William Wilberforce

William Wilberforce (1759-1833) led the movement in parliament from 1787 to 1807 to abolish the slave trade throughout the British Empire. He was beloved by most dissenters for his position on this issue. Many dissenters, however, divided with Wilberforce over his refusal to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts when it came before parliament in 1787, 1789, and 1790, as well as his support of the war with France. The work referred to in the above letter is Wilberforce’s A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes of this Country Contrasted with Real Christianity (1797). Thomas Belsham, the Unitarian minister at Gravel Pit, Hackney, responded to Wilberforce’s book with A Review of Mr. Wilberforce’s Treatise, entitled A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, &c. In Letters to a Lady (1798). Thomas Williams then responded to Belsham’s review with A Vindication of the Calvinistic Doctrines of Human Depravity, the Atonement, Divine Influences, &c:  In a Series of Letters to the Rev. T. Belsham, Occasioned by his “Review of Mr. Wilberforce’s Treatise” with an Appendix Addressed to the Author of “Letters on Hereditary Depravity” (1799). On 15 April 1797 the thirty-eight-year-old bachelor met a much younger Barbara Ann Spooner (1777-1847), a devout evangelical Anglican like himself, and after a whirlwind courtship, they were married at Bath on 30 May 1797.