Regulations for the intended Settlement near Sierra Leona’ [sic], which reached a third edition in 1788; after some assistance had been obtained from the government, the first cargo of freed slaves sailed on 8 April 1787. In 1789 a company called the St. George's company was formed to manage the settlement, and Sharp was one of the original directors, but after experiencing many difficulties it surrendered to the crown on 1 Jan. 1808 [see Macaulay, Zachary].
During the last years of his life Sharp took a prominent part in founding the British and Foreign Bible Society [see Shore, John, Lord Teignmouth], and was chosen chairman at the inaugural meetings in May 1804 (Owen, Hist. Brit. and For. Bible Soc.) He helped to found the African institution in 1807 and the Society for the Conversion of the Jews in 1808. He had been since 1785 a member of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and in 1813 was first chairman of the Protestant Union designed to oppose catholic emancipation. But his chief work in later years was an important contribution to New Testament scholarship in the shape of ‘Remarks on the Uses of the Definitive Article in the Greek Text of the New Testament,’ Durham, 1798 (2nd ed. 1802; 3rd ed. 1803). ‘Granville Sharp's canon,’ as the rule here laid down has since been known, is that ‘when two personal nouns of the same case are connected by the copulate καὶ, if the former has the definite article and the latter has not, they both belong to the same person,’ e.g. in τοῦ Θεοῦ ἡμῶν καὶ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Xριστοῦ, ‘our God and Lord Jesus Christ,’ ‘God’ and ‘Jesus’ are one and the same person. The canon is a crucial one in connection with the unitarian controversy; it was attacked by Gregory Blunt in 1803, and Calvin Winstanley in 1805, and defended by Christopher Wordsworth (1774–1846) [q. v.] in ‘Six Letters to Granville Sharp,’ 1802, by Thomas Burgess [q. v.], bishop of St. Davids, in 1810, and by Thomas Fanshaw Middleton [q. v.], afterwards bishop of Calcutta, in his ‘Doctrine of the Greek Article,’ 1808 (cf. Alford, Greek Testament, iii. 419–20).
Sharp's irrepressible enthusiasm led him into many eccentric opinions. During his latter years he wrote a number of tracts to prove the approaching fulfilment of scripture prophecies. On one occasion he attempted to convince Fox that Napoleon was the ‘Little Horn’ mentioned by Daniel. At a public meeting presided over by the Duke of Gloucester, he proposed to cure all ills in Sierra Leone by introducing King Alfred's system of frankpledge, and suggested that the soldiers in the Peninsula should be provided with portable bales of wool, which would form an impregnable rampart against the enemy in case of attack. Nevertheless Sir James Stephen attributes to Sharp ‘the most inflexible of human wills united to the gentlest of human hearts,’ and declares that ‘as long as Granville Sharp survived it was too soon to proclaim that the age of chivalry was gone’ (Eccl. Biogr. 1860, p. 538).
Sharp, who was unmarried, chiefly lived in rooms in Garden Court, Temple. He died at Fulham on 6 July 1813, at the house of his sister-in-law, Mrs. William Sharp. He was buried in the family vault in Fulham churchyard, where there is an inscription to his memory; another memorial, with an inscription and medallion portrait to him, was placed by the African Institution in the Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey (engraved in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ 1818, ii. 489). A portrait drawn by George Dance, R.A., and engraved by Henry Meyer, is prefixed to Prince Hoare's ‘Memoirs of Granville Sharp,’ 1820.
Hoare's ‘Memoirs’ (pp. 487–96) contains a complete list of Sharp's works, numbering sixty-one. The more important, besides those already mentioned, are: 1. ‘Remarks on the Opinions of the most celebrated Writers on Crown Law …,’ 1773. 2. ‘The Law of Retribution, or a Serious Warning to Great Britain and her Colonies … of God's Temporal Vengeance against Tyrants, Slaveholders, and Oppressors,’ 1776. 3. ‘The just Limitation of Slavery in the Laws of God,’ 1776, in reply to Thomas Thompson (fl. 1758–1772) [q. v.] 4. ‘An Essay on Slavery,’ 1776. 5. ‘The Law of Liberty or Royal Law,’ 1776. 6. ‘The Law of Passive Obedience,’ 1776. 7. ‘A Defence … of the Right of the People to elect Representatives for every Session of Parliament,’ 1780 (5th ed. same year). 8. ‘An Account of the Ancient Division of the English People into Hundreds and Tithings,’ 1784. 9. ‘An Account of the Constitutional English Polity of Congregational Courts, and more particularly of … the View of Frankpledge,’ 1786. 10. ‘An English Alphabet for the Use of Foreigners,’ 1786. 11. ‘A General Plan for laying out Towns and Townships on the new-acquired Lands in the East Indies, America, or elsewhere,’ 1794 (2nd ed. 1804). 12. ‘Serious Reflections on the Slave Trade and Slavery,’ 1805. 13. ‘Extract of a Letter on the proposed Catholic Emancipation,’ 1805. 14. ‘A Dissertation on the Supreme Divine Right of the Messiah,’ 1806. 15. ‘A Letter in Answer to some of the leading Principles of the People called Quakers,’ 1807. The following tracts are of some note: ‘On the
