457 



SHARP, JAMES. 



SHARP, JAMES. 



468 



to the impressment of seamen, and a citizen of London having been 

 seized and carried to the Noro, Sharp had him brought back by a 

 writ of habeas corpus from the Court of King's Bench, and he was Bet 

 at liberty. He sent out a number of negroes whom he found in the 

 streets of London to Sierra Leone at his own expense, and also drew 

 up a ' Sketch of Temporary Resolutions for the intended Settlement 

 on the Grain Coast of Africa, near Sierra Leone/ and thus may be said 

 to have been the founder of the settlement there. He was an advo- 

 cate of parliamentary reform, having as early as 1778 published 'A 

 Declaration of the People's Natural Rights to a share in the Legislature, 

 which is the Fundamental Principle of the British Constitution of 

 State ; also a Declaration of Defence of the same Doctrine when 

 applied particularly to the People of Ireland,' 8vo, London. Granville 

 Sharp continued to pass his time in these and similar benevolent 

 labours till July 1813, when he died at the age of seventy-nine. 



Sharp's writings were numerous, and had many readers at the time 

 when they appeared; but as most of them are pamphlets, and were 

 written for temporary purposes, they are not much referred to now. 

 Among them however are some laborious and useful investigations 

 into the great principles of the English constitution, particularly his 

 'Account of tho Ancient Divisions of the English Nation into Hundreds 

 and Tithings,' 8vo, London, 1784; and his 'Account of the English 

 Polity of Congregational Courts, more particularly of the great Annual 

 Court of the People, called Frank Pledge," 8vo, London, 1786. He 

 was a zealous member of the Established Church, and had a great 

 dislike to the Roman Catholic religion, but was liberal to Protestant 

 dissenters of all classes. 



(Memoirs of Granville Sharp, Esq., composed from his own Manuscripts 

 and other authentic Documents, 4 to, 1820.) 



SHARP, JAMES, archbishop of St. Andrews, was born in May, 

 1618, in the castle of Banff, where his father, Mr. William Sharp, 

 resided in his quality of sheriff-clerk of the county. Sharp's paternal 

 grandfather had been a merchant of considerable eminence in the 

 town of Aberdeen, and was the younger son of a gentleman of landed 

 property in Perthshire. Sharp was educated at the University of 

 Aberdeen, where he is said to have distinguished himself in the studies 

 then in vogue. On leaving college he paid a visit to England, but 

 soon after returned to his native country on being chosen one of the 

 regents, or professors of philosophy, in St. Leonard's College, St. 

 Andrews, an appointment for which he is said to have been indebted 

 to the interest of his relation the Earl of Rothes, to whom he had got 

 himself introduced while in the South. His whole history evinces the 

 great talent he had in insinuating himself into the favour of the great. 

 After a short time he exchanged his professorship for the office of 

 minister of the parish of Grail, no doubt a better living, to which he 

 was appointed by his friend John, earl of Crawford and Liudesay. 



These facts are given on the authority of a tract entitled ' A true 

 and Impartial Account of the Life of the most Reverend Father in 

 God, Dr. James Sharp, Archbishop of St. Andrews,' which is usually 

 quoted as printed in 1723, although, according to Watt's ' Bibliotheca,' 

 it was first published in 1719. The object of the writer is to make it 

 appear that Sharp was disinclined to Presbytery, or at least opposed 

 to the Solemn League and Covenant, from the beginning ; but he must 

 at any rate have complied with both when he accepted his professor- 

 ship and his living in the church. Indeed it is evident that he 

 assumed the appearance of great zeal for the ecclesiastical system now, 

 after the commencement of the civil war, established in Scotland, and 

 with such success as to take in its firmest and ablest friends, so that 

 he enjoyed the full confidence and took part in all the councils of the 

 leaders of the church. His affability and pleasing manners also, we 

 are told, made him a favourite among his parishioners. 



In August 1651, according to Sir James Balfour's ' Annals,' Sharp 

 was one of a number of ministers who were seized and put on board 

 ship at Broughty, on the Tay, and carried off prisoners to England, by 

 order of General Monk, who was then overrunning the country. This 

 remarkable passage in his history is not noticed in the common 

 accounts of Sharp; but frequent allusions occur in the Presbyterian 

 invectives to certain base compliances, by which he is asserted to have 

 purchased the favour of Cromwell on some occasion, and to have 

 obtained his liberty, while his companions were left in bondage. He 

 appears, at all events, to have, after some time, found his way back to 

 his charge at Crail. 



Some years after this we hear of him being sent up to London with 

 a commission from the party in the church called the Resolutioners, 

 to plead their cause before the Protector against Mr. James Guthrie, 

 minister of Stirling, the deputy of the opposing faction, called the 

 Protestors or Remonstrators ; on which occasion he is said to have so 

 distinguished himself by his management and address that Cromwell 

 remarked to the byestanders, " That gentleman, after the Scotch way, 

 ought to be styled Sharp of that ilk." He was no doubt selected for 

 this mission partly on account of the connections he had formed in 

 England, According to Burnet, Sharp at this time "seemed more 

 than ordinary zealous for Presbytery." 



It is characteristic of Sharp that, although thus the agent of the 

 Resolutioners, he always, according to his friendly biographer, kept 

 a good understanding with the chiefs of their opponents, the Pro- 

 testors. While ingratiating himslf with Cromwell also, it seems, he 

 maintained a correspondence with Charles II. during all the time of 



his exile. General Monk was exactly the character for such a man to 

 get into his hands at the critical moment of the Restoration. It is 

 certain that, whatever may have afterwards been thought or said of 

 the acts by which he had obtained his release from Cromwell when 

 his companions were left in confinement, he had either never lost or 

 had completely regained the confidence of his brethren in the church, 

 five of whom, ministers of Edinburgh, and the leading men of their 

 party, when Monk began his march from the North of England upon 

 London, in January 1660, applied to him to receive Sharp as their 

 representative, and as a person fully instructed in their views. 



The seven months that followed form the portion of Sharp's history 

 which is of tho most importance to tho appreciation of his character. 

 He proceeded to London, where he arrived 13th February, set out for 

 Breda 4th May, returned to London 26th May, and appears to have 

 remained there till about the middle of August. During all this 

 time he was in close communication with all the leading persons and 

 parties of the day; with Mo'nk and the chief of the English and 

 Scottish nobility then in London ; with both the Presbyterian and the 

 Episcopalian ministers there ; with Charles himself and the members 

 of his court ; and he also kept up an active correspondence with 

 Douglas and the other ministers in Scotland by whom he had been 

 deputed. The numerous letters which passed between him and 

 Douglas have been preserved ; they are now deposited in the library 

 of the University of Glasgow, and a very full abstract of them has 

 been given by Wodrow in the Introduction to his ' History of the 

 Sufferings of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the 

 Revolution.' Mr. C. Kirkpatrick Sharpe, in a note to Kirkton's 

 ' Secret and true History of the Church of Scotland from the Resto- 

 ration to the year 1678,' observes that "Wodrow is accused of gross 

 injustice in garbling Sharp's letters to Douglas;" but that writer, 

 whose partisanship is very decided, neither ventures to warrant the 

 truth of this accusation, nor professes to have examined the original 

 letters. On the other hand, the Rev. Dr. Burns, late of Paisley, 

 now of Toronto in Canada, the modern editor of Wodrow's His- 

 tory, having compared, as he tells us, the letters with the 

 abstract, asserts, " without hesitation, as a general result of the 

 inquiry, that, while the historian does by no means conceal his 

 design of exposing Sharp's treachery, he had it in his power 

 from these documents to have held him up to detestation in still 

 blacker colours, had he quoted all the expressions of affected devo- 

 tion all the solemn protestation of attachment to Presbytery all 

 the specimens of mean adulation, and all the bitter vituperations 

 against his opponents, which these letters contain." Dr. Burns pro- 

 bably would not wish to be considered a less zealous partisan than 

 Mr. Sharp ; but, besides the authority his statement derives from his 

 having actually seen and read the original letters, it appears to us to 

 be probable in itself. Wodrow, though not a critically exact historian, 

 had a most minute as well as extensive acquaintance with the times of 

 which he writes, and is a very careful compiler from the vast store of 

 original documents on which his work is almost exclusively founded ; 

 and, although not a person of much enlargement of mind, he cannot 

 with justice be called either a violent or an unfair writer. His abstract 

 certainly leaves a strong impression of Sharp's thorough dissimulation 

 and treachery. The opinion which Douglas afterwards formed was, 

 it seems, that he had been corrupted and gained over to the Episcopa- 

 lian side during his visit to Breda, where he was probably much with 

 Hyde, and where Charles himself treated him with the most flattering 

 favour and familiarity ; and in this view of the matter Wodrow also 

 appears to coincide. To us his conduct has the air of intrigue and 

 dishonesty from the commencement of his mission ; he may not have 

 made up his mind when he left home to support the restoration of 

 Episcopacy in Scotland, but we believe he set out fully determined to 

 take the course as to that matter which promised most for his own 

 advancement, and that what he saw of the current in which things 

 were running after he got to London very soon determined him as to 

 the part he should act. 



Some of Sharp's defenders however take up other ground, and, 

 without disputing the correctness of Wodrow's abstract of the letters, 

 deny that they afford any evidence of his insincerity, or that we have 

 any other reason for believing that he was unfaithful to the cause of 

 Presbytery so long as he was employed on this mission. When he 

 returned to Scotland, he brought with him a letter from the King, 

 directed, " to Mr. Robert Douglas, to be communicated to the Pres- 

 bytery of Edinburgh," in which his Majesty declared his resolution 

 " to protect and preserve the government of the church of Scotland, as it 

 is settled by law, without violation." This letter Sharp's enemies will 

 have to have been of his composition; its mode of expression was at least 

 ingenious. The Scottish parliament, which met 1st January 1661, 

 passed an act suggested, according to Burnet, at the council table in 

 a drunken bout rescinding or repealing all acts passed since the 

 year 1633; and this at once abolished any legal establishment that 

 Presbytery had ever received, and made "the church as it is settled 

 by law " to mean the old Episcopal church which had been over- 

 thrown in 1638. During his late absence from Scotland, Sharp had 

 been elected professor of divinity in St. Mary's college, St. 

 Andrews ; he was also appointed his Majesty's chaplain for Scotland, 

 with an annual salary of 200Z. sterling ; and now, having gone up 

 again to London, on the rising of parliament, along with Glencairn, 



