sal. On 3 May 1679 a number of Fife lairds and farmers had assembled on horseback on Magus Muir, between St. Andrews and Cupar, in the hope of capturing or killing Carmichael, sheriff-substitute of Fifeshire, the main agent in the persecution of the covenanters in the shire, when the carriage of the archbishop himself was unexpectedly seen approaching. In part influenced by the superstitious conviction that God meant to deliver him into their hands, and by the consideration that it would be more effectual to remove the principal than the subordinate, but chiefly inspired by an overpowering passion of hate, they at once resolved on the archbishop's death. David Hackston [q. v.], laird of Rathillet, was in command of the party; but having a private cause of quarrel against the archbishop, he resolved to hold aloof, and the duties of leader were undertaken by Balfour of Burleigh [see Balfour, John]. Two separate accounts of the murder, differing considerably in details, have been published, the one being probably supplied by the daughter of Sharp, who was with him in the carriage, the other by one of the covenanters; but both agree in regard to the substantial facts: viz. that he was shot at while sitting beside his daughter Isabella in the carriage; that, finding he was not slain, the assassins, in the belief that he was proof against bullets, compelled him to come out of the carriage; and that they then fell upon him in a most ferocious manner with their swords until he received his deathblow. The escape of the assassins to the west of Scotland and the consequent insurrection form the subject of Scott's ‘Old Mortality,’ in which the main historic facts are closely adhered to (see notes c and p; cf. Tales of a Grandfather, ch. li.; and art. Graham, John, of Claverhouse). Sharp was buried in the parish church of St. Andrews, where an elaborate marble monument, with a long inscription, was erected to his memory. His portrait, painted by Lely, belonged in 1866 to the Rev. F. G. Sandys Lumsdaine, and a copy is in the National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh; it has been engraved by T. Dudley, D. Loggan (1675), and Vertue (1710).
By his wife Helen, daughter of Moncrieff of Randerston, he had two sons and five daughters: Sir William, who succeeded him in the barony of Scotscraig; John; Isabella, married to John Cunningham of Barns; Catherine; Margaret, married to William, lord Saltoun; and another, married to Erskine of Cambo.
[Ravillac Redivivus, being a Narrative of the Late Tryal of Mr. J. Mitchell for an Attempt on the Person of the Archbishop of St. Andrews; Barbarous Murder of Archbishop Sharp, 3 May 1679 (in verse), 1679; Some Account of the Horrid Murder committed on the late Lord Archbishop of St. Andrews, 1679; Some Account of what is discovered concerning the Murder of Archbishop Sharp, and of what appeurs to have been the Occasion thereof, 1679; Fanatical Moderation, or Unparalleled Villainy displayed: being a Faithful Narrative of the Barbarous Murder, &c., 1679 and 1711; Life of Archbishop Sharp, first printed in 1678, to which is added an Account of his Death, by an Eye-Witness, 1719; True Account of the Life of James Sharp, 1723; Stephen's Life and Times of Archbishop Sharp, 1839; Wodrow's History of the Kirk of Scotland; Kirkton's History of the Kirk of Scotland; Burnet's Own Time; Nicoll's Diary and Robert Baillie's Letters and Journals in the Bannatyne Club; Keith's Scottish Bishops; Hew Scott's Fasti Eccles. Scot. A number of Sharp's letters are included in the Addit. MSS. in the British Museum; and thirty-four letters, witten to him by the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale, &c., were published in the Miscellany of the Scottish History Society, 1893.]
SHARP, JOHN (1572?–1648?), Scottish theologian, was born about 1572. He studied at the university of St. Andrews, and received the degree of M.A. in 1592. In 1601 he became minister of Kilmany in Fife, a parish in the gift of St. Salvator's College, St. Andrews. He was appointed clerk to the assembly which met at Aberdeen on 2 July 1605 in opposition to the commands of James VI, who was taking decisive steps to repress the independence of the Scottish church (Scottish P. C. Reg. 1604–7, p. 472). In consequence Sharp and those present at the assembly were ordered to appear before the privy council on 24 Oct. When they presented themselves they declared the authority of the privy council incompetent to judge a purely ecclesiastical question. For this conduct Sharp and five other ministers were confined in Blackness Castle and served with an indictment to stand their trial for high treason before the court of justiciary at Linlithgow. There they were found guilty in January 1606, and on 23 Oct. banished for life (ib. pp. 83–5, 101–5, 112, 123–5, 134, 199; Calderwood, Hist. of the Kirk, vi. 292–332). Sharp went to France, where in 1608 he was appointed professor of theology in the college of Die in Dauphiné. In 1618 Archbishop Spotiswood asserted that Sharp had written to him beseeching him to obtain his recall and promising submission. This statement was vehemently denied by Sharp's friends, and the letter itself was never produced. There is no doubt, however, that he would
