SHARP, JOHN. 



SHARP, JOHN. 



460 



the chancellor, and Rothee, the president of the council, he was, in a 

 council held at Whitehall, nominated Archbishop of St. Andrews. He 

 returned to Scotland with the same two noblemen on August 31st, 

 and left again for England on October 18th ; and about the middle of 

 December he and three of his brethren were consecrated with great 

 pomp at Westminister by the bishops of London and Worcester. 



The history of Sharp's government of the Scottish Church cannot 

 be here detailed. He certainly did not allow any recollections of his 

 own very recent renouncement of Presbyterianism, or of the extreme 

 zeal he had been wont to profess for that system of ecclesiastical 

 government, to check his activity and ardour in the maintenance of 

 the opposite order of things that bad been now set up. The party he 

 had deserted cbarge him with an unrelenting persecution of his old 

 associates, of all who would not apostatise like himself, as well as with 

 the most overbearing deportment even to those of his own communion 

 who were his inferiors in station, and with an insatiable ambition ; 

 and it cannot be denied that many well-authenticated facts lend 

 strong countenance to these imputations. He may have conscien- 

 tiously believed such a policy to be necessary, or to be the wisest and 

 best ; but whatever were his views or motives, it is certain that we 

 find him on all occasions the advocate for measures of rigour and 

 severity, and constantly clamouring for the more strict execution of 

 the laws against nonconformists. 



In 1663 he left the declining interest of the Earl of Middleton, to 

 whose support he had been mainly indebted for his nomination to 

 the primacy, and attached himself to his old adversary the Earl of 

 Lauderdale ; but their association scarcely lasted two years. 



In 1664, on the death of the Earl of Glencairn, he made strong 

 application for the office of Lord Chancellor, but without success. 

 In the beginning of the year 1667 he was commanded to come no 

 more to the council-table, but to remain within his diocese ; but this 

 restraint was taken off before the end of the year. On Saturday, the 

 9th of July 1668, he was shot at as he was entering his coach in the 

 streets of Edinburgh, by one James Mitchell, a conventicle preacher; 

 but the ball was intercepted by the arm of the Eishop of Orkney, 

 who was following him into the coach. The bishop's arm was 

 shattered, but nobody attempted to apprehend the assassin, who 

 was discovered, however, five years afterwards, and executed in 

 January 1678, after a series of proceedings which, at least according to 

 one version of the story, are little creditable to Sharp's magnanimity. 

 At last, on Saturday, the 3rd of May 1679, the archbishop, while 

 travelling with his eldest daughter from Kennoway, where he had 

 passed the night, to St. Andrews, was attacked by' a band of nine 

 enthusiasts on Magus Muir, within three miles of that city, dragged 

 from his coach, and slaughtered on the spot with circumstances of the 

 most ferocious and pitiless barbarity. Various narratives of this 

 murder have been collected by Wodrow, and one has been added by 

 Dr Bums, in his late edition of that historian's work (4 vols. 8vo, 

 Glasgow, 1829) ; but the most detailed and in all respects remarkable 

 account of the affair is that drawn up by James Russell, one of the 

 actors in it, which was for the first tune printed by Mr. Sharpe at the 

 end of his edition of Kirktou's History. The same volume also con- 

 tains a letter from Sir William Sharp, the archbishop's son, giving an 

 account of his father's murder, dated St. Andrews, the 10th of May. 



By his wife Helen Moncrief, daughter of the laird of llanderston, 

 Archbishop Sharp left a son, Sir William Sharp, and two daughters, 

 both of whom were married, the youngest, Margaret, to William, 

 eleventh Lord Saltoun, the ancestor of the present lord. His portrait, 

 from a painting by Lely, is engraved in Sharpe's Kirkton, and also in 

 the last edition of Wodrow. The spot where he was murdered on 

 Magus Muir is still marked by a stone erected to the memory of 

 Andrew Guillan, one of the only two of the party who were brought 

 to justice, whose body was there hung in chains. A magnificent 

 marble monument was erected to the archbishop by his son over the 

 place where his remains were interred in the parish-church of St. 

 Andrews, exhibiting, besides a representation of the murder, a long 

 and highly laudatory inscription, a copy of which, with a short 

 account of the archbishop, may be found in the ' Reliquiae Divi 

 Andrese ' of Mr. George Martine, who is supposed to have been his 

 secretary (4to., St. Andrews, 1797). 



SHARP, JOHN, Archbishop of York, was born at Bradford, 16th 

 February 1644 ; his father, Mr. Thomas Sharp, was engaged in trade 

 there, but ia said to have been descended from the Sharps of Little 

 Norton, a family of great antiquity in Bradford Dale. In 1660 he 

 waa admitted of Christ's College, Cambridge; in July 1667, he was 

 ordained deacon and priest; and in October of the same year he 

 became domestic chaplain to Sir Heneage Finch (then attorney-gene- 

 ral, afterwards chancellor), and tutor to his sons. Having taken his 

 master's degree at Oxford in 1669, he was in 1672, on the recom- 

 mendation of Finch, nominated by the crown to the archdeaconry 

 of Berkshire. When Finch was appointed the game year lord-keeper, 

 he devolved the exercise of his church patronage upon Sharp, " whose 

 conscience," says Nelson, in hia ' Life of Dr.Bull,' "he charged with an 

 impartial scrutiny in this matter; adding withal, that he would prefer 

 none but those who came recommended from him ; and that if he led 

 him wrong, the blame should fall upon his own soul." In 1676 Sharp 

 was installed a prebendary of Norwich; and in 1677 he was insti- 

 tuted to the rectory of St. Giles-in-thc-Fields, London, ou which he 



ceased to reside with his patron the chancellor, and took a house 

 for himself. In 1679 he commenced D.D. at Cambridge, and that 

 year also he accepted the lectureship at St. Lawrence, Jewry, which 

 he held till 1683. In 1681 he was made dean of Norwich, an appoint- 

 ment for which he was again indebted to the interest of his steady 

 friend the chancellor. 



Having been chaplain to Charles II., he was re-appointed to the 

 same office on the accession of James II., but gave great offence and 

 involved himself in some trouble by a sermon which he soon after 

 preached in his own church against popery. Sharp seems to have had 

 no intention of provoking the royal displeasure ; his sermon was 

 preached in reply to a written argument in support of the right of 

 the Church of Rome to the style and title of the only visible catholic 

 church, which had been put into his hands as he was descending from 

 the pulpit on the preceding Sunday ; and he showed every disposition 

 to make up for any offence he might have given. On the 14th of June 

 1686, James addressed a letter to Compton, bishop of London, in 

 which he observed, that notwithstanding the late royal letter to the 

 two archbishops, and the directions concerning preachers issued on 

 the 15th of March 1685, yet Sharp had in some o the sermons he had 

 since preached, " presumed to make unbecoming reflections, and to 

 utter such expressions as were not fit or proper for him ; endea- 

 vouring thereby," continued his majesty, " to beget in the minds of 

 his hearers ail evil opinion of us and our government, by insinuating 

 fears and jealousies, to dispose them to discontent, and to lead them 

 into disobedience and rebellion." And the bishop was commanded 

 immediately to suspend Sharp from further preaching within the 

 diocese of London, until he should have given satisfaction to his 

 majesty, and his majesty's further pleasure should be known. Compton 

 replied, that he should always count it his duty to obey the king in 

 whatever he could perform with a safe conscience ; but that in this 

 case he humbly conceived he was obliged to proceed according to 

 law, and therefore it was impossible for him to comply. His lordship 

 however advised Sharp to abstain in the meantime from preaching ; 

 and on the 20th of June Sharp himself proceeded to Windsor with a 

 petition to the king, in which he assured his majesty, that so far had 

 he always been from venting in the pulpit anything tending to schism 

 or faction, or anyway to the disturbance of his majesty's government, 

 that he had upon all occasions in his sermons, to the utmost of his 

 power, set himself against all sorts of doctrines and principles that 

 looked that way. " But," the petition went on, "if in any sermon of 

 his any words or expressions have unwarily slipped from him, that 

 have been capable of such couatructions as to give your majesty cause 

 of offence, as he solemnly professes he had no ill intention in thoae 

 words or expressions, so he is very sorry for them, and resolves for 

 the future to be so careful in the discharge of his duty, that your 

 majesty shall have reason to believe him to be your most faithful 

 subject. And therefore he earnestly prayeth that your majesty, out 

 of your royal grace and clemency, would be pleased to lay aside the 

 displeasure you have conceived against your humble petitioner, and 

 restore him to that favour which the rest of the clergy enjoy under 

 your majesty's gracious government." James would not even hear 

 this petition read ; upon which Sharp left town and went down to 

 Norwich, where he amused his leisure in collecting old British, Saxon, 

 and English coins, till at length, in the beginning of January 1687, a 

 letter from Suuderland informed him that he might return to his 

 function. Kennet, in his ' Complete History,' says that he was indebted 

 for his recal to the intercession of Pepys (the author of the 'Diary '), 

 who was applied to " as a good-natured man, with wife and children," 

 and who " went freely to the king, and prevailed with his majesty " to 

 remit his displeasure. 



In August 1688, Sharp drew up the reasons on which the other 

 archdeacons and himself declined to appear before the ecclesiastical 

 commissioners to answer for not obeying the king's orders in regard 

 to the reading of the declaration for liberty of conscience. On the 

 27th of January 1689, he preached before the Prince of Orange, and 

 on the 30th before the Convention ; on both occasions praying for 

 King James, although on the 28th the Commons had voted that the 

 king had abdicated and that the throne was vacant. It was not till 

 after a long debate that the House agreed to thank him for his 

 sermon, and to request that he would print it ; and he thought it best 

 to decline complying with that request. After the settlement of the 

 new government, Sharp was, in September 1689, promoted to the 

 deanery of Canterbury, on the removal of Tillotsou to that of St. 

 Paul's. He was pressed to accept the place of one of the deprived 

 bishops ; but this his feelings would not allow him to do, and he ran 

 some risk of losing the favour of King William, till hia frieud Tillotson 

 put it into hia head to offer to accept the archbishopric of York, on 

 the pretext that such an arrangement would place him in his native 

 district, as soon as it should become vacant by the death of Lamplugh, 

 who was then very ill. He died, in fact, within a fortnight after, and 

 Sharp was consecrated archbishop on the oth of July 1691. Sharp 

 acquired a very high character in this eminent office, which ha 

 retained till his death, at Bath, on the 2nd of February, 1714. He 

 enjoyed considerable influence at court during the reign of Anne, and, 

 among other things, is said to have had a share in preventing the 

 elevation of Swift to the Episcopal bench. As a preacher, he had a 

 cluar, easy, correct iitylej and his sermons, which niako seven octavo 



