101 
S H I 
don, he presented a very humble petition to theJcing, in 
consequence of which, he was allowed to return to his 
duty in the metropolis, and he was extremely careful never 
after to give offence, as he had done before. After the 
abdication of the monarch, Dr. Sharp irritated the ad¬ 
herents to William, by some offensive passages in a prayer 
and sermon, which he delivered before the house of com¬ 
mons, who at first refused him their accustomed thanks, 
which, however, were voted afterwards. In 1689, Dr. 
Sharp was appointed the successor to Dr. Tillotson in the 
deanery of Canterbury, and he was nominated one of the 
commissioners for revising the liturgy. At this period 
several bishops had been deprived of their fees for refusing 
to take the oaths to William and Mary, and Dr. Sharp 
might have succeeded to almost any of them, but he re¬ 
fused, not through any scruple of conscience, but on ac¬ 
count of his friendship for the persons deprived. When, 
however, the archbishopric of York became vacant in a dif¬ 
ferent way, he readily accepted the high office, and he was 
consecrated in July 1691. He filled this exalted station in 
a manner, which has caused him to be represented as a 
model of prelatical virtues, and which procured him ge¬ 
neral respect and esteem. He died at Bath in 1714, in the 
69th year of his age. His only writings were sermons, of 
which were published two volumes, consisting of such oc¬ 
casional discourses as he had printed during his life time, 
and five others, that were selected after his decease. He 
was reckoned an excellent preacher, and his style and doc¬ 
trine are said to be equally of the standard purity. Biog. 
Brit. 
SHARP (Thomas), younger son of the preceding, was 
born in Yorkshire, and admitted of Trinity college, Cam¬ 
bridge, about 1703, when he was of the age of 15. He 
obtained a fellowship in 1729, and took his doctor’s degree 
the same year. Archbishop Dawes appointed him his 
chaplain, and in 1720, he was collated to the rectory of 
Rothbury, in Northumberland. He was afterwards pre¬ 
ferred to a prebend in Durham cathedral, and also to the 
archdeaconry of Northumberland. He died in 1758. Dr. 
Sharp wrote two dissertations concerning the etymology of 
the Hebrew words Elohim and Berith.—“ Discourses on 
the Antiquity of the Hebrew Tongue and Character.” 
SHARP (Granville), son of the preceding, a most dis¬ 
tinguished philantrophist and friend do the liberties of man¬ 
kind, was born in the year 1734. He was educated for 
the bar, but did not practise at it. When he quitted the 
legal profession, he obtained a place in the ordnance office, 
which he resigned at the commencement of the American 
war; the principles of which were abhorrent from his mind. 
He now took chambers in the Temple, and devoted himself 
to a life of study ; at the same time, laying himself out for 
public utility. He first became known to the public in the 
case of a poor and friendless Negro, of the name of So¬ 
merset. This person had been brought from the West 
Indies to England by a master, whose name we should 
gladly hand down to the execration of posterity, if it were 
in our power; and falling into bad health, was abandoned 
by him as a useless article of property, and turned into the 
streets, either to die, or to gain a miserable support by 
precarious charity. In this destitute state, almost, it is 
said, on the point of expiring on the pavement of one of 
the public streets of London, Mr. Sharp chanced to see 
him. He instantly had him removed to St. Bartholomew’s 
hospital, attended personally to his wants, and in a short 
time had the happiness to see him restored to health. Mr. 
Sharp now clothed him, and procured him comfortable em¬ 
ployment in the service of a lady. Two years had elapsed, 
and the circumstance almost, and the name of the poor 
Negro, had escaped the memory of his benefactor, when 
Mr. Sharp received a letter from a person, signing himself 
Somerset, confined in the Poultry Compter, stating no 
cause for his commitment, but intreating his interference to 
save him from a greater calamity even than the death from 
which he had rescued him. Mr. Sharp instantly went 
to the prison, and found the Negro, who in sickness and 
Vol. XXIII. No. 1557. 
L R P. 
misery had been discarded by his master, sent to prison as 
a runaway slave. The excellent patriot went immediately to 
the lord mayor, William Nash, Esq., who caused the parties 
to be brought before him; when, after a long hearing, the 
upright magistrate decided that the master had no property 
in the person of the Negro, in this country, and gave the 
Negro his liberty. The master instantly collared him, in 
the presence of Mr. Sharp and the lord mayor, and insisted 
on his right to keep him as his property. Mr. Sharp now 
claimed the protection of the English law, caused the master 
to be taken into custody, and exhibited articles of peace 
against him for an assault and battery. After various legal 
proceedings, supported by him with most undaunted spirit, 
the twelve judges unanimously concurred in an opinion that 
the master had acted criminally. Thus did Mr. Sharp 
emancipate for ever the race of blacks from a state of 
slavery, while on British ground, and in fact banished slavery 
from Great Britain. Such an incident could not fail deeply 
to impress a benevolent mind ; and slavery, in every shape 
and country, became the object of his unceasing hostility. 
In 1769 he published a work, entitled “ A Representation 
of the Injustice and dangerous Tendency of Tolerating 
Slavery, or of admitting the least Claim of private Property 
in the Persons of Men in England.” Having succeeded in 
the case of an individual Negro, he interested himself in 
the condition of the many others, who were seen wander¬ 
ing about the streets of London, and at his own expense 
collected a number of them, whom he sent back to Africa, 
where they formed a colony on the river Sierra Leone. 
He performed a still more essential service to humanity, 
by becoming the institutor of the “ Society for the Aboli¬ 
tion of the Slave Trade;” which, after contending against 
a vast mass of opposition, at length (1807) gloriously 
succeeded, as far as this country was concerned in the hor¬ 
rible traffic. 
Mr. Granville Sharp is mentioned in connection with this 
business, in terms of the highest commendation, by Mr. 
Clarkson, in his “ History of the Abolition of the Slave 
Trade.” The following short account of him is extracted 
from the Edinburgh Review, vol. xii. 
“ We think it a duty to mention the name of Mr. Gran¬ 
ville Sharp. Regardless of the dangers to which he ex¬ 
posed himself, both in his person and his fortune, Mr. Sharp 
stood forward in every case as the courageous friend of the 
poor Africans in England, in direct opposition to an opinion 
of York and Talbot, the attorney and solicitor-general for 
the time being. This opinion had been acted upon; and 
so high was its authority, that, after it had been made 
public, it was held as the settled law of the land, that a slave, 
neither by baptism, or arrival in Great Britan or Ireland, 
acquires freedom, but may be legally forced back to the 
plantations. Discouraged by judge Blackstone, and several 
other eminent lawyers, Mr. Sharp devoted three years of his 
life to the English law, that he might render himself the 
more effectual advocate of these friendless strangers. In 
his work, entitled ‘ A Representation of the Injustice and 
dangerous Tendency of tolerating Slavery in England,’ 
published in the year 1769, and afterwards in his learned 
and laborious ‘ Inquiry into the Principles of Villenages,’ 
he refuted the opinion of York and Talbot by unanswerable 
arguments, and neutralized their authority by the counter 
opinion of the great lord chief justice. Holt, who many 
years before had decided, that as force could be used against 
no man in England without legal process, every slave 
coming into England became free, inasmuch as the laws of 
England recognized the distinction between person and pro¬ 
perty as perpetual and sacred. Finally, in the great case 
of Somerset, which was argued at three different sittings, 
in January,in February, and in May, of,the year 1772, 
(the opinion of the judges having been taken up on the 
pleadings), it was at last ascertained and declared to be the 
law of the land, that as soon as ever any slave set his foot 
upon English territory, he became free. Among the heroes 
and sages of British story, we can think of few whom we 
should feel a greater glow of honest pride in claiming as an 
2 D ancestor, 
