Wilberforce's works are ‘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, 8vo, and ‘Appeal to the Religion, Justice, and Humanity of the Inhabitants of the British Empire on behalf of the Negro Slaves in the West Indies,’ 1823. Two or three speeches and addresses were also published, and in 1834 his ‘Family Prayers’ were edited by his son Robert.
[The chief authority for Wilberforce is the Life by his sons Robert Isaac and Samuel Wilberforce, 1838, 5 vols. 8vo (‘condensed’ ed. 1 vol. 8vo, 1868). This is chiefly a series of letters and extracts from private journals, and, though it had a large circulation, is not a model biography. Two volumes oh Correspondence were published by his sons in 1840. The Recollections by John S. Harford, which had been used by the sons in the Life, followed in 1864. The Private Papers of William Wilberforce (1897) gives some correspondence and family letters; it includes the ‘Pitt and Wilberforce’ privately printed by Lord Rosebery, also in 1897, which contains early letters from Pitt and an interesting character of Pitt by Wilberforce. Other authorities are the ‘Wilberforce’ in Sir James Stephen's Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography; J. C. Colquhoun's Wilberforce, his Friends and his Times, 1866; and J. J. Gurney's Familiar Sketch of Wilberforce, 1838. William Wilberforce, by John Stoughton, D.D. (1880), gives a good summary. Many letters to Wilberforce are in W. Roberts's Life of Hannah More. See also Clarkson's Abolition of the Slave Trade; Memoirs of Romilly, i. 334, 335, ii. 140, 268, 314, 356, iii. 1-178, 254, 328; Life of Sir F. Buxton, pp. 75, 104, 117-36, 151, 329.]
WILBRORD or WILLIBRORD, SAINT (657-738), archbishop of Utrecht and apostle of Frisia. [See Willibrord.]
WILBYE, JOHN (fl. 1598–1614), musician, was probably a native of the eastern counties, where the name was common [cf. Tallis, Thomas]. A John, son of John Wilbye or Milbye, was baptised in St. Mary's, Bury St. Edmunds, 15 Jan. 1572–3; and another John, son of Thomas Wilbye, on 27 Sept. The musician's will is, however, is not to be found in any of the eastern probate courts. In 1598 he published his first set of madrigals; the work is dedicated (‘from the Augustine Fryers’) to Sir Charles Cavendish [see under Cavendish, Sir William, 1505–1557]. To Morley's collection, ‘The Triumphes of Oriana’ (1601), Wilbye contributed a six-voiced madrigal, ‘The Lady Oriana Was dight in all the treasures of Guiana.’ His second set of madrigals appeared in 1608, with a dedication to the Lady ‘Arbella’ Stuart. The dedications favour the supposition that Wilbye was connected with Suffolk. Leighton's ‘Tears or Lamentacions of a Sorrowful Soule’ (1614) contains two pieces by Wilbye. These were all his published works. In 1622 Peacham (Compleat Gentleman, p. 103) mentions Wilbye among the best English musicians. Nothing further is recorded of him; his name does not occur in the cheque-book of the Chapel Royal, or in the records of either university. It is still more singular that scarcely any manuscript compositions by him are preserved. There are anthems in Thomas Myriell's ‘Tristitiæ Remedium’ (Brit. Mus. Addit. MSS. 29372–7); another anthem and two Latin motets are in the part-books written by Hamond (of Hawkdon, Bury St. Edmunds), now in the Bodleian Library. Wilbye is not represented in the great collections preserved at the Royal College of Music, from which Barnard compiled his ‘Selected Church Musick’ (1641). In Rimbault's ‘Vocal Part-Music’ (1842) appeared a madrigal, ‘The Nightingale in Silent Night,’ said to be ascribed to Wilbye in a manuscript in the music school, Oxford; no such piece is mentioned in the catalogue. The only instrumental music by Wilbye now extant is in an altus part-book (Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 29427), one of a set which included three of his ‘Fancies’ for viols; a volume of ‘Lessons for the Lute’ appears in the sale-catalogue of Gostling's library in 1777.
Wilbye is generally regarded as the greatest of English madrigal composers. His two sets contain sixty-four pieces, almost every one being of the highest beauty. Among the very finest are ‘Flora gave me fairest flowers,’ ‘Lady, when I behold the roses sprouting,’ ‘Sweet honey-sucking bees,’ ‘Stay, Corydon,’ ‘Thus saith my Cloris bright,’ ‘Adieu, sweet Amaryllis.’ They have always remained favourites; Playford advertised them for sale during the Commonwealth; they were on the repertory of the Academy of Ancient Music and the Ancient Concerts during the eighteenth century; Burney, writing in 1789, describes them as ‘much sung;’ the Madrigal Society, from 1741 to the present day, has specially kept them in remembrance. ‘Flora gave me fairest flowers,’ perhaps the very finest, is mentioned among the pieces sung at a Sussex harvest-home about 1830 (Luke Berrington, From my Boyhood). Complete reprints of both sets, in score, were issued by the Musical Antiquarian Society (1841–1846). The fourteen numbers for three voices had been reprinted in score by Thomas
