His evidence before the royal commission appointed in 1905 to inquire into ecclesiastical disorders contained a vigorous defence of the clergy in his diocese. The success which crowned his policy was largely due to the exercise of what was practically a dispensing power.
These troubles were not allowed to interfere with the general administration of his diocese, and his exertions in setting on foot a regular system of Easter offerings as a means of increasing the stipends of the parochial clergy resulted in the annual collection of a sum which in the last year of his episcopate only just fell short of 10,000l. In 1896 he was elected chairman of the Church of England Temperance Society, and in 1904 he made one of a party of English clergy who visited South Africa on ‘a mission of help.’ Rhodesia and the northern Transvaal were allotted to him, and there his unaffected manners and downright speech proved highly attractive. He died after a short illness on 9 Sept. 1907 at Bembridge in the Isle of Wight, and he was buried at West Hampnett, near Chichester.
In many respects, and especially in speech and intonation, Ernest Wilberforce bore a marked resemblance to his father, from whom he inherited an eloquence which found a freer vent on the platform than in the pulpit. A somewhat chilling manner rendered him a formidable personality to those who had not the opportunity of penetrating beneath the reserve which covered a highly sympathetic and affectionate nature. Devoted to every form of exercise and sport, he spent part of his annual holidays on a salmon river in Norway. Endowed with extraordinary physical strength, he was a type of the muscular Christianity celebrated by Charles Kingsley and Tom Hughes. An oil painting by S. Goldsborough Anderson is in the possession of Mrs. Wilberforce; a replica hangs in the Palace at Chichester.
Wilberforce was twice married: (1) in 1863 to Frances Mary, third daughter of Sir Charles Anderson, Bart., who died in October 1870 at San Remo without issue; (2) on 14 Oct. 1874 to Emily, only daughter of George Connor, afterwards dean of Windsor [q. v.], who survived him, together with a family of three sons and three daughters.
[Ernest Roland Wilberforce, a Memoir by J. B. Atlay, 1912; Life of Samuel Wilberforce, by Canon Ashwell and Reginald Wilberforce; Chronicle of Convocation, Feb. 1908; Church Times, 13 Sept. 1907; Guardian, 11 Sept. 1907; the Temperance Chronicle, 13 Sept. 1907; Minutes of Evidence taken before the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Disorders, questions 18953–19154.]
WILKINS, AUGUSTUS SAMUEL (1843–1905), classical scholar, born in Enfield Road, Kingsland, London, N., on 20 Aug. 1843, was son of Samuel J. Wilkins, schoolmaster in Brixton, by his wife Mary Haslam of Thaxted, Essex. His parents were congregationalists. Educated at Bishop Stortford collegiate school, he then attended the lectures of Henry Malden [q. v.], professor of Greek, and of F. W. Newman [q. v. Suppl. I], professor of Latin, at University College, London. Entering St. John's College, Cambridge, with an open exhibition in October 1864, he became a foundation scholar in 1866, and won college prizes for English essays in 1865 and 1866, and the moral philosophy prize in 1868. He distinguished himself as a fluent speaker at the Union, and was president for Lent term, 1868. In the same year he graduated B.A. as fifth in the first class of the classical tripos. Both as an undergraduate and as a bachelor of arts he won the members' prize for the Latin essay, while his skill as a writer of English was attested by his three university prize essays—the Hulsean for 1868, the Burney for 1870, and the Hare for 1873, the respective subjects being ‘Christian and Pagan Ethics,’ ‘Phœnicia and Israel,’ and ‘National Education in Greece.’ All three were published: the first, which appeared in 1869 under the title of ‘The Light of the World,’ and quickly reached a second edition, was dedicated to James Baldwin Brown the younger [q. v.], congregational minister. The second prize essay (1871) was dedicated to James Fraser, bishop of Manchester, and the third (1873) to Connop Thirlwall, bishop of St. David's.
As a nonconformist, Wilkins was legally disqualified for a fellowship. When the religious disability was cancelled by the Tests Act of 1871, Wilkins was disqualified by marriage, nor was he helped by the removal of the second disability under the statutes of 1882, which rendered no one eligible who had taken his first degree more than ten years before.
In 1868 he took the M.A. degree in the University of London, receiving the gold medal for classics, and in the same year was appointed Latin lecturer at Owens College, Manchester, where he was promoted in the following year to the Latin professorship. For eight years he also lectured on comparative philology, and
