THE

LIFE OF WILBERFORCE.

CHAPTER I.

Birth-Parentage-Education.

WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, only son of Robert Wilberforce and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Bird Esq. of Barton, Oxon, was born at Hull upon the feast of St. Bartholomew, August 24, A. D. 1759. He was the third of four children, but of his three sisters the second only arrived at maturity.

His ancestors had long been settled in the county of York. In the reign of the second Henry, Ilgerus de Wilberfoss served in the Scottish wars under Philip de Kyme, with a daughter of whose powerful house he had intermarried. The township of Wilberfoss, eight miles east of York, gave him a mansion and a name; and his property extended to the neighbourhood of Stamford bridge, a spot then famous for the recent battle between Harold and Tosti, the last victory of the last Saxon monarch.

At Wilberfoss the family was fixed for many generations, until, after a gradual decline in wealth and numbers, it disappeared from the place about a century ago." Note, that all these," says Robert Glover, Somerset Herald, after enumerating sixteen descents, "did successively succeed as is here set down, and that they did successively occupy the Soake of Cotton which containeth six villages, &c."1 About the middle of the sixteenth century, the son of William Wilberfoss of Wilberfoss, by his second marriage, settled in the neighbouring town of Beverley. His son appears in the Visitation of 1612 as William Wilberfoss of Brigham: and here and at Beverley the younger branch rose into importance as the parent stock decayed.

William Wilberfoss was mayor of Beverley at the opening of the great rebellion; and the same office was twice filled at Hull, in the succeeding century, by a great-grandson William Wilberfoss, or, as he finally fixed its spelling, Wilberforce; who continued in the Baltic trade, though, besides his patrimonial fortune, he inherited a considerable landed property from his mother, an heiress of the Davye family. He was a man of much repute for talent and integrity; and the settlement of Joseph Milner in the grammar school at Hull is an abiding record of his well-directed influence. Robert, the younger of his two children, father of William Wilberforce, was a partner in the house at Hull; and here was spent the early childhood

1 Herald's Vis. A. D. 1584.

of his distinguished son. The old man had seen much of life; and one of those tales of travel with which he charmed his grandson is even yet preserved. He had been admitted to the intimacy of the Duke of Marlborough, then commanding the allied armies on the continent; and was invited by that general to witness from the safeguard of a neighbouring eminence the incidents of an approaching battle. Through reluctance to overstep from idle curiosity the strict line of professional duty, enforced perhaps by a careful regard to his personal safety, the offer was prudently declined by the grateful merchant. Upon a more fitting occasion he displayed some military ardour when the arsenal of Hull was prepared for an expected attack in the year 1745.

Of the early years of William Wilberforce little is recorded. His frame from infancy was feeble, his stature small, his eyes weak,.. a failing which with many rich mental endowments he inherited from his mother. It was one amongst the many expressions of his gratitude in after-life "that I was not born in less civilized times, when it would have been thought impossible to rear so delicate a child." But with these bodily infirmities were united a vigorous mind, and a temper eminently affectionate. An unusual thoughtfulness for others marked his youngest childhood: "I shall never forget," says a frequent guest at his mother's, "how he would steal into my sick room, taking off his shoes lest he should disturb me, and with an anxious face looking through my curtains to

learn if I was better." At seven years old he was sent to the grammar school of Hull, of which Joseph Milner was soon afterwards master. "Even then his elocution was so remarkable," says the younger Milner 2 at that time his brother's assistant, "that we used to set him upon a table, and make him read aloud as an example to the other boys." Thus he spent two years, going daily from his father's house to school with his "satchel on his shoulder," and occasionally visiting his grandfather at Ferriby, a pleasant village seven miles distant, on the Humber. The death of his father in the summer of 1768 transferred him to the care of his uncle William Wilberforce; and after a week's residence at Nottingham, 3 he was sent to live with him at Wimbledon and in St. James's Place. Such was then the standard measure of private education, that the school at which he was soon afterwards placed was of the meanest character. "Mr. Chalmers the master, himself a Scotchman, had an usher of the same nation, whose red beard-for he scarcely shaved once a month-I shall never forget. They taught writing, French, arithmetic, and Latin.. with Greek we did not much meddle. It was frequented chiefly by the sons of merchants, and they taught therefore every thing and nothing. Here I continued some time as a parlour boarder: I was sent at first amongst the lodgers, and I can remember even now the nauseous

2 Isaac Milner, afterwards Dean of Carlisle.

3 At the house of A. Smith Esq. father to the present Lord Carrington, who had married his mother's sister

RESIDENCE AT HIS UNCLE'S.

5

food with which we were supplied, and which I could not eat without sickness." 4

He remained two years at this school, spending his holidays at his uncle's house, with occasional visits to Nottingham and Hull. He is described at this time as "a fine sharp lad," whose activity and spirit made up in boyish sports for some deficiency of strength. One incident of these years deserves special notice from its assisting, as he thought, to form what was undoubtedly a striking feature in his later character. He received from the late John Thornton, the brother of his aunt, with whom he was travelling, a present much exceeding the usual amount of a boy's possessions, intended to enforce the precept with which it was accompanied, that some should be given to the poor.

"

When he quitted Hull no great pains had been taken to form his religious principles. His mother indeed was a woman of real excellence, as well as of great and highly cultivated talents, but not possessed at this time of those views of the spiritual nature of religion, which she adopted in later life: "She was what I should call an Archbishop Tillotson Christian." 5 But in his uncle's house he was subjected to a new and powerful influence. His aunt was a great admirer of Whitefield's preaching, and kept up a friendly connexion with the early methodists. The lively affections of his heart, warmed by the kindness of his friends, readily assumed their tone. A stranger has noticed.

4 Conversational Memoranda.

5 Ib.

6 Private Journal of J. Russel Esq. to whom at this time he sat for