Wilberforce: High Authority, Low Method

Abstract

Samuel Wilberforce (1805–1873) was Manning’s brother-in-law in the Victorian sense of their being married to two sisters. This fact affected their outlooks deeply and Wilberforce was talking about Manning to Lord Granville at the beginning of the ride which ended in his accidental death.In the 1830s, when they were especially close, it is often difficult to tell which of the twin stars initiated a particular line of thought. Despite the efforts of David Newsome and Standish Meacham, the younger Wilberforce remains underrated. Contemporaries regarded him as a person of exceptional talents. He combined the personal charm of Newman with the administrative abilities of Manning, while avoiding the introversion of the first and the forbidding exterior of the second. Wilberforce, it may be argued, was the architect of modern Anglicanism. He initiated, what has been so often the pattern of the Church of England, a period of reconstruction and renewal after apparently irretrievably damaging secessions and losses. He did so through an infusion of critical thinking suited to Anglican institutions and sufficient to restart their mechanisms.