trusted, he zealously exerted himself to promote the views of his friends. Be this as it may, before he quitted London he was secretly gained over by some of the English high church statesmen, and induced to betray the church which had intrusted its cause to his advocacy. So artfully did he conceal his perfidy, however, that no suspicion was entertained of his designs till they were ripe for execution, and on his return to Scotland the Edinburgh presbytery unanimously thanked him for his diligence and fidelity. A few months later the presbyterian establishment was overthrown, and Sharp, who had meanwhile been elected professor of divinity in St. Marys college, St. Andrews, was appointed his majesty's chaplain for Scotland, and soon after was nominated primate, and archbishop of St. Andrews. He had to submit to the indignity of reordination, his presbyterian orders being treated as a nullity, and along with other three ministers was consecrated with great pomp in Westminster abbey, on the 15th December, 1661. The new primate was naturally regarded with dislike by the party whom he had deserted and betrayed, and that feeling was soon deepened into bitter hatred by the part which he took in the persecution of the covenanters. His insatiable ambition, and haughty and overbearing deportment, rendered him obnoxious also to the other members of the privy council, who were not sorry to mortify him and thwart his schemes when a convenient opportunity offered. The violent policy and wanton cruelties which disgraced the Scottish administration, were largely imputed to Sharp's counsels. It is certain that he was on all occasions the advocate for measures of rigour and severity, and he was deeply implicated in the perfidious and rapacious, as well as blood-thirsty proceedings, of Middleton and Lauderdale. His enemies affirm that he kept back a letter of the king to the privy council, commanding them to stay the execution of the prisoners taken at Rullion Green; that the books of council prove that in common with the other members of the council he perjured himself in the case of Mitchell, who was executed in direct violation of a promise of pardon; that he falsified a document in the case of Bailie of Jerviswood; and that he was the prime mover in the misgovernment of the country, and in the merciless persecution of his former associates. He became in consequence an object of abhorrence to the presbyterians, who denounced him as a Judas, a treacherous and perjured apostate, and an agent of the devil. In 1668 a fanatical preacher named Mitchell discharged a pistol at the archbishop while sitting in his coach in the High Street of Edinburgh, but missed him, and wounded the bishop of Orkney; but at last, on the 6th of May, 1679, he was attacked at Magus Muir, three miles from St. Andrews, by a body of presbyterians whom oppression had made mad, and murdered with circumstances of great barbarity. He was interred in the parish church of St. Andrews, where a marble monument has been erected to his memory. Sharp had considerable ability and learning, plausible manners, and some dexterity in managing men; but he was mean, vindictive, cruel, and perfidious.—(See Wodrow; Kirkton; and Stephens' Life and Times of Archbishop Sharp.)—J. T.
SHARP, John, an eminent prelate, was born 16th February, 1644, at Bradford, in which town his father was a tradesman of note. He entered Christ's college, Cambridge, in 1660, and in 1667, on being ordained deacon and priest, he became domestic chaplain to the attorney-general, Sir Heneage Finch, and tutor to his sons. He took the degree of A.M. at Oxford in 1669. Through his patron's influence he received the archdeaconry of Berkshire, and in 1676 a stall in Norwich cathedral. In 1677 he became rector of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. In 1679 he commenced D.D. at Cambridge, and was preferred to the lectureship of St. Lawrence, Jewry, which he held till 1683. In 1681 he was advanced to the deanery of Norwich. Being a royal chaplain to Charles II., he was continued in the same office by James II. But a sermon preached by him against popery gave so great offence to James, that the bishop of London was ordered to prevent him from preaching in his diocese, and the prelate, for hesitating to obey, fell under the royal displeasure. Sharp resisted, but ultimately went to Windsor with a petition, to which the king in his wrath refused to listen. Sharp then retired to Norwich, but returned to the metropolis in 1687. In August, 1688, he drew up the famous reasons for declining to read the king's declaration for liberty of conscience. On 27th January, 1689, he preached before the prince of Orange, and on the 30th of the same month before the convention, and asserted his loyalty by praying for King James on both occasions. But in 1689 he had no scruple in accepting the deanery of Canterbury under the new government, though he would not accept the see of any of the deprived bishops. He waited, however, till the death of Lamplugh, and became his successor as archbishop of York, 5th July, 1691. He maintained a high character as a prelate. In 1702 he preached the sermon at the coronation of Queen Anne, was sworn of her privy council, and made grand almoner. He died at Bath on the 2nd of February, 1714, and was buried in York minster, where there is an elegant and just inscription to his memory. It may be added, that he visited the notorious Jeffries when he was a prisoner in the Tower, but failed to make any salutary impression on the hardened reprobate. His sermons have been always popular, and often reprinted; their style is easy, perspicuous, and forcible. A new and handsome edition of them was published at Oxford in 1840.—J. E.
SHARP, Richard, from his conversational abilities called "Conversation Sharp," was born about 1760. He seems to have been in early life connected with Manchester, and long superintended extensive commercial concerns. From 1806 till 1812 he represented Castle Rising in the house of commons, and was afterwards till 1820, member for Portarlington. Sharp was a steady whig, a friend of Mackintosh and Horner—the former called him the best critic he had ever known. Sir Walter Scott refers to Sharp in his Diary, as one of the greatest conversationists of his time. The only memorial of his intellect is a volume published anonymously in 1834, of elegant and refined "Letters and Essays," in prose and verse. He died in the March of the following year at Dorchester, on his way from Torquay to London, and left a quarter of a million of money.—F. E.
SHARP, William, an eminent line engraver, was born at Aldgate, London, January 29, 1749. He was the son of a gun-maker, and was apprenticed to one Longmate, a bright engraver, or engraver of gun-barrels, brass-plates, and the like. After his apprenticeship, Sharp commenced business in the same line, but his chief occupation is said to have been in engraving publicans' pewter-pots. He soon ventured, however, to try his hand on a higher branch of art. One of his earliest efforts was a quarto print of Hector, a lion then well known to Londoners as having been for many years one of the attractions of the Tower. This print, which was from a drawing by himself. Sharp exhibited for sale in his shop window. Gradually he made his way by working for the booksellers, till the publication of the Novelists' Library, for which he engraved some of Stothard's graceful drawings, stamped him as one of the ablest of English engravers. But his full power was not called out till he executed plates of a large size. He engraved numerous pictures of very different character, and of course his prints are unequal; but in all is displayed a large and manly style, combined with the most painstaking care in the execution. In expression, precision of line, exquisite gradation of light and shadow, and characterization of surface. Sharp had perhaps hardly a rival among his contemporaries: his print after Reynolds' portrait of John Hunter, is admitted to be one of the very finest English engravings of its class. As other examples of Sharp's best prints may be named the Three Marys, after A. Carracci; Guido's Doctors of the Church, and Ecce Homo; the St. Cecilia of Domenichino; West's Lear in the Storm, and Reynolds' Holy Family; and Vandyck's Charles I. (showing the face in three directions). Sharp was to the last a man of plain simple habits, but a good deal of an enthusiast, and an easy dupe. He was a follower of Richard Brothers, "the Prophet," and gave a public testimony of faith in his claims by engraving his portrait, and placing beneath it the inscription, "Fully believing this to be the man appointed by God, I engrave his likeness." And he gave an equally strong evidence of his credulity in the case of Johanna Southcote, by depositing in her hands the greater part of the money he had earned by years of toil. He died July 25, 1824. Sharp was a member of the academies of Vienna and Munich, and received an intimation that he would be elected associate of the Royal Academy of London, but refused to become a candidate.—J. T—e.
SHARPE, Charles Kirkpatrick, a Scottish antiquary, was a member of the old family of Kirkpatrick of Closeburn, and connected also with the Sharpes of Hoddam, to whose estates his father succeeded in 1769. Charles, who was born about 1780, was educated at Christ church, Oxford, and received the degree of M.A. from that university in 1806. His education was intended to qualify him for the church, but he never took orders. He devoted himself to the cultivation of antiquities, lite-
