William Wilberforce was a 19th century Member of Parliament (MP) and writer who devoted much of his life to the campaigns to first abolish the slave trade and secondly, to abolish slavery itself in British colonies. He was converted to evangelical Christianity by friends and his beliefs played an important role in his political life. After a campaign lasting 42 years, slavery was abolished in British territories three days before his death.

Key Facts

Born 1759 – died 1833

Fought for most of his life for the end of slavery

Died days after achieving his goal

Evangelical conservative Christian opposed to many other social reforms

A Short Biography

William Wilberforce was born on the 24th of August, 1759 in the town of Hull, Yorkshire. His father was a wealthy merchant and his grandfather had been the mayor of Hull and made the family fortune trading in the Baltic. He was sent to Hull Grammar School, but upon the death of his father his situation became more uncertain and he was sent to live with an aunt and uncle in Wimbledon. He attended boarding school in Putney and came under the evangelical influence of his relatives, causing some concern among his Church of England mother and grandfather. They were sufficiently alarmed by his exposure to radical non-conformism to bring him back to Hull. The 12-year old was very reluctant to return, but over time his religious zeal diminished and he began to attend balls, the theatre and even play cards.

When he was 17, he attended St John’s College in Cambridge, but the recent deaths of his grandfather and uncle had made him independently wealthy, so he had little inclination to study, preferring to continue gambling, drinking late into the night and generally living a highly sociable student life. He became a popular figure in the College and began a life-long friendship with William Pitt, a fellow student who would go on to become Prime Minister. Despite his apparent lack of application to study, he graduated B.A. and then M.A. in 1788.

Encouraged by his friend Pitt to become involved in politics, Wilberforce was elected MP for Kingston upon Hull, a Yorkshire constituency, spending £8,000 to secure the votes, a practice considered perfectly acceptable during this time of limited franchise, where the eligible voters were a small group of land owners.

Wilberforce sat as an independent, supporting the government when he approved of their actions, and he became well-known for his eloquent speeches. Outside of parliament he frequented various gentlemen’s clubs to gamble at cards.

Wilberforce spent the winter of 1784/5 on the French Riviera and in Switzerland in the company of his mother and a friend named Isaac Milner. Milner was a non-conformist opponent of slavery, which was a major cause at the time among many non-conformists, and he brought about an evangelical conversion in Wilberforce, who abandoned his old ways and took to rising early to study his Bible. Evangelicals were viewed with suspicion and ridicule and his new friends among this group had some difficulty in persuading him to stay in politics. But he did, returning to parliament a deep conservative, opposed to change in the God-given social order, a protector of the Sabbath and promoter of moral education for the masses. He was rejected by both the establishment Tories, who saw him as an enemy of Church and State, and by political radicals, who distrusted his conservatism.

The campaign to abolish the British slave-trade, long established as the major source of slaves for all the European colonies in the West Indies and elsewhere, had begun a few years earlier among the Quakers. They had presented a petition to Parliament for abolition in 1783. Although in the same year Wilberforce had met James Ramsay, a ship’s surgeon turned abolitionist after his experiences on the plantations of the Leeward Islands, it wasn’t until 1786 that he was approached by reformers to support the cause. He began to read on the subject and often met with an abolitionist group called the Testonites, based in Teston, Kent.

At a dinner party in March of 1787 a diverse group, including James Boswell, the biographer of Dr. Johnson; the painter Sir Joshua Reynolds; Thomas Clarkson, a friend of Wilberforce who provided him with much anti-slavery material; and assorted MPs and abolitionists, persuaded Wilberforce to act as the spokesman for abolition in Parliament. He agreed in principle, but remained reluctant, doubting his ability to bring such a controversial matter forward. A few weeks later, a pivotal conversation with William Pitt persuaded him to make a full commitment.

His planned motion in Parliament was delayed by illness, and it wasn’t until 1789 that he made his first speech in Parliament in support of abolition. This was made on the back of a Privy Council report commissioned by Pitt himself, but Parliamentary tactics and delays, plus an election, meant that it was April 1791 before Wilberforce could introduce a Bill for the abolition of slavery.

A protracted campaign followed, during which Wilberforce joined an evangelical community, living around Clapham Common, known as ‘The Saints’. A year after his first speech, Wilberforce took the floor again to push his bill, but it was cleverly side-tracked with an amendment from the Home Secretary to make the change gradual, but with no definite timetable.

The outbreak of war with France in 1793 effectively sidelined the abolition issue. The association in the public mind between abolition and the French Revolution, which had abolished slavery in 1794, caused the campaign to falter during this period of hostilities, with the most important groups ceasing to meet, although Wilberforce continued his attempts to introduce various abolitionist bills.

A confirmed bachelor and now in his late 30s, Wilberforce was introduced to the twenty-year old Barbara Ann Spooner, and after an eight-day romance they were engaged. They were married in 1797 and had six children over the next decade.

With the rise of Napoleon in France, who reintroduced slavery, the cause was no longer seen as pro-French, and public interest returned. With the new Whig government, abolitionists were now in the Cabinet and a bill was passed banning British subjects from taking part in or supporting, the slave trade with the French colonies.

A general election in 1806 saw abolition become a campaign issue and many MPs who opposed slavery were returned to Parliament. With his years of research, Wilberforce wrote a 400-page book which became the corner-stone of the arguments for abolitionist. Lord Grenville, the new Prime Minister, put forward an Abolition Bill which passed first the House of Lords and then the Commons by large majorities and The Slave Trade Act became law on the 25th of March, 1807. This was not emancipation, which was not on Wilberforce’s immediate agenda; just the end of the trade with slave owners calculating that there were sufficient slaves in the colonies to provide the needed workforce indefinitely. Wilberforce, himself, did not believe that slaves were ready for freedom, but may one day become so.

In 1820, he began to withdraw from public life due to ill health, but in 1823 he changed his position on emancipation and began to support the complete freedom of all slaves. During his last years as an MP he attempted, but failed, to pass emancipation legislation.

In 1826, he moved from Kensington to Mill Hill, then a rural area, but in 1830 most of his personal fortune was spent salvaging his son William’s failed attempts at farming the property. In April of 1833, he made his final emancipation speech and the next month the Bill for the Abolition of Slavery was introduced with a formal tribute to Wilberforce’s influence. On the 26th of July he heard news that the Bill would pass and on the 29th he died at a cousin’s house in Cadogan Place, London.

His Legacy

Wilberforce was the figurehead of abolition and emancipation for over 40 years and his dedication and commitment to that cause was instrumental in swaying public opinion to support the election of abolitionist MPs. His name will always be associated with Britain’s progress in the liberation of their fellow human beings. His family tried to downplay the vital role of his friend Thomas Clarkson, but historians today view both of them as more or less equal partners in the work.

In other areas Wilberforce remained a conservative. He supported the suspension of habeas corpus and bans on public meetings of more than 50 people. He opposed the formation of trade unions and an inquiry into the Peterloo Massacre. He was against women engaging in political activity and opposed the rights of Catholics. He supported all attempts to suppress public vice, from drinking to swearing in public. Many of these activities brought him into direct opposition with prominent reforming radicals of the time, who felt him much more concerned with the behaviour of the poor than of the ruling classes. He was often ridiculed by them for what they perceived as his double standards.

He did however support prison reform, opposed capital punishment for some crimes and supported education for the poor. He was also instrumental in forming what was to become the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Sites to Visit

Wilberforce is buried in the north transept of Westminster Abbey, near the grave of William Pitt.

There is also a statue of him in Westminster Abbey.

The Wilberforce Monument, a 100-foot column topped by a statue, is in the grounds of Hull College, Hull, Yorkshire.

There are blue plaques at 44 Cadogan Place, London, where he died; Lauriston House (originally called Laurel Grove) on Southside, Wimbledon where he grew up; and on the Holy Trinity Church, in Clapham, where he and ‘The Saints’ worshipped.

Further Research

Biographies of Wilberforce include:

Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery, by Eric Metaxas

William Wilberforce: A Biography, by Stephen Tomkins

William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner, by William Hague

Amazing Grace in the Life of William Wilberforce, by John Piper and Jonathan Aitken

Books of, or based on his writings include:

William Wilberforce, by William Wilberforce

A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes, by William Wilberforce

There is a film about his life and the fight against the slave trade, based on the book by Eric Metaxas:

Amazing Grace, starring Benedict Cumberbatch