William Wilberforce

The Freedom Fighter

Derick Bingham

• Publisher: Christian Focus Publication
• eBook ISBN:
  9781845509194
• Year: 2015

The Slave Auction

‘No! No!’ cried the little boy, ‘Please No! I want to stay with my Mother!’

‘Be quiet!’ shouted the man, callously pulling his mother away from him. She was taken to a raised platform and offered for sale, immediately.

Described on the ‘Slaves at Sale’ notice as ‘A very superior washer, ironer, cook and house woman’ the interest among the slave owners in buying her was intense.

‘100 guineas, sir, I see you,’ cried the auctioneer. ‘Any advance on 100?’

‘120, 130... yes 140! Any advance on 140? Yes, 150, sir, and more, 160?’

On and on they continued, a coarse looking slave owner bidding higher and higher. His name was Isaac Riley.

 ‘200? Any advance on 200? Is this the highest bid? Am I bid any more? No more bids, then, gentlemen? This is a trusty, intelligent and excellent worker - freely guaranteed. Is 200 the last offer? Right, then, going, going, gone to Mr. Isaac Riley. Now, let’s have the boy,’ cried the auctioneer, motioning for the slave’s terrified son to be led up to the huge platform. ‘Josiah Henson. A very fit and good-looking five year old male. What am I bid for him?’

‘A tough little urchin,’ whispered one of the slave owners, ‘He would make a good house-boy.’

‘I’d keep him for picking cotton myself,’ said another.

A number of men were interested in buying the child and the bidding was brisk.

Standing in the crowd watching the proceedings, a surprised Isaac Riley felt hands suddenly gripping his knees. Josiah’s mother had pushed through the crowd and had fallen at his feet.

‘Please, Mr. Riley, please buy my boy!’ Mrs. Henson pleaded. ‘All the rest of my children are sold and I plead with you to buy him so that we will not be separated. You can afford it, sir, surely you can! Please let me have just one of my children!’

‘And just who do you think you are?’ replied Riley furiously.

 ‘The child’s mother, sir, that’s all!’ she replied. ‘If you have children of your own, sir, you will well understand how I feel. Would you like to be separated from any one of them? I will work for you, sir, I will serve you well, I promise, but just let me have my boy.’

‘I’ll let you have this!’ replied Riley who started to mercilessly kick Mrs. Henson. She fell from his knees groaning and tried to roll away from him, but he came after her, beating her with violent blows.

‘My child! Please, my child!’ screamed Mrs. Henson.

 ‘I’ll not buy your child,’ cried Riley, ‘And that’s an end of it!’

Weeping with the intense pain he had inflicted, Mrs. Henson began to crawl away on her hands and knees. Yet, as she moved, she was heard to sob a prayer to the Lord.

‘Oh Lord Jesus,’ she prayed, ‘How long shall I suffer this way?’

Millions of African men, women and children suffered a similar kind of fate in the 18th and 19th centuries. The British, the Americans, the French, and the Dutch were particularly deeply involved in the slave trade. They bought another human being in the same way as we might buy a cat or a dog.

In one year alone 185 ships took 43,755 people from Africa by force. Many were flushed out by slave traders who burned their villages. They were marched to the coast with huge yokes around their necks to prevent their escape. On board ship many perished in the fearful conditions below deck. Those who survived were then faced with the likes of Isaac Riley as their master.

Had God heard Mrs. Henson? Where would the answer to her prayer come from? Who would dare to rise up and condemn the disgraceful practice of slavery and seek to destroy it? Where would slaves find a friend?

An important part of the answer to her prayer was to come with the birth of a boy on August 24th, 1759. His name was William Wilberforce, and he was to become one of the greatest friends of slaves that ever lived. Here is his amazing story.

A Letter from a Schoolboy

‘Here he comes!’ cried the excited crowd.

Everybody strained to catch a glimpse of their thin, bearded King as he rode his large horse down the main street of Hull.

‘He’s smaller than I thought,’ a lady commented to a friend as he passed.

‘Not so small that he can’t raise a huge army,’ said another, ‘and my husband will be called up to serve in it, I warrant!’

The retinue of accompanying horsemen reined in at a large, red bricked house on the main street. No. 27, belonged to the Lord Mayor, Sir John Lister, who stood waiting for King Charles II at the gate.

‘Welcome to Hull, your Majesty. And welcome to our home.’

‘It’s a pleasure to be here, Sir John,’ came the reply, ‘and what a fine house you have here.’

King Charles spent the night at the Lister home, and ate in a banqueting room with oak-panelled walls bearing the Lister coat-of-arms above the fireplace.

In this famous house, now open to the public, William Wilberforce was born. The back garden ran to a steep bank of the River Hull, and at high tide William would watch ships sail up and down.

At low tide, barges were pulled or punted from one large warehouse to another. Hull was the fourth port of England after London, Bristol and Liverpool.

‘I wonder what St Petersburg is like?’ William thought one day as he watched a Russian ship go past the family garden, the name of its port written clearly on its bow. Another day a ship from Sweden came past, heavily laden with iron ore. ‘I’d love to go to Sweden,’ thought William.

Many a time he would stand and watch the ships being loaded with everything from ponies brought in from all over the countryside to knives from Sheffield.

‘Oh! I’d love to be a sea captain,’ thought William, ‘and then I could explore the countries of the world!’

His grandfather, who had been Mayor of Hull, had become a very rich merchant through owning ships and trading with the Baltic. William’s father, Robert, became a managing partner in William’s grandfather’s business and he also became a very wealthy and successful merchant.

God had great plans for Robert’s little boy but his becoming a sea captain was not one of them.

One day William, now seven years of age, came charging through the front door of his home, through the large hall, tiled with black and white squares like a great giant chess board, and up the main wide staircase to his sister, Sarah’s room.

‘Sarah! Sarah,’ he cried, bursting into the room.

Sarah looked across to her fair-haired brother who stood before her in his full skirted coat, knee-breeches, white stockings and buckled shoes.

‘Sarah, you’ll never guess. Mr. Milner, our teacher, swung me onto the table in front of the whole class today. He made me read from the book, Robinson Crusoe for about five minutes.

“There,” cried Mr. Milner, pointing with one of his hands to me and with his other to my class, “That’s how you all should read!”’

 ‘But you do have a lovely voice!’ replied Sarah, at which her brother burst out laughing.

***

She was, of course, absolutely right. William’s voice was to become one of his most famous qualities. One day he would become one of the greatest speakers in history and be named, ‘The Nightingale of the House of Commons’. The house on High Street was often to ring with the lively cries of Robert and Elizabeth Wilberforce’s son, for he was a little bundle of energy as well as having a very bright mind.

Sadly, though, little William’s life was soon to be filled with sorrow.

Running upstairs one day, just home from the Grammar School of Kingston-upon-Hull, his mother Elizabeth came out of her bedroom looking very sad.

‘William, you must not make a noise,’ she said, closing the door gently behind her, ‘Your father has taken very ill.’

William stopped in his tracks, feeling numb.

‘How ill, Mother?’ he asked.

‘You can come in to see him, but you must be very, very quiet,’ said his mother gently.

William would never forget his father lying in that room so very ill.

‘You must be good to your mother and Sarah,’ he kept saying.

William failed to recognise that death was not far away.

When his father died there was no sadder boy in all of Hull than William Wilberforce. He stood by his father’s grave side, a heartbroken lad of nine amongst the mourners.

‘God bless you son!’ the various merchant-friends of his father’s said to him as they shook his hand. They all wondered what would become of him.

His Uncle William came up to the young boy’s mother.

‘You must let him come and stay with us in Surrey, Elizabeth,’ he said gently.

William’s mother wiped a tear stained eye.

‘You know that my wife Hannah and I have no children of our own. We will be more than happy to have young William here with us at Wimbledon. He is a delightful child, and besides, it will bring relief to you at this very difficult time.’

‘It’s very good of you, William,’ replied Mrs. Wilberforce, ‘I’ll bring him to you next year. It won’t be easy for him to leave Hull, but it will be for the best.’

‘There will be plenty for him to do,’ assured William’s uncle. ‘We’ll send him to school at Putney and he can also come and stay at our London home at St James’ Place.’

One year after his father’s death, a carriage pulled up at No. 27. The various servants stood at the gate as the coachman began to load up the luggage. Lots of tears were shed and William received many hugs and kisses.

‘We’ll miss you lad,’ said the cook who had fed William so often when he would sneak into the kitchen, ravenous for food! She didn’t know what she was going to do without him. Sarah, perhaps, was the most heartbroken of all.

‘Write soon, William,’ she said through her tears, ‘Tell me all about London.’

‘I will,’ he replied ‘and will you please write to me and tell me what’s happening at home?’

‘I promise,’ said Sarah as William and his mother were helped by the footman into the carriage.

‘Forward!’ cried the coachman as the horses started over the cobbled stones and William Wilberforce started out on the first of many long journeys in his life from Yorkshire to London.

The distance to London was 175 miles and the coach could only cover 30 per day. William and his mother had to stay at various inns on their journey.

‘What’s the coachman carrying pistols for, Mother?’ asked William when they got out at the first inn.

‘I’m sorry I have to tell you,’ replied the lady, ‘but there are many dangerous highwaymen about who hold up coaches and rob travellers!’

‘Will we be robbed?’ asked William.

‘Please God, we won’t,’ said his mother trying to reassure her boy whose eyes were now filled with fear.

Their journey went well, and William was fascinated by all the different scenes that passed before his eyes.

As they travelled across the rolling English countryside passing towns and villages, he began to wonder what on earth London would look like.

Soon they arrived in Nottingham and immediately William was on the lookout for Robin Hood and his Merry Men.

‘Do you think we’ll see any of them?’ he asked, enthusiastically.

‘I’m afraid not,’ replied Mrs. Wilberforce, ‘They have long since died. Though, what fun we had, reading all those stories about them, didn’t we? I think you liked Maid Marion best!’

Soon the coach began to near the great city of London. At an inn, one evening, as they were eating their meal, a nearby traveller began to tell the story of what had happened the night before.

‘Ah! It was a very grizzly affair, Ma’am. The stagecoach was passing through Epping Forest when it was attacked by no less than seven highwaymen.’

‘Seven!’ cried William, ‘They must have been determined to rob the travellers.’

‘They certainly were lad,’ replied the traveller, ‘but the guard was very brave. He killed three of them before he was killed himself.’

No-one was happier to get safely to London than William.

At last the coach brought them to Wimbledon and his uncle and aunt. After a short stay, his mother returned to Yorkshire and left William to settle into his new surroundings. He later described his school as ‘a most wretched little place’ where ‘they taught everything and nothing.’ He particularly detested the school dinners and when he grew older he stated he could remember ‘meals which I could not eat without sickness’.

The one great thing in William’s life, though, was his love for his uncle and aunt.

He had not lived with them for very long before he discovered that they both had a deep love for the Lord Jesus and were very enthusiastic Christians.

They were friends with one of the best known Christians in England, the Reverend George Whitfield. Although William did not realise it at the time, Whitfield was to go down in history as one of the greatest preachers in the history of the Christian church.

Whitfield had a great friend called John Wesley who was to become the founder of the Methodist Church. Wesley was as famous as Whitfield, and Hannah, William’s aunt, came to know the Lord Jesus as her Saviour through his preaching. William was often taken along to church services.

‘Who is that little boy who sings with such a beautiful voice?’ people began to say. They could not help but notice the little boy’s voice which soared above the singing of the congregation at services he attended.

John Wesley’s brother, Charles, had written hundreds of new hymns, and William soon got to know and love some of these songs of praise.

There was one minister, though, who probably deeply influenced the little boy more than all the others.

This minister had once been a captain of a ship bringing slaves from Africa to the West Indies and had been converted to Christ in the middle of a thunderstorm in the Atlantic Ocean. Now he was a Church of England minister at Olney in Buckinghamshire. William thought the world of John Newton and loved his stories and his sermons.

John Newton was a man who was full of fun and had a very affectionate nature, and as a child, William treated him almost as his father. Little was the ex-sea captain and slave trader to realise the influence that his sermons were soon to have upon the boy and the world of slavery.

When William’s mother heard of his interest in what he was hearing at the church services he attended, she was determined to put a stop to it all.

Although she went to church herself she was against anybody showing great ‘enthusiasm’. She brought William home to Hull to get him away from the spiritual influences that were shaping his mind and heart.

William later wrote, ‘Being removed from my uncle and aunt affected me most seriously. It almost broke my heart, I was so much attached to them.’

The headmaster of William’s old school had also turned with enthusiasm to the Gospel, so Elizabeth sent William to a school in a town called Polkington, thirteen miles from Hull.

If you visit the Holy Trinity Parish Church in Kingston-upon-Hull, you will find, above the entry to the tower stairs, in the north east pier, a marble monument to the Reverend Joseph Milner, who was, for thirty years, headmaster of the Grammar School and a leader of the Evangelical Revival. William was later to become a very prominent leader himself in this Revival, though his mother would never have dreamed it could have happened.

William lived in the house of his new headmaster and soon became a very popular boy in the school.

He had a great gift for mimicry and would “take off” the voices and mannerisms of his teachers. His friends would urge him to mimic their teachers and they fell about with laughter whenever he did.

He was very fond of poetry and used to learn it just for fun. When he went for a walk he usually carried a book of poetry in his pocket!

One day, when William was fourteen years old, he handed a letter to a friend of his called Walmsley.

‘Please would you post this for me on your way home?’ asked William.

Walmsley many years later, recalled how he saw that the envelope was addressed to the Editor of a Yorkshire newspaper and he was very curious.

‘What on earth is the letter about?’ he asked.

‘It’s a protest against what I have called, “The Odious Traffic in Human Flesh,” answered William enthusiastically.

‘And what, may I ask, is “The Odious Traffic in Human Flesh”?’ enquired a very surprised Walmsley.

‘You’ll see, if the Editor publishes it,’ said William with a smile.

Soon millions were to see what lay in the heart of the lad from Hull.

To Cambridge

In the history of Cambridge University there have been few students more fun-loving and popular, than the seventeen year old William Wilberforce who became a student there in 1776.

‘Ah! Cookson,’ said William dashing around St John’s College one morning, ‘I’m having a crowd to my room this evening for a party. Will you join us?’

‘As long as you have that legendary Yorkshire pie of yours!’ replied his friend.

‘I promise you that there will be lots of it,’ said the hazel-eyed, five foot four inch Wilberforce, as he dashed on to his morning lecture.

‘Christian!’ said Wilberforce hailing another student in the corridor. ‘My rooms tonight for a party? Yes? Around seven?’

‘I suppose I will have to listen to your songs!’ said Edward Christian whose brother Fletcher later lead the famous mutiny on the HMS Bounty in the South Seas.

William was now a very wealthy young man because, through the deaths of his grandfather, his father and his uncle, he had been left a lot of money.

His mother was the guardian of his fortune and he was told that he could, more or less, do what he liked. He certainly had plenty of money to spend on whatever he pleased. As it turned out, William liked to entertain. He loved to have students round to his rooms where his wit and sense of humour had everybody laughing.

He loved singing and listening to instrumental music. He had many interests to amuse him.

That evening, as darkness began to fall, a crowd of jostling, joking students were found to be heading for Wilberforce’s rooms.

They had brought with them a fellow student who had never met Wilberforce before. He was very different in personality and while Wilberforce wasted a lot of his time, away playing cards and entertaining his friends, this student was very studious and was also rather shy.

‘What a pie!’ chorused the hungry students as they tucked into the food Wilberforce had provided.

‘It won’t last long at this rate!’ said Thomas Gisborne who had rooms next door.

Soon, William was called across the crowded room to greet his new guest.

‘Allow me to introduce William Pitt,’ said one of Wilberforce’s fellow students.

‘Pleased to meet you Pitt,’ said Wilberforce, ‘I hope they have introduced you to my Yorkshire pie.’

‘First class food!’ said the quiet Pitt, with a smile, as Wilberforce poured him a drink.

‘And what area of study are you interested in?’ asked Wilberforce.

‘Astronomy, Greek and ...

Table of contents

• Title
• Indicia
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1. The Slave Auction
• 2. A Letter from a Schoolboy
• 3. To Cambridge
• 4. The Shrimp who swelled into a Whale
• 5. Oh Happy Day
• 6. Amazing Grace
• 7. The Truth about the Slave Trade
• 8. Mr. Greatheart
• 9. The Duel
• 10. A Night of Nights
• 11. Free at last
• Thinking Further Topics
• Books for Further Reading
• My Prayer Diary
• Life Summary
• Time Line
• More Books
• Christian Focus