18C0 to 1873, "he stood out, not only as undisputed leader among the English bishops, but also as undisi^uted master of his diocese, and as something more than either. He was no longer merely ' the Bishop of Oxford,' and foremost among his equals, but he had become the representative man of the English episcopate, in great measure the representative man of the English Church ; and such as by this time he had become, such he remained during the rest of his life." ^ In his diaries, letters, and writings, his biographers have found an abundant material forfilh'ng in the outlines thus marked out. It was his custom to keep somewhat full chronicles of his daily doings, and his thoughts of men and things, as well as notes of conversations in which he took part. These, witli their revelations of his inward and private life, have been drawn upon in the last two volumes of his Life with a certain want of tact and judgment, calculated sometimes to leave an unfavourable impression as to some of his motives and feelings.'^ The use made of them illustrates the dangers of diary-keeping, when it goes beyond the barest record of facts, and chronicles phases of thought and feeling which were probably after all but transitory. The Bishop's letters are a fruitful source of information concerning him ; he had a large private correspondence,

1 Life, Introduction, p. xxxvi.

2 Quarterly Eevdew, No. 309, Jan. 1883.

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besides his official ona, and made time for very full letters to his family and friends. Every one has heard of him as writing a great deal in the train, or in carriages ; and perhaps, in illustration,^ the story may be quoted of the delivery at his address, Eaton Place, of a letter addressed to "S. Oxon, Esq., Rail, Near Reading," in answer to one written on a railway journey, and dated from the train. He liked, as far as he could, to answer his letters himself.- In answer to the question why he did not keep a secretary, he said once to a clergyman, " that it would certainly be a great relief to do so, but then so many people would be disappointed." It was his feeling that a few kind words from liimself would lessen the annoyance of necessary refusals ; and, as a consequence, he has left in his many letters a large material for his biography. From the sources here indicated, the substance of the following pages is mainly drawn. The Life of Bishop Wilbcrforce, by Canon Ashwell and Mr. K G. Wilberforce, and Dean Burgon's sketch from the Quarterly, have been freely used. Often, as in the case of the Cuddesdon troubles, and the difficulties with Dr. Pusey, the writer has only attempted to adapt to the limits of this little book the work of the writers mentioned above. An old friend of the great Bishop suggested the desirability of combinina; with Mr. R. G. Wilberforce's work Dean Burgon's views ; and tliis hint has been taken.

^ Life, Introduction, p. xxxi. - Life, iii. p. 409.

CHAPTER 11.

EARLY YEARS AND TRAINING.

There is always an interest in the predisposing causes found in descent and heredity to any eminent and distinguished life. Next it is desirable to notice the circumstances of training and education that have contributed to the successful development of the opportunities offered by natural gifts. We will therefore glance briefly at the history of Samuel Wilberforce from these two points of view, and trace out shortly the genesis of the powers and ideas that made his episcopate such an era in the history of the English Church.

The family of Wilberforce, or Wilberfoss, can be traced back as far as the days of Henry II., and it is remarkable in its long history that no member of it seems to have entered Holy Orders till the generation to which Samuel, and his two brothers, Robert and Henry, belonged. The work of their illustrious father, William Wilberforce, in the emancipation of the slaves, is well known ; and it is to him that the change in the family traditions which gave three of his four sons to Holy Orders may be ascribed. He was one of the little colony of Evangelicals who, residing at Clapham, were called somewhat contemptuously "The Clapham Sect." Here it was that on September 7th, 1805, his

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third son Samuel was bom. We know very little of this son's childhood; but we can understand the atmosphere of thought and life in which he received his earliest impressions.

His father seems to have taken a special interest in his training and development. We are told how the elder Wilberforce was accustomed to make his son get up subjects of importance and deliver orations on them ; and that it was in this way that he acquired his remarkable power of public speaking. He was never sent to a large school, or a public school; his father feared them, as likely, through a defective sense of honour cultivated in them, to cause a want of confidence between children and parents. " I know," he says in a letter to his son, " that this is often one of the consequences of a youth's living at a great school, especially if his parents are pious, that he has one set of principles and ways of going on in all respects at school, and another at home." Thus he was educated chiefly by private tutors.

There is still extant a long series of some six hundred letters, which his father began to write to him in his twelfth year. These bear evident traces of careful study, and had, as his father desired, a most important influence on his son's development and character. The results and nature of these letters are thus summarized by Canon Ashwell : — " Nascent faults carefully marked and checked, personal habits of upright conduct strenuously enforced, shrewd practical counsels as to social duties and conduct towards his equals constantly suggested, and all these strung upon the one thread of ever-repeated inculcation of the duty of private prayer as the one holdfast of life, — these remarkable lettez's

EAELY YEARS AND TRAINING.

exhibit the influences which formed that soHd substratum of character which underlay the brilliant gifts and the striking career of Samuel Wilberforce." ^

One or tvvo jDractical suggestions, made about the time that he matriculated at Oriel, are worth quoting as having been so evidently acted upon. Thus his father impresses on him the following as a principle upon which he himself has often acted, e. g. the bringing together all men who are like-minded, and who may probably, at some time or other, combine and concert for the public good. He also advises him never to omit an opportunity of getting acquainted with any good man or any useful man. Other suggestions, such as that one should always pay ready money, should be hospitable but not lavish, that Sunday breakfast-parties should be avoided, all bear witness to the careful, wise, and sympathetic guidance that helped to ripen to a healthy maturity Samuel Wilberforce's many and conspicuous natural gifts.

In Michaelmas term, 1823, he followed his brother Robert to Oriel. During his Oxford career Oriel was almost at the height of its fame, and supplied, in its fellows, scholars, and commoners, a stimulating intellectual atmosphere, which had its full effect on Samuel Wilberforce's development. He took a leading part in the debates of the United Debating Society, speaking on the Liberal side, and being therefore often in the minority. His father supplied him with material for some of his speeches, warning him against being too much of a politician, and adding — " Watch, my dear Samuel, with jealousy whether you find yourself unduly solicitous about acquitting yourself creditably, whether 1 Life, i. p. 3.

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you are much chagrined when you fail, or are puffed up by your success. Undue sohcitude about popiilar estimation is a weakness against which all real Christians must guard with the most jealous watchfulness." He was not at this time in robust health, and took his exercise chiefly on horseback ; nevertheless he managed to combine steady and moderate reading with a thorough use of all the social opportunities of the University.

In the Michaelmas term of 1826 he took a first class in mathematics, and a second in classics. He tried once for a Fellowship at Balliol,^ but about this time his engagement to Miss Emily Sargent was practically arranged after a long attachment, and his thoughts were taken up with preparations for his marriage and for Holy Orders. It was finally settled that his marriage should take place in the summer of 1828, at the end of which year he would be old enough to be ordained Deacon.

On June 11th, 1828, Samuel Wilberforce was married at Lavington to Emily Sargent. Through his wife at a later period the Lavington property passed to the then Bishop of Oxford, and made him, as he delighted to describe himself, a " Sussex Squire." On December 21st, in the same year, he was ordained Deacon in Christ Church Cathedral, beginning his work in the diocese that he afterwards made famous. His curacy was a sole charge — Checkendon, near Henley-on- Thames.

Just before his ordination he expresses, in a letter to Mr. Patrick Boyle, his determination to moderate his political feelings, which only, in his opinion, became a 1 Life, i. p. 32.

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clergyman when mildly shown. During his stay at Checkendon his political views underwent a complete change ; he seemed to see in England, and almost all other Continental nations, a state of things foreboding some storm, and says of himself that, whereas he was once a Radical, he was now, with some exceptions, a very high Tory. He had already been offered preferment by Bishop J. B. Sumner of Chester, and had refused it ; but some sixteen months after his coming to Checkendon, BishoiD Sumner of Winchester offered him the pleasant Rectory of Brighstone, in the Isle of Wight, and he was inducted into it in June 1830. In his first curacy, with its non-resident rector, he had to work on his own lines, but there are traces of his work being well and wisely done ; and he was thus fitted for the larger sphere to which he was removed while yet under twenty-five years of age. He left pleasant memories of his work and his personality among the simple inhabitants of the secluded Oxford village, who remembered him, even in the days of his greatness, as " our Mr. Wilberforce."

His first two years at Brighstone were mainly given to his parish work. Samuel Wilberforce always began with the thing nearest, and, when that was organized and well in hand, looked further for some new field for his energies. At tLe beginning of his incumbency the questions and circumstances connected with the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832 had brought the Church, and specially the Bishops, into great odium with the people.

Being then, as he himself says, gradually advanced, in Toryism, he took a somewhat pessimistic view of the outlook, as he fuund an " infidel pi ess, an ungodly

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people, and a scorning parliament, which knows not nor will hear the voice of truth except as a matter of ridicule." His remedy was found in using every possible means and effort, in spending and being spent, to make the Church, and its services and means of grace, very much of a reality to his Brighstone parishioners. It had been long an idea with many of the English clergy that rubrics were made to be broken and disregarded, and that it was not unworthy and wrong to consider how little might decently be offered of spiritual opportunity. The Rector of Brighstone plainly left no stone unturned to give his people every chance. He added a second Sunday sermon, a week-day evening service and sermon, a service and sermon on all saints' days, and a daily service during Holy Week. Besides this, frequent catechisings, cottage lectures, and communicants' classes were all parts of his parochial machinery. He interested himself in labour questions, then mi;ch to the fore among the agriculturalists; started allotments; wrote a small tract to try and correct the prejudices of the lower orders of farmers in the matter of tithes ; and lived in close sympathy with the country life around him. He also published a hymn-book for his people, in order to give a new life and interest to the Church services, and to help to bring home in a most eflective way the Christian's hopes and trials and aspirations. It is still remembered how his people sat listening with delight to his evening preaching, though he would sometimes go on till it grew dark, so that you could not see him. Being anxious to vindicate the value and usefulness to the nation of the jiarochial clergy, he put together a little volume, called The Note-Book of a Country Clergy-

EARLY YEARS AND TRAINING.

man, which was meant to ilhistrate, largely out of his own experiences, the sort of influence a resident clergyman has. It was at this time also that he began with his brother Robert a Life of his father, who had died in 1833, and prefixed to Henry Martyn's Life and Journals a notice of the life of his father-in-law, Mr. Sargent, who died in the same year. Wishing also, as a stimulus to his own reading, to be a contributor to some review, he frequently sent papers to the British Magazine, which, edited by Hugh James Rose, was the Church organ of the period.

These years were marked by the issue of the Tracts for the Times, and Ave can see the beginning of the somewhat " peculiar relation," as Dean Burgon calls it, which Samuel Wilberforce held to the movement which led to their publication. He, unlike his brothers, stood outside it, and though " a High Churchman from the first," ^ and " full of reverence for the personal holiness of certain of the leaders of the movement, had his eyes wide open to their faults, and, while he instinctively assimilated whatever he recognized in it as Catholic and true, whatever in it had a Rome-ward tendency he rejected from the first with unqualified abhorrence." " Thus it was that J. H. Newman declined further contributions from S, Wilberforce for the British Critic, on the ground that he is not "confident enough in his general approval of the body of opinions which he and Pusey held." ^ Wilberforce, in a letter to Mr. Charles Anderson, speaks of this step with regret as a mark of party spirit, and laments the policy that led Newman and Pusey to set themselves against the Martyrs' Memorial at Oxford.

1 Life, i. p. 54, - Burgon's Tivelve Good Men, ii. jj. 6.

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It will help to the better understanding of the Rector of Brighstone's later work, to notice some of the ways in which, at this time, he showed himself a strong Churchman. The results of the Reform Bill, and the attitude of the Reformed Parliament towards the Church, had the effect of bringing clearly before Churchmen the necessity of asserting their conviction that, though the Church of England was established, it was something more than a mere department of the Civil Service. It was clear that the time had come when a protest must be made against the Erastian views that had prevailed during the Georgian period. Thus in 1834, and the years succeeding it, meetings of friends of the Church were being held all over the country, and Samuel Wilberforce took a prominent part in the Isle of Wight in these movements.

The general tendency of his thought and feeling at this time is shown by the attack he made on Lord Palmerston's remarks at a meeting held for the purpose of setting on foot a Diocesan Church Building Society. Lord Palmerston had taken a line which Samuel Wilberforce considered to be inconsistent with true Churchmanship, and which, in a letter to Mr. Charles Anderson, he afterwards said was " really speaking to his dissenting constituents." His success on this occasion shows us how his powers as an orator were maturing ; and when the Duke of Wellington, who was in the chair, was asked why he had not checked the indignant outburst of so young a man, his reply was to the effect that he would only have diverted on himself the stream of eloquence; and "I assure you," he added, "that I would have faced a battery sooner." ^ He took a pro- 1 Life, i. p. 108.

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minent part in getting up an opposition to Dr. Hampden's appointment as Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford in 1836 ; and, on going up to Oxford to vote for the censure passed against the new Professor and his views in Convocation, says in a letter to Mr. C. Anderson that "it was loose Churchmen against sound Churchmen, whatever were their politics."

It was only natural that the question of the importance of the episcopal office to a real and vigorous Church life should occupy men's thoughts. As early as 1833 the Rector of Brighstone preached a sermon on " The Apostolical Ministry," at the Bishop of Winchester's Visitation at Newport. ^ It called upon the clergy to prize at a higher rate that unbroken succession, " whereby those who ordained us are joined as to Christ's own Apostles," and it spoke strongly on "the danger of quitting the high vantage ground of Apostolical authority, to fight the battle out upon the doubtful level of Erastian principles." The author did not escape criticism, and was accused of bolstering up his Bishop into High Church notions on the subject. He kept, however, to his principles, and in 1837 was asserting strongly the importance of episcopal organization in missionary work. His work on the History of the American Church, published in 1844, illustrates his views on this point, and sets forth plainly how deadness and latitudinarianism seemed to him to arise in churches without bishops.

Wilberforce was always a great supporter of the Mission work of the Church, and a tour for the S. P. G. in the West of England, towards the close of his stay at Brighstone, did a great deal to make him widely 1 Life, i. p. 67.

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and favourably known. Part of it was arranged to coincide with Bishop Philpott's Visitation tour, and the Bishop was disposed to dread having to listen so often to the same speaker on the same subject. At the end, however, he expressed freely his surprise at the power which always found some fresh point of view from which to advocate the claims of Missions, and declared himself to have been by no means bored, but delighted and interested.

The Rector of Brighstone soon became a leader of the island clergy. He started a society amongst them with monthly meetings, and became a power in drawing them together and inducing an interest amongst them in public questions. Hurrell Froude writes to tell him how he had heard him described as "the /ae'yas bLakXaKTijs of the island," and had heard it said that if it were not for him, " all the parsons would be by the ears." His appointment presently as Rural Dean gave him further oj^portunity for such influence, and made him able to test the possibilities of an office which he afterwards made very important in his diocesan oi'ganization.