Born in Spitalfields, London, he was the son of the silk manufacturer Stephen Wilson and his wife Ann Collett West.

[1][4] Wilson developed into a strong preacher, associated with the Clapham Sect of evangelical Anglicans.

[3] That year he was consecrated Bishop of Calcutta and first Metropolitan of India and Ceylon.

He founded an English church at Rangoon, Ceylon, in 1855 and St Paul's Cathedral, Calcutta (consecrated 1847).

Another son became a missionary to indigenous Canadians in the Diocese of Algoma in the Ecclesiastical Province of Ontario.