Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/213

 prosecution was really set on foot by Keble, Pusey, and other leaders of the tractarians; that it was they who suggested that he should try as Hampden's diocesan to bring him to an abjuration of the doctrines imputed to him without suit; and that it was because Wilberforce was really convinced that Hampden's opinions had been misrepresented that the letters of request were withdrawn (ib. i. 445).

Meanwhile Newman's secession was beginning to bear fruit in Wilberforce's own family. In 1846 his wife's sister Mrs. G. D. Ryder and her husband were received into the Roman church, and in 1850 his brother Henry and his wife followed. The next year came the secession of Henry Edward Manning [q. v.], his brother-in-law, and the rector of his own parish of Lavington, and in 1854 that of his guide and counsellor, his brother, Robert Isaac, the list being completed by the reception of his remaining brother William in 1863, and of his only daughter and her husband, Mr. J. H. Pye, in 1868. As a consequence, those who remembered only Wilberforce's vacillations in the Hampden case put aside his repeated denunciations of papal aggression and ‘the deadly subtleties of Rome’ (see his Charge of 1851) as expressions not to be taken literally. They considered that he was only watching his opportunity to follow the other members of his family into the church of Rome. The nickname of ‘Soapy Sam’—finally fastened upon him in consequence of Lord Westbury's description in the House of Lords (15 July 1864) of his synodical judgment on ‘Essays and Reviews’ as ‘a well-lubricated set of words, a sentence so oily and saponaceous that no one can grasp it’—both expressed and did something to confirm the public's impression of his capacity for evasion; he himself declared, with characteristic quickness, that he owed his sobriquet to the fact that ‘though often in hot water, he always came out with clean hands.’

The suspicions of his sincerity, however, which were caused by the defections to Rome of so many members of his family soon died away. In the controversy which arose in 1860 over ‘Essays and Reviews’ [see ], Wilberforce began the fray by an article in the ‘Quarterly Review’ condemning the book. After the privy council reversed the sentence of a year's suspension passed by the court of arches on some of the authors of the volume, he procured the synodical condemnation of the council's decision by the convocation of Canterbury, and successfully defended the action of that body in the House of Lords. His action on the case of John William Colenso [q. v.] caused him to be regarded with more favour than before by the low-church party, one of whose spokesmen hailed him in 1862 as ‘our invaluable champion in the conflict with infidelity’ (Life of S. Wilberforce, iii. 1, n. 1); while his services on the ritual commission of 1867 did much to disarm their distrust of him as a ‘Romaniser.’ Hence it was generally expected that on the promotion of Bishop Tait to the archbishopric of Canterbury in 1868 he would receive the diocese of London thereby left vacant. This, however, was not to be, and it was not until the bishop's resignation act of 1869 had vacated the see of Winchester that Gladstone wrote to Wilberforce that the ‘time had come to seal the general verdict’ by offering him the vacant see. From a money point of view the translation offered no advantages, the income of the see being burdened with the pension of the retiring bishop, Charles Richard Sumner [q. v.]; but Wilberforce saw in it an opportunity of more extended work, and he was enthroned in December 1869. In his new post he initiated, and during the remainder of his life presided over, the revision of the New Testament, a joint committee of both houses of convocation being appointed for the purpose in February 1870; the revision was completed in 1882. He also passed through convocation in 1870 a clergy resignation bill which became law in 1872, contrived to allay the agitation for the disuse of the Athanasian creed, and arranged with Gladstone in 1873 the omission of the bishops from the supreme court of appeal instituted by the Judicature Act of that year. But the end was now near. His last public appearance was at a confirmation held by him at Epsom College on 17 July. Two days after he was thrown from his horse while riding with Lord Granville on the Surrey downs at Abinger, and was killed on the spot. He was buried, in accordance with his own wish, at Lavington churchyard by the side of his wife. Four children survived him (1) Emily Charlotte, the wife of Mr. J. H. Pye, mentioned above; (2) Reginald Garton Wilberforce, who succeeded to Lavington; (3) Ernest Roland (1840–1907), at one time bishop of Chichester; and (4) Albert Basil Orme, archdeacon and canon of Westminster.

Wilberforce was at once too energetic and too resourceful a man to have justice done him till after his death. In spite of the accusation of ambition often brought against him, it is plain that the interest of