Inside the mind of Robert Wilberforce: A closer look at the Wilberforce Collection

Emily Atkin, MA Public History, examines the texts in the Wilberforce Collection that confirm Robert Wilberforce's spiritual doubts and misgivings. 

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The Wilberforce Collection is a subset of books within the Mirfield Collection - deposited at the University of York in 1973 on permanent loan from the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield, but formerly belonging to the library of abolitionist William Wilberforce and sons Robert and Samuel. William Wilberforce’s library was dispersed during the years after his death in 1833 and though many have found their way back into the Wilberforce Library at Wilberforce House Museum (WHM) as a result of donations by descendants, there is no telling how many more may have wound their way undetected into libraries like that of the Community of the Resurrection, built up by gifts from members and friends. The subject-matter contained within the library at WHM is wide-ranging, reflecting the interests, passions and religious devotion of Wilberforce and his family and thought to be actively used for self-improvement and religious inspiration, the many handwritten annotations being evidence of this. [1] The same can also be said of those now held in the library here at the University of York, with those belonging to William’s son Robert, to whom the majority of the found books belong,  being particularly worthy of mention.

 In 1854 Robert Isaac Wilberforce resigned from the Anglican Church and was received into the Church of Rome. This decision marked the culmination of decades of personal, spiritual, turmoil but formed part of a larger trend of secession by High-Church individuals in the Church of England which had become typical in the mid-nineteenth century.[2] Their motivation? While many Anglo-Catholic converts were detached from the Church of their baptism simply because they found the marks of the “true” Church elsewhere, a series of reforms undermining the authority of the Church and its existence independent of the State propelled many others into the arms of the Tractarians and the Oxford Movement and, ultimately, the Catholic Church - Robert Wilberforce among them.[3]

For some the Oxford Movement represents a gigantic conspiracy to subvert the Protestantism of the Church of England from within however the reality is much more nuanced than that.[4] Joining the Oxford Movement was not a precursor to the wholesale repudiation of Evangelicalism with a guaranteed conversion to Catholicism at the end of it. As mentioned above, for some their Evangelicalism was a sort of stepping stone in a gradual spiritual awakening which culminated in their acceptance of the Roman Catholic Church as their “true” church; yet countless others remained within the Anglican Church, seeing the Movement as a vehicle for a much needed revival of theological studies and liturgical renewal.[5] Robert’s decision, though gradual, was not easy and represented thirty years of doubt and indecision as he wrestled with the crisis between Church and State and the impacts of this on his own faith. His growing disillusionment was centred around what he perceived to be an untidy boundary between the State and the Church which caused his allegiance to the Church of England to gradually wane until it disappeared altogether and gave way to a conviction that the Church of England was a heretical body to which he could no longer belong with a clear conscience.[6] But what does this have to do with a collection of books?

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The Oxford Movement was as much an intellectual movement as one of spiritual revival and Robert was regarded as one of the Movement’s greatest theologians; his good friend and spiritual confidante Henry Manning going so far as to say he was perhaps the greatest of his generation.[7] To be able to see into the minds of history’s great thinkers is a privilege not always obtainable, however thanks to the discovery of a collection of texts once belonging to Robert Wilberforce within the Mirfield Collection, there is a chance we are able to do just that. What first appeared to be a collection of (not unsurprisingly) religious texts ranging in language from English to Latin, German and even Hebrew, upon closer inspection emerged as being that and so much more besides. Not only does the range of languages correspond with what is already known of Robert’s command of Christian doctrine, his familiarity with theological debates in Europe and interest in Lutheran doctrines in particular; the actual content of these texts and the evidence of Robert’s personal interaction with them is most illuminating of all. Through examining these texts it is easy to see more clearly just how consumed Robert was with what he perceived to be the untenable position of the English Church, the questioning of his own religious views as a result of that, and the influence on his own contributions to the history of Christian theology.

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The vast majority of these texts are religious in nature, and are altogether an unsurprising collection given they belonged to a man of the Church. However, with the knowledge of Robert’s spiritual doubts and misgivings, when certain texts are examined more closely we find that they become further evidence of this. Many are concerned with the reformation of the liturgy, the administration of the sacraments, and post-reformation histories of similar crises within the Christian church; of the books there a considerable number which contain signs of interaction by Robert such as marginal annotations, underlining and the logging of pertinent sections in his own personal index. For example in A Petition for Peace “highlighted” sections include those relating to the sacraments, specifically communion and the contested idea of transubstantiation; and the greatest example of Robert’s indexing in this sample can be found in Robert’s copy of Paolo Sarpi’s History of the Council of Trent. The Council itself was a key part of the Counter-Reformation, playing a vital role in revitalizing the Roman Catholic Church throughout Europe and though Sarpi was critical of the Council for hardening differences with Protestants and quashing any hope of a united Christendom, it seems that this text is one which Robert engaged with heavily, and may be cited as an influence on Robert’s own writing.[8] Within this text indicated in the margins are sections such as those concerning ‘indulgences’, ‘repentance’, ‘benefits of council’ and, rather tellingly, ‘church authority’, all of which correspond to his three page index. It might well be assumed that this was a text that Robert found himself going back to time and again, hence the need to make relevant information easy to locate.

Like many of his Oxford fellows, Robert’s main preoccupations were: the centrality of the sacraments; the conviction that the Church of England must be freed from all state interference in matters of doctrine; and the need within the church for a systematic corpus of theology – preoccupying him to the point that his three great works - or doctrines - The Doctrine of the Incarnation (1848), of Holy Baptism (1849) and of the Holy Eucharist (1853), saw him draw together the various strands of sacramental teaching, as communicated and understood both in the past and in more recent times, to form a single corpus of theology. These doctrines are at the heart of why Robert was regarded as one of the greatest theologians of his time or, alternatively, a heretic. [9]

Robert’s works excited such controversy that he was at risk of prosecution by his Archbishop for false teaching. [10] In An appeal to the Lord Archbishop of York, one James Taylor accused Robert of “teaching most emphatically […] all the gross heresies of the apostate Church of Rome”, “advocating without any disguise, all the popery of Trent” in his defence of the decrees of the Council of Trent against those of the Church of England.[11] In fact, Robert rather welcomed an eventuality - namely the threat of prosecution – which would force him to make a decision on the issue that was haunting him day and night – the question of whether he should seek reception into the Roman Church. When in the summer of 1854 rumours began to spread of legal proceedings being initiated against him Robert’s mind was made up, on the 30 August he recalled his subscription to the Oath of Supremacy and submitted his resignation from all his posts to the Archbishop and in October made the trip to Paris where he was to be received into the Church of Rome on all Saints’ Eve. [12]

References

[1] Information available at Wilberforce House Museum

[2] Conrad, B. ‘The Politics of Conversion - the case of Robert Isaac Wilberforce’, International Journal for the
Study of the Christian Church, 16:3, (2016), 182, https://doi.org/10.1080/1474225X.2016.1221591 

[3] Newsome, D. The Parting of Friends: A study of the Wilberforces and Henry Manning,
(London: Murray, 1966), 371 and Nockles, P.B. ‘The Oxford Movement and Evangelicalism: Parallels and
Contrasts in Two Nineteenth-Century Movements of Religious Revival’ in R. Webster, Perfecting Perfection:
Essays in Honour of Henry D. Rack, (James Clark  & Co Ltd, 2015), 243
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1dfnrbh.16 

[4] Nockles, ‘The Oxford Movement and Evangelicalism’, 236

[5] Nockles, ‘The Oxford Movement and Evangelicalism’, 258

[6] Conrad, ‘The Politics of Conversion’, 192

[7] Nockles, ‘The Oxford Movement and Evangelicalism’, 256 and Newsome, The Parting of Friends, 381

[8] See ‘Council of Trent’, Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/event/Council-of-Trent
and Cronin, V. ‘Paolo Sarpi’, Encyclopaedia Britannica,
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paolo-Sarpi#ref243329

[9] Newsome, D. ‘Wilberforce, Robert Isaac (1802-1857)’, OxfordDNB, 23 Sept, 2004,
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-29384;jsessionid=A5F5FD7A1615565ED58C1D17686D3610
and Newsome, The Parting of Friends

[10] Newsome, The Parting of Friends, 399

[11] James, T, An Appeal to the Lord Archbishop of York, on the uncondemned heresies of the Venerable
Archdeacon Wilberforce’s book, entitled ‘The doctrine of the Holy Eucharist’, (London, William and Macintosh;
Wakefield, Stanfield, 1854)

[12] Newsome, The Parting of Friends, 402