Samuel Wilberforce

Samuel Wilberforce, FRS (7 September 1805 – 19 July 1873) was an English bishop in the Church of England, and the third son of William Wilberforce. Known as "Soapy Sam", Wilberforce was one of the greatest public speakers of his day. He is now best remembered for his opposition to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution at a debate in 1860. Early life He was born at Clapham Common, London, the fifth child of William Wilberforce, a major campaigner against the slave trade and slavery, and Barbara Spooner; he was the younger brother of Robert Isaac Wilberforce. He had an Anglican education, outside the English public schools. This was the "private and domestic" pattern of instruction chosen for his sons by William Wilberforce. It concentrated on a traditional teaching of the classics, but in a clerical home environment. Samuel Wilberforce was from 1812 under Stephen Langston, and then Edward Garrard Marsh. With Henry Hoare of Staplehurst and others, he was a pupil in 1819 at Stanstead Park, near Racton in Sussex, of George Hodson, at that time chaplain to Lewis Way. Hodson was tutoring Albert Way, but gathered a small class of six boys, who included also James Thomason. In 1820 Hodson moved to Maisemore near Gloucester as a curate, taking pupils with him. Wilberforce was schooled under Hodson in Gloucestershire until 1822, when he required coaching for university entrance. For that he went, with his younger brother Henry, to Francis Roach Spragge at Bidborough. In 1823 Wilberforce entered Oriel College, Oxford. In the United Debating Society, the forerunner of the Oxford Union, he demonstrated some Whig views. His friends included William Ewart Gladstone and Henry Edward Manning, and were nicknamed the "Bethel Union" for their religiosity. Wilberforce's student recreations included riding and hunting. He graduated in 1826, taking a first-class degree in mathematics and a second in classics.