Early Life
Wilberforce was born into an abolitionist family at Clapham Common, London. In 1823 he entered Oriel College, Oxford. In the United Debating Society, which afterwards developed into the Union, he distinguished himself as a zealous advocate of liberalism. The set of friends with whom he chiefly associated at Oxford—among them William Ewart Gladstone and Henry Manning—were sometimes named, on account of their exceptionally decorous conduct, the "Bethel Union"; but he was by no means averse to amusements, and specially delighted in hurdle jumping and hunting. He graduated in 1826, taking a first class in mathematics and a second in classics. He spent the summer and autumn of 1827 touring the continent. After his marriage on 11 June 1828 to Emily Sargent, he was in December ordained and appointed curate-in-charge at Checkendon, near Henley-on-Thames.
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“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
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