15 Sept. 1850 he and his wife were received into the Roman catholic church (Browne, Annals of the Tractarian Movement, 1861, pp. 175, 211).
In 1852 he accepted the office of secretary to the Catholic Defence Association, then lately founded in Dublin; and from 1854 to 1863 he was proprietor and editor of the ‘Catholic Standard,’ a London newspaper, afterwards called the ‘Weekly Register.’ He died on 23 April 1873 at his residence, Chester House, Stroud, Gloucestershire, and was buried in the Dominican monastery at Woodchester.
Wilberforce married, on 24 July 1834, Mary, fourth daughter of his former tutor, the Rev. John Sargent; by her he had issue five sons and four daughters (Foster, Pedigrees of Yorkshire Families); she died on 27 Jan. 1878; her eldest sister, Emily, was the wife of her husband's brother, Bishop Wilberforce.
He was the author of:
- ‘The Parochial System: an Appeal to English Churchmen,’ London, 1838, 8vo.
- ‘Reasons for submitting to the Catholic Church: a Farewell Letter to his Parishioners,’ London, 1851, 8vo; 6th edit. 1855. This gave rise to considerable controversy.
- ‘Proselytism in Ireland,’ London, 1852, 16mo; being a correspondence between Wilberforce and the Rev. Alexander Dallas on the subject of the Irish church missions.
- ‘On some Events preparatory to the English Reformation,’ in Archbishop Manning's ‘Essays on Religion and Literature,’ 2nd ser. 1867.
- ‘The Church and the Empires: Historical Periods,’ London, 1874, 8vo, with portrait, and a memoir of the author by John Henry Newman, D.D.
[Memoir by Newman; Mozley's Reminiscences of Oriel, passim; Ann. Reg. 1873, p. 138; Ashwell's Life of Bishop Wilberforce, iii. 478; Bowden's Life of Faber, p. 369; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1715–1886; Tablet, 26 April 1873 p. 543, and 3 May p. 576; Times, 28 April 1873; Weekly Register, 26 April 1873 p. 264, and 3 May p. 284.]
WILBERFORCE, ROBERT ISAAC (1802–1857), archdeacon of the East Riding, the second son of William Wilberforce [q. v.] and Barbara Ann, eldest daughter of Isaac Spooner of Elmdon Hall, Warwickshire, was born at Clapham on 19 Dec. 1802. His brothers Henry William [q. v.] and Samuel [q. v.] are noticed separately. He was educated chiefly by private tutors in his father's house, and matriculated at Oriel College, Oxford, on 14 Feb. 1820. In 1823 he took a first class in both classics and mathematics, graduating B.A. in 1824 and M.A. in 1827. Very early he came under the influence of John Henry Newman [q. v.], who was at the time exerting a paramount influence on his college. Wilberforce was elected a fellow of Oriel in 1826. Newman, Pusey, Keble, Thomas Mozley, Frederic Rogers (afterwards Lord Blachford), and Richard Hurrell Froude were thenceforth among his colleagues. In 1828 he was elected sub-dean and tutor. There were three tutors in all, Newman and Froude being the other two. Difficulties followed Wilberforce's appointment. Edward Hawkins (1789–1882) [q. v.] had just been promoted to the provostship of Oriel (2 Feb. 1828). From the outset the new provost objected to the guardianship in moral and religious as well as in disciplinary matters which the three tutors seemed to exercise over their pupils, and the friction between the head and his staff soon led to an open rupture. The ostensible cause was the claim of the tutors to arrange their table of lectures as seemed good to them. A long indeterminate discussion continued till June 1830—shortly after Wilberforce's appointment as classical examiner for that year. At that date the provost announced that he would send no more pupils to Newman, Wilberforce, or Froude. By this arrangement Wilberforce's tutorship gradually died out as his old pupils went out of residence; but it was not entirely at an end till 1831. In the autumn of that year he resigned his tutorship to travel on the continent, and did not again return to Oxford save as select preacher in 1849.
The position which Wilberforce occupied in the opinion of his contemporaries at the end of his academic career was deservedly high. Always of quiet and studious habits, he had become, in the words of Thomas Mozley (Reminiscences of Oriel, i. 225), ‘a scholar and a theologian.’ In these capacities he was generally consulted during the rest of his life by men of action like his brother Samuel (afterwards bishop of Oxford) [q. v.], and also by the leaders of the tractarian or high-church party with which he had gradually become identified (Prevost, Autobiography of Isaac Williams, p. 39). For some time also his thoughts had turned more and more to the church as a career. He had been ordained on obtaining his fellowship (subsequently taking priest's orders 21 Dec. 1828), and in 1829 Newman offered (Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman, i. 186) to separate Littlemore from his own parish of St. Mary's and to hand it over to him as a separate cure. This he did not see his way to accept, and Lord Brougham, who had been allied with his father on the
