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Dissimulation as an Editorial Strategy in the Life of William Wilberforce
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 May 2024
Abstract
In 1838, Robert and Samuel Wilberforce published, in five volumes, The Life of William Wilberforce. Although the subject of some contemporary controversy, this work, containing extensive quotations from his diaries, rapidly established itself as the principal source for subsequent biographical writings about Wilberforce and strongly influenced later interpretations. The production of a complete initial transcription of the diaries by the Wilberforce Diaries Project for the first time enables a systematic comparison between the Life and its principal source. This reveals a systematic attempt by his sons to minimize references to Wilberforce's participation in some aspects of Hanoverian sociability, his use of medication to deal with his worsening health, his close associations with and respect for Nonconformists and his own evangelical commitment and spirituality. As a consequence, the Wilberforce we know from the biography is as much a product of early Victorian myth-making as the Wilberforce of 1759–1833.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 60: THE CHURCH, HYPOCRISY AND DISSIMULATION , June 2024 , pp. 387 - 407
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Ecclesiastical History Society.
References
1 Robert (1802–57) and Samuel (1805–73) Wilberforce were both ordained in 1838 as Anglican clergymen who, in contrast to their father, were high churchmen and early followers of the Oxford Movement. In 1845, Samuel became bishop of Oxford and then, in 1869, bishop of Winchester, while Robert became a convert to Roman Catholicism in 1854. The most sympathetic portrayal of their religious development remains David Newsome, The Parting of Friends (London, 1966).
2 Wilberforce, Robert Isaac and Wilberforce, Samuel, The Life of William Wilberforce, 5 vols (London, 1838) [hereafter: Life]Google Scholar.
3 For example, The Edinburgh Review 67/135 (1838), 142–80.
4 Clarkson, Thomas, The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (London, 1808)Google Scholar.
5 The Quarterly Review 62/123 (1838), 214–85.
6 Thomas Clarkson, Henry Brougham and Henry Crabbe Robinson, Strictures on a Life of William Wilberforce by the Rev. W[.] [sic.] and the Rev. S. Wilberforce (London, 1838). Brougham (1778–1868) was a leading lawyer and politician who had been prominent in the abolition campaign. Robinson (1775–1867) was a diarist and journalist.
7 Tolley, Christopher, Domestic Biography: The Legacy of Evangelicalism in Four Nineteenth-Century Families (Oxford, 1997), 166–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Jay, William, The Autobiography of the Rev. William Jay, ed. Redford, George and James, John Angel (London, 1854)Google Scholar.
9 Ibid. 300–27.
10 Tolley, Domestic Biography, 172.
11 For a discussion of these concerns, see ibid. 173–6.
12 Furneaux, Robin, William Wilberforce (London, 1974)Google Scholar.
13 Hague, William, William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner (London, 2008)Google Scholar. For an exception, though focussing on Wilberforce's domestic and family life, rather than aiming at a comprehensive biography, see Stott, Anne, Wilberforce: Family and Friends (Oxford, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 Coupland, Reginald, Wilberforce, 2nd edn (London, 1945; first publ. 1923), 431Google Scholar.
15 Brown, Ford K., Fathers of the Victorians: The Age of Wilberforce (Cambridge, 1961), 487–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16 Ibid. 499.
17 Ibid. 500–1.
18 David Newsome, ‘Fathers and Sons’, HistJ 6 (1963), 295–310.
19 Ibid. 301–2.
20 Ibid. 305.
21 Ibid. 301.
22 Brown's work was based exclusively on printed sources. Newsome had been given access to collections of Wilberforce papers for the research which led to the publication of The Parting of Friends in the mid-1960s, but (at least up to 1963) seems to have restricted himself largely to material concerning the sons, rather than their father. See Newsome, Parting of Friends (London, 1966), x–xi, 455–8.
23 For details of the Wilberforce Diaries Project, which aims to produce the first scholarly edition of Wilberforce's surviving diaries and journals, see online at: https://wilberforcediariesproject.com/. Thanks are due to my editorial colleagues, in particular John Coffey and Anna Harrington, without which the analysis presented here would not have been possible. Diaries kept at the Bodleian Library are catalogued in a number of series and are cited following Bodleian document references b.2 and c.40 etc. The large volume kept at the Wilberforce House Museum in Hull has no catalogue reference and is cited by name. The folios in each volume are as numbered by Wilberforce. In the case of the Hull volume, he numbered each page separately in two sequences, the second differentiated from the first by the addition of a lower-case x. For ease of reading, quotations from the diaries expand many of Wilberforce's abbreviations; inserted letters are given in square brackets.
24 The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam, ed. Robert Oresko (London, 1975), 48.
25 Gilbert Elliot, Life and Letters of Sir Gilbert Elliot, First Earl of Minto, ed. Emma Eleanor Elizabeth Hislop Elliot, 3 vols. (London, 1874), 1: 189.
26 Wilberforce took these lodgings in 1786 and used them regularly for parliamentary entertaining, even after his marriage in 1797, until 1808, when he moved his family residence from Clapham to Kensington Gore. See ‘Places’, The Wilberforce Diaries Project, online at: <https://wilberforcediariesproject.com/places/#homes>, accessed 6 August 2023. Sociable dining at the House of Commons is discussed in Caroline Shenton, The Day Parliament Burnt Down (Oxford, 2012), 121–4.
27 Life, 1: 197.
28 Oxford, Bodl., MS Wilberforce b.2, fol. 6, Diary, 27 July 1788.
29 Quoted in Life, 1: 181.
30 See, for instance, Bodl., MS Wilberforce b.2, fol. 10v, Diary, 6 Feb 1789.
31 Life, 1: 197–8.
32 Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.4, fol. 4, Diary, 19 November 1788. ‘Mens’ (an abbreviation of mensa) was Wilberforce's standard shorthand for matters to do with the table and is often to be found in the diary in conjunction with the abbreviation ‘reg’ or ‘regs’, representing regula or regulations.
33 Bodl., MS Wilberforce b.2, fol. 18, Diary, 4–5 October 1789. ‘Ferms’ was Wilberforce's standard shorthand for fermented liquor.
34 See, for instance, Bodl., MS Wilberforce b.2, fol. 24r, Diary, 12 Feb 1791: ‘Sykess & Smiths & Xtian dined with me - again I did not adhere strictly - unless I can keep my Mens: & other Resolves – I must now break off this living so much in Company.’
35 Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.4, fol. 4, Diary, 3 Jan 1789.
36 Bodl., MS Wilberforce b.2, fol. 24r, Diary, 14 Feb. 1791.
37 Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.40, fol.48, Diary, 4 Oct 1792.
38 Bodl., MS Wilberforce b.2, fol. 11v, Diary, 2 March 1789. Wilberforce occasionally used the shorthand term ‘dis’ to represent overconsumption by his own standards of spirits. See, for example, Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.41, fol. 105, Diary, 2 April 1797.
39 Bodl., MS Wilberforce b.2, fol. 16, Diary, 15 June 1789; ibid., fol. 17r, Diary, 31 July 1789.
40 Bodl., MS Wilberforce b.2, fol. 13, Diary, 12 May 1789. Emphasis added.
41 Life, 1: 218.
42 Hannah Greig and Amanda Vickery, ‘The Political Day in London c.1697–1834’, P&P 252 (2021), 101–37, at 131.
43 Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.41, fol. 117, Diary, 11 March 1798.
44 Life, 4: 242.
45 Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.39, fol. 28, Diary, 11 Feb. 1815.
46 For Thorpe, see, for instance, Gareth Atkins, Converting Britannia: Evangelicals and English Public Life, 1770–1840 (Woodbridge, 2019), 165–6. For the deaths of Thornton and Bowdler of tuberculosis on 16 January and 1 February 1815 respectively, see Stott, Wilberforce, 172–88. For the registration bill, see, for example, John Pollock, Wilberforce (Tring, 1977), 249–51.
47 Life, 1: 69–70.
48 Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.34, fol. 41, Diary, 30 December 1794.
49 Bodl., MS Wilberforce Don, e.164, fol. 81, Diary, 18 July 1785.
50 Bodl., MS Wilberforce Don, e.164, fol. 80, Diary, 5 July 1785.
51 Bodl., MS Wilberforce Don, e.164, fol. 83, Diary, 2 August 1785.
52 Bodl., MS Wilberforce b.2, fol. 21, Diary, 17 July 1790.
53 Bodl., MS Wilberforce d.54, fol. 14, Diary, 8 October 1808.
54 See, for instance, Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.34, fol. 148, Diary, 15–21 January 1798; Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.41, fol. 115, Journal, 21 January 1798.
55 Bodl., MS Wilberforce b.2, fol. 21r, Diary, 5 August 1790.
56 Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.34, fol. 33, Diary, 5–7 August 1794.
57 Stott, Anne, Hannah More (Oxford, 2003), viii–ixGoogle Scholar.
58 Auerbach, Emily, Searching for Jane Austen (Madison, WI, 2004), 7–11Google Scholar.
59 In the Authorized Version, 1 Cor 1: 30 reads: ‘But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.’
60 Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.41, fol. 123, Journal, 23 September 1798.
61 See below p. 407.
62 See, for instance, Furneaux, Wilberforce, 76–8.
63 Life, 1: 173–4.
64 For the original reference, see The London Magazine 4 (1821), 294. De Quincey, by his own account, intended a full public identification, but the discretion of his publisher delayed this until 1856. Thomas De Quincey, ‘Original Preface to the Confessions 1821’, in The Works of Thomas De Quincey, 16 vols (Edinburgh, 1878), 1: v–vi. For Milner, see Kevin C. Knox, ‘Milner, Isaac (1750–1820), natural philosopher and dean of Carlisle’, ODNB, online edn (2004), at: <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/18788>, accessed 13 May 2005. Despite the reference to medical opinion in the Life, it is not unlikely that Milner was key as a trusted advisor in introducing Wilberforce to opium and his own experience of intestinal pain (like being gnawed by rats, according to De Quincey) was very similar to that of Wilberforce, who in his diary described his stomach as being ‘raked’: Bodl., MS Wilberforce b.2, fol. 10b, Diary, 2 February 1789.
65 Coupland, Wilberforce, 90.
66 Furneaux, Wilberforce, 78–9.
67 Pollock, Wilberforce, 78–81; Hague, Wilberforce, 161–2.
68 Bodl., MS Wilberforce d.55, fol. 280, Diary, 4 June 1824.
69 Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.34, fol. 117, Diary, 12 June 1796.
70 Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.36, fol. 10, Diary, 6–7 September 1803.
71 Bodl., MS Wilberforce d.54, fol. 67, Diary, 4 August 1810.
72 Bodl., MS Wilberforce d.55, fol. 305, Diary, 6 October 1826.
73 If the phrase indicating that William had no need to increase his dose as a ‘remedy for his specific weakness’ was intended to provide cover for the sons’ handiwork, it is unclear whether it was their deception or self-deception that was being camouflaged.
74 Bodl., MS Wilberforce d.54, fol. 171, Diary, 10 March 1813.
75 Hull, Wilberforce House Museum [hereafter: WHM], Wilberforce Journal, fol. 61, Diary, 19 August 1816.
76 For example, WHM, Wilberforce Journal, 7, Diary, 6 March 1814; WHM, Wilberforce Journal, 44x, Diary, 6 May 1816.
77 For a discussion of the long-term health effects of Wilberforce's opium use, see Pollock, Wilberforce, 81.
78 Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.41, fol. 118, Journal, 1 April 1798.
79 WHM, Wilberforce Journal, fol. 255, Diary, 26 November 1821.
80 For such concerns, see, for instance, Robert Philip, No Opium! Or Commerce and Christianity, working together for good in China; a letter to James Cropper, Esq of Liverpool (London, 1835). James Cropper, the putative addressee of the pamphlet, was an abolitionist associated with Wilberforce in the African Institution and a leader of the later emancipation campaign.
81 See, for example, Newsome, Parting of Friends, 234–5.
82 Some of Wilberforce's Nonconformist connections are explored in John Coffey and Michael Morgan, ‘William Wilberforce and English Dissent’, Journal of the United Reformed Church History Society 11 (2022), 3–20.
83 Life, 3: 91–2.
84 Roger H. Martin, Evangelicals United: Ecumenical Stirrings in Pre-Victorian Britain, 1795–1830 (London, 1983), 85–6.
85 See, for instance, H. H. Norris, A Practical Exposition of the Tendency and Proceedings of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 2nd edn (London, 1814; first publ. 1813).
86 Martin, Evangelicals United, 93.
87 While the sons seem to have sought out correspondence from a number of their father's friends (see Life, 1: vii), they do not appear to have asked William Jay. Jay's correspondence with Wilberforce was subsequently published in his own autobiography. See William Jay, ed. Redford and James, 299–324.
88 Life, 2: 234, 313.
89 Life, 2: 240; 5: 258.
90 Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.34, fol. 144, Diary, 8 October 1797.
91 For example, Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.34, fols 134–5, Diary, 12 February 1797; Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.39, fol. 79, Diary, 8 December 1825.
92 Bodl., MS Wilberforce b.2, fol. 25v, Diary, 29 May 1791.
93 For instance, Bodl., MS Wilberforce d.54, fol. 9, Diary, 31 August 1808.
94 Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.38, fol. 91, Diary, 25 March 1833.
95 Life, 4: 225.
96 Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.39, fol. 26, Diary, 1 January 1815.
97 Life, 5: 258.
98 Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.39, fol. 77, Diary, 23 Oct 1825.
99 For example, Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.39, fol. 78, Diary, 4 December 1825; Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.38, fol. 60, Diary, 23 Sept 1832.
100 For instance, Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.39, fol. 78, Diary, 27 November 1825.
101 Life, 5: 140; Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.39, fol. 86, Diary, 28 May 1826.
102 For example, WHM, Wilberforce Journal, fol. 6, Diary, 3 March 1814.
103 Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.35, fol. 30, Diary, 9 January 1802.
104 Bodl., MS Wilberforce d.54, fol. 126, Diary, 28 December 1811.
105 Life, 3: 566.
106 Life, 4: 153.
107 Bodl., MS Wilberforce d.54, fol. 183v, Diary, 3 January 1814.
108 Tolley, Domestic Biography, 172.
109 Bodl., MS Wilberforce d.55, fol. 344, Diary, 28 December 1828. See also Bodl., MS Wilberforce c.39, fol. 45, Diary, Monday 26 August 1816.
110 WHM, Wilberforce Journal, fol. 73, Diary, 17 May 1817.
111 Life, 4: 323.
112 Life, 1: 201. Emphasis added.
113 Bodl., MS Wilberforce b.2, fol. 9, Diary, 18 January 1789. Emphasis added.
114 Life, 3: 356. Emphasis added.
115 Bodl., MS Wilberforce d.54, fols 115–6, Diary, 24 August 1811. Emphasis added.
116 For the hardening of church parties, see, for instance, John Walsh and Stephen Taylor, ‘The Church and Anglicanism’, in John Walsh, Colin Haydon and Stephen Taylor, eds, The Church of England c.1689–c.1833 (Cambridge, 1993), 29–51.
117 William Wilberforce, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes in this Country Contrasted with Real Christianity (London, 1797), 54, 85–6, 136–7.
118 Life, 1: 107.