William Wilberforce (1798–1879)
William Wilberforce was a British lawyer, the eldest son of William Wilberforce. He was briefly a Member of Parliament in 1837–38.
Wilberforce was born in Clapham on 21 July 1798 to William Wilberforce, a member of Parliament and prominent abolitionist campaigner, and his wife Barbara Wilberforce. He was their eldest child. He was educated at a school in Cambridgeshire before attending Trinity College, Cambridge in 1817–1820, and was then admitted to study at the Middle Temple. He was called to the Bar in 1825.
He was a Justice of the Peace for Yorkshire and for Middlesex, and at the 1837 general election was returned as a Conservative for Kingston upon Hull, a seat his father had represented in the 1780s, but this was overturned by an election petition the following year. He did not return to Parliament, though he contested Taunton in the 1841 general election, and Bradford in a subsequent by-election.
In 1850, Wilberforce converted to Catholicism,, along with his youngest brother, Henry, a parson in Kent. Four years later, a third brother, Robert, would also resign his Anglican archdeaconry and follow them.
