[1] He was born at Chester and died at Iridge Place, a listed country house near Hurst Green, East Sussex.
[1] Gibson was the eldest son of William Gibson (a priest; 1804–1862) and his first wife, Eliza Maria, who was the daughter of John Bird Sumner, Archbishop of Canterbury; the reformer and churchman William Wilberforce was also a relation.
After Eliza Maria died in 1836, William Gibson married her cousin, Louisiana, who was the daughter of Charles Sumner, Bishop of Winchester from 1827 to 1868.
[2] Gibson was educated at Harrow School, where he played in the cricket team, and at Trinity College, Cambridge.
[3] Gibson was ordained as a Church of England priest and held various parish incumbencies in Kent, Warwickshire and Derbyshire up to 1873, when he appears to have retired to East Sussex.