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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2021
This paper will examine the relationship between Samuel Wilberforce and John Henry Newman. The two priests had a common cause in their wish to see the Church of England rediscover its Catholic identity – which led them to work alongside one another at the beginning of the Oxford Movement – but quickly drifted apart because of their strong divergences on the nature of the Church and the place of Tradition, as well as Samuel Wilberforce’s strong hostility to Rome. The paper also examines the place of Samuel Wilberforce’s young brother in this relationship.
I wish to thank Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt and the Governing Body of Jesus College, Oxford: they gave me the opportunity to make extensive research for this article as part of my Short-Term Visiting Fellowship during Trinity Term 2019.
2 David Newsome, The Parting of Friends: A Study of the Wilberforces and Henry Manning (London: Murray, 1966), pp. 97 and 309.
3 Ian Ker, John Henry Newman, a Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 502 and 675.
4 Arthur Rawson Ashwell† and Reginald Garton Wilberforce, Life of the Right Reverend Samuel Wilberforce, D. D., Lord Bishop of Oxford and afterwards of Winchester, with selections from his diaries and correspondence [hereafter Life] (3 vols.; London: John Murray, 1880–82), II, p. 266.
5 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, II, pp. 261-62.
6 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 26.
7 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 36.
8 The Convocation is the legislative body of the University of Oxford, composed of ‘all the former student members of the University who have been admitted to a degree (other than an honorary degree) of the University’ as well as current and retired office-holders of the University (cf. https://www.ox.ac.uk/about/organisation/history/oxford-glossary?wssl=1 (accessed 31 May 2019).
9 John Henry Newman was exactly 5 years, 6 months and 2 weeks older than Samuel Wilberforce.
10 Newsome, The Parting of Friends, p. 97.
11 Samuel Wilberforce to John Henry Newman, 26 July 1836, Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman [hereafter LD] (ed. Stephen Charles Dessain; 32 vols.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978–2008), V, p. 332.
12 John Henry Newman to Samuel Wilberforce, 4 August 1836, LD, V, p. 332.
13 John Henry Newman to Arthur Rawson Ashwell, 30 March 1876, LD, XXVIII, p. 46.
14 Samuel Wilberforce’s younger brother, Robert Wilberforce, was a Fellow of Oriel College, and had been a tutor along with Newman and Hurrell Froude from 1826 to 1831. Originally closer to Pusey, Robert Wilberforce was drawn to Newman because of their common dedication to giving their Oriel tutorships a pastoral aspect (Newsome, The Parting of Friends, pp. 92-96), as well as, no doubt, Newman’s obvious charisma. The two men became a little more distant over the years, partly because Robert Wilberforce left Oxford to study in Bonn for most of 1831, and then married in 1832 and was appointed to various vicarages in Kent and Yorkshire. His pastoral care and his own theological writing necessarily put some distance between himself and John Henry Newman. As already noted, Robert Wilberforce was later received into the Roman Catholic Church (in October 1854).
15 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 217.
16 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 217.
17 Fr Ian Ker develops this point: Ker, John Henry Newman, pp. 3-5.
18 Ker, John Henry Newman, p. 3.
19 Ker, John Henry Newman, p. 4.
20 Ker, John Henry Newman, p. 4.
21 Peter Nockles remarks on the surprising bridges between Evangelicalism and Catholicism at the time of the Oxford Movement: Peter B. Nockles, ‘The Oxford Movement and Evangelicalism’ in Robert Webster (ed.), Perfection Perfected: Essays in Honor of Henry D. Rack (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2015), pp. 233–59.
22 John Henry Newman to J.W. Bowden, 6 November 1838, LD, VI, p. 337.
23 John Henry Newman to H.A. Woodgate, 22 September 1841, LD, VIII, p. 277.
24 Samuel Wilberforce, ‘Sermon XXII: The Apostolical Ministry: Its Difficulties, Strengths and Duties’ (1833) in Sermons Preached and Published on Several Occasions (London: John W. Parker & Son, 1854), p. 27.
25 [John Henry Newman], ‘Thoughts on the Ministerial Commission’, Tracts for the Times, n° 1, 9 September1833, [n. p.].
26 Probably Tract LXVI (13/4/1835), a supplement to Tract XVII which had been the first tract ‘signed’ by its author (Pusey had affixed his initials to it).
27 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 83.
28 Quoted in Meacham, Lord Bishop, p. 67.
29 Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part I: 1829–1859 (London: SCM Press, 3rd edn, 1987), p. 116.
30 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 93.
31 Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part I, p. 116.
32 John Henry Newman to Simeon Lloyd Pope, 3 March 1836, LD, V, p. 251.
33 Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part I, p. 118.
34 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 93.
35 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 93.
36 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 93.
37 Samuel Wilberforce to Louisa Noel, 1 April 1836 in Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 93.
38 John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (ed. David J. DeLaura; London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1968) p. 61.
39 Parliamentary Debates. House of Lords Debates, 21 December 1837, vol. 39, c. 1402.
40 ‘As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain’ (nrsv).
41 Samuel Wilberforce, ‘Sermon I: The Moral Consequences of Permitted Sin’ in Sermons preached before the University of Oxford in St Mary’s Church in the years MDCCCXXXVII, MDCCCXXXVIII & MDCCCXXXIX (London: James Burn, 1839), p. 10.
42 Strictly speaking, S. Wilberforce was not a Tractarian since he never contributed to the publication. Neither was he a Puseyite – again literally – since he never studied under E.B. Pusey.
43 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, pp. 115-16.
44 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 116.
45 Wilberforce, University Sermons, p. v.
46 Wilberforce, University Sermons, p. 38.
47 Wilberforce, University Sermons, p. 39.
48 Wilberforce, University Sermons, p. 40.
49 Tract for the Times n° 67: Scriptural views of Holy Baptism (24/8/1835), § xiii.
50 He had previously written some reviews for them (Meacham, Lord Bishop, p. 66).
51 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, pp. 125-26.
52 Meacham, Lord Bishop, p. 67.
53 Simon Skinner, ‘Newman, the Tractarians and the British Critic’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 50.4 (1999), p. 716.
54 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, pp. 35-36.
55 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 120. This strange reference to the missionary priest Henry Martyn (1781–1812), who had died of fever in present-day Northern Turkey seems to indicate the vanity of human suffering offered in vain and for no purpose.
56 Richard Hurrell Froude, Remains of the Late Reverend Richard Hurrell Froude, M.A., Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford (London: J. G. & F. Rivington, 1838), II, p. 433.
57 Froude, Remains, II, p. 435.
58 See [Samuel Wilberforce], ‘Keble’s Biography’ (July 1869) in Samuel Wilberforce†, Essays Contributed to the ‘Quarterly Review’ (London: John Murray, 1874), II, p. 233.
59 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 129.
60 Henry Parry Liddon†, Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1898), II, p. 68.
61 Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part I, p. 177.
62 He wrote thus: ‘I have no sort of confidence in Cranmer etc, and I will not commit myself to them. Practically speaking, to subscribe is to make them the representatives of the English Church – This is the reason they are brought forward; in order to be watchwords against the Romanists… it is to acknowledge them theologically. … I say that Cranmer will not stand examination’, John Henry Newman to Thomas Henderson, 28 December 1838, LD, VI, p. 364.
63 On this controversy, and on Charles Golightly in general, see Andrew Atherstone, Oxford’s Protestant Spy: The Controversial Career of Charles Golightly (Milton Keynes: Paternoster 2007).
64 Williams had published three collections of poems: The Cathedral, or, The Catholic and Apostolic Church in England (1838), Thoughts in Past Years (1838) and Hymns Translated from the Parisian Breviary (1839).
65 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 205.
66 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 205.
67 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 205.
68 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 207.
69 Chadwick The Victorian Church, Part I, p. 204.
70 Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part I, p. 204.
71 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 205.
72 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 205.
73 W.G. Ward, The Ideal of a Christian Church, considered in comparison with the existing practice (London: James Toovey, 1844), p. 45.
74 Ward, Ideal, p. 567.
75 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, pp. 246-47.
76 [Newman], ‘Thoughts on the Ministerial Commission’.
77 John Henry Newman, The Restoration of Suffragan Bishops Recommended (London: J.G. & F. Rivington, 1835), p. 26.
78 Newman, Restoration, p. 15.
79 Newman, Restoration, p. 17.
80 Newman, Apologia, pp. 65-66.
81 He was to develop this line of argument in March 1837 in Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church viewed relatively to Romanism and Popular Protestantism. This theory would be developed further by William Palmer of Worcester College in A Treatise on the Church of Christ (1838).
82 Wilberforce, ‘Sermon XXII’, p. 27.
83 Meacham, Lord Bishop, p. 252.
84 Meacham, Lord Bishop, p. 252.
85 Meacham, Lord Bishop, p. 252.
86 Meacham, Lord Bishop, p. 252. See also Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, II, pp. 202-203.
87 Newsome, The Parting of Friends, p. 289.
88 Ker, John Henry Newman, p. 235.
89 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 198.
90 He was transferred in 1869 to Winchester but was there for barely four years before dying abruptly after falling off his horse (he may also have had a heart attack while on horseback).
91 Meacham, Lord Bishop, p. 268.
92 On this, see Arthur Burns, The Diocesan Revival in the Church of England c. 1800–1870 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd edn, 1999), p. 344.
93 Meacham, Lord Bishop, p. 80.
94 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 83.
95 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 213.
96 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, II, p. 69.
97 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, I, p. 214.
98 John Henry Newman, Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, viewed relatively to Romanism and Popular Protestantism (London: J.G. & F. Rivington, 1838), p. 36.
99 Newman, Prophetical Office, p. 37.
100 Newman, Prophetical Office, p. 291.
101 Newman, Prophetical Office, p. 63.
102 Newsome, The Parting of Friends, p. 192.
103 Meacham, Lord Bishop, p. 90.
104 Meacham, Lord Bishop, pp. 90-91.
105 [Wilberforce], ‘Keble’s Biography’, p. 231.
106 The reference here is to Dean Burgon’s Lives of Twelve Good Men (1888) (London: John Murray, 1889), II, pp. 1-70.
107 George William Daniell, Bishop Wilberforce (London: Methuen & Co., 1891), p. 28.
108 Roy Jenkins, Gladstone (London: Papermac/Macmillan, 2nd edn, 1996), p. 373. See also Noel Annan, Leslie Stephen (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2nd edn, 1984), p. 207.
109 See in particular Meacham, Lord Bishop, pp. 172-75.
110 Sophia was the sister-in-law of Emily Sargent, Samuel Wilberforce’s wife, who had died prematurely in 1841. She was also the daughter of Bishop Henry Ryder of Lichfield (1777–1836) whom J.H. Newman says he ‘venerate[d]’ in the early 1830s (Newman, Apologia, p. 37).
111 J.H. Newman was aware of this and wrote in March 1876: ‘In 1850, when I saw him at Grace-Dieu, in George Ryder’s house, where Mrs G. Ryder lay dead, he turned round at once, would not even look me on the face and so disappeared’, Newman, LD, XXVIII, p. 46.
112 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, II, p. 262.
113 Ashwell and Wilberforce, Life, II, p. 253.