Charterhouse N Chronicle

THIS YEAR there have been many celebrations to mark the abolition of slavery 150 years ago. William Wilberforce, the man who devoted his life to the cause of abolition, only just lived long enough to hear the new,, that the necessary Bill had finally received the assent of Parliament.
A great, great grandson of William the emancipator is Fr Gerard Wilberforce, parish priest of the Blessed .Sacrament Church at fleavitree in Exeter. Last month he preached a most interesting sermon at St Charles' Church in Hull in the presence of Bishop Kevin O'Brien and the city's civic authorities.
It has helped to remind people how Catholic the Wilberforce family has been through most of its long history.
They were originally from Yorkshire and their name was then Wilberfosse. This is the name of a small town between York and Poeklington which must have been associated with wild game. For the Wilberforce name is said to come from "Wild Boar Fosse." The family later moved to Hull.
There was a break in the religious continuity in the seventeenth century and the Wilberforces supported the Parliamentarians in the Civil War.
But the famous William underwent a complete conversion in 1785. Fr Gerard calls it a "conversion within a conversion," as a result of which his natural fervour took off into new channels and he helped to form the famous "Clapham Sect" which greatly influenced the evangelical wing of the Church of England.
To fill in some more gaps in the religious and Catholic part of the whole story — which was somewhat forgotten during the celebrations for the anniversary of the abolition of slavery as such — Fr Anthony Story of Cottingham wrote during the year a fascinating short account of this missing background.
He points out that the life of William Wilberforce (1759-1833) corresponded with a period of particular importance for the Catholic Church in England. Hull, home of the Wilberforces, comes very much into the story.
When Wilberforce was still a young man, shortly before the French Revolution of 1789, London saw the last serious outbreak of anti-Catholic violence — the Gordon riots.
In Hull the rioters burned down a very important chapel — important because it was the first Catholic chapel to have been built in post-Reformation England. The chapel was in the street named Posterngate.
Very soon, however, events in France helped to transform the whole religious position in England. Refugees started pouring over and the English, of every class and religion, welcomed them with open arms.
The upper classes took the French aristocracy very much to their hearts and even began imitating the way they spoke. It is thus that the broad "a" came into general use among such classes, ultimately being imitated by others.
Catholics became less and less of a hated religion and the English showed themselves to be more broadminded than would ever have been thought possible a generation earlier.
One of the most important developments was the return of the English Catholic colleges and monasteries which had been in exile in France since the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. These gradually came back to such places as Stonyhurst, Ushaw, Ampleforth and many others.
To Hull came one of the many French refugee priests, a certain Abbe Foucher. It was he who replaced the burned-out Posterngate chapel with the Church of St Charles where the Wilberforces were remembered the other day at the solemn Mass celebrated by Bishop O'Brien.
On one side of the Bishop was Fr Joseph, a descendant of a freed slave; and on the other, Fr Gerard, descendant of the slave freer.
The campaign for the abolition of slavery greatly helped another campaign — that of Catholic emancipation.
Wilberforce initially sat in a Parliament which was barred to Catholics, as were the professions and armed services. But men were needed to fight Napoleon, apart from which a whole new outlook was spreading over the entire United Kingdom, which at that time, of course, included Ireland.
There Daniel O'Connell, encouraged by the new atmosphere created by the efforts of Wilberforce, fought his battle for the other emancipation, which was finally won in 1829.
The Bill for the Abolition of Slavery was not passed until July, 1833. The news was carried to Wilberforce on his sick bed. He died three days later.
Had he ever thought of becoming a Catholic? It would seem not, despite his tremendous sympathy for the Catholic cause and interest in the Catholic Church. Such interest overflowed to his sons, no less than three out of four of whom became Catholics.
Two of them, Robert and Henry, went up to Oriel College, Oxford, where they came under the influence of the college's Senior Fellow, John Henry Newman.
But many vicissitudes were to follow before all three became Catholics. In 1827 in fact, the new Provost of Oriel, Edward Hawkins, was determined to block the "dangerous influence" of three of the college's tutors, namely Newman, Robert Wilberforce and Hurell Froude, all at this stage staunch Anglicans.
Hawkins's opportunity for dismissing the tutors came, ironically, over the question of Catholic emancipation. Hawkins supported this, as did Robert Peel, Oxford's MP. But Newman and his friends opposed it and were dismissed.
It was not until about 30 years later that Robert and Henry became Catholics, followed in 1863 by the eldest brother William.
The Wilberforce brothers were up at Oxford during what some have called a "golden age;" an age of renaissance in learning and spiritual fervour. The Oxford Movement was of course a main reason for thinking of this age as "golden." But one must not forget that the boat race and the varsity cricket match also date from this period!