WILBERFORCE, SAMUEL (1805-1873), English bishop, third son of William Wilberforce, was born at Clapham Common, London, on Sept. 7,1805. He graduated from Oriel College, Ox ford, in 1826, taking a first class in mathematics and a second in classics. He was ordained in 1828, and in 1830 became rector of Brightstone, Isle of Wight. Although a High Churchman Wilber force held aloof from the Oxford movement, and in 1838 his di vergence from the "Tract" writers became so marked that J. H. Newman declined further contributions from him to the British Critic, not deeming it advisable that they should longer "co operate very closely." In 1838 Wilberforce published, with his elder brother Robert, the Life of his father, and two years later his father's Correspondence. In 1839 he also published Euchar istica (from the old English divines), to which he wrote an intro duction, Agathos and other Sunday Stories, and a volume of University Sermons, and in the following year Rocky Island and other Parables. In March 1844 he was made dean of Westminster, and in October bishop of Oxford.
The bishop in 1847 became involved in the Hampden contro versy, and signed the remonstrance of the thirteen bishops to Lord John Russell against R. D. Hampden's appointment to the bishop ric of Hereford. He also endeavoured to obtain satisfactory assur ances from Hampden ; but, though unsuccessful in this, he withdrew from the suit against him. The publication of a papal bull in 1850 establishing a Roman hierarchy in England brought. the High Church party, of whom Wilberforce was the most promi nent member, into temporary disrepute. His diary reveals a devout private life which has been overlooked by those who have only considered the versatile facility and persuasive expedi ency that marked the successful public career of the bishop, and earned him the sobriquet of "Soapy Sam."
His attitude towards Essays and Reviews, 1861, against which he wrote an article in the Quarterly, won him the special gratitude of the Low Church party, and latterly he enjoyed the full confidence and esteem of all except the extreme men of either side and party. On the publication of J. W. Colenso's Commentary on the Romans in 1861, Wilberforce sought a private conference with the author; but after the publication of the first two parts of the Pentateuch Critically Examined he drew up the address of the bishops which called on Colenso to resign his bishopric. Though opposed to the disestablishment of the Irish Church, yet, when the constitu encies decided for it, he advised that no opposition should be made to it by the House of Lords. After twenty-four years' labour in the diocese of Oxford, he was translated by Gladstone to the bishopric of Winchester. He was killed on July 19, 1873, by the shock of a fall from his horse near Dorking, Surrey.
See Life of Samuel Wilberforce, with Selections from his Diary and Correspondence (1879-82), vol. i., ed. by Canon A. R. Ashwell, and vols. ii. and iii., ed. by his son R. G. Wilberforce, who also wrote a one-volume Life (19°5). One of the volumes of the "English Leaders of Religion" is devoted to him, and he is included in Dean Burgon's Lives of Twelve Good Men (1888).