8

MEMOIRS OF GRANVILLE SHARP.

for nearly three centuries the ravages of avarice, owed to him the first foreign settlement of friendly commerce on her shores; and Great Britain claimed, through his arduous struggles, the gratitude of a long-degraded people for the returning dawn of civilization.

At home, many of the distinguished efforts of benevolent and religious societies, in which he will be found to have born a principal part, are wholly of his time. That which finally extorted from sluggish apathy, from power and prejudice, the abolition of the inhuman Slave Trade, stands in the list. The societies themselves either did not exist when his humane and virtuous mind first impelled him forward in the pursuit of public good, or all have derived an increase of strength from his co-operation.

The lives of some men may be contemplated in their opinions and private studies; of others, in their exertions and public concerns. It is rarely that the world beholds the union of unceasing action and unwearied study: still more rarely does it enjoy the sight of such united power devoting itself, at once meekly and resolutely, to the fear of God and the aid of man.

Yet such was the character of GRANVILLE Sharp.

Mr. SHARP* was descended from a family very antiently settled at Bradford-dale, in Yorkshire; and his more immediate predecessors had been distinguished for the same high qualities of which he maintained the lustre in his own example.

During the war between Charles I. and the Parliament, Thomas Sharp rose into notice from the particular degree of favour in which he stood with General Lord Fairfax, who held his head-quarters at his house at Bradford, and, among other marks of regard, offered him a commission in the army; but he declined it, preferring to continue in trade. It is unnecessary to say, that he was attached

The name of Granville was derived from Sir Richard Granville, who was Vice-Admiral of England in the reign of Elizabeth. "He reduced Virginia to allegiance, and added it to her Majesty's dominions. He was himself lineally descended from Richard, the third Duke of Normandy."-Raleigh's Naval Register,

to the opinions of the Puritans. His infant son, John, would have been brought up in the same principles, if the contrary attachment of the mother to the Royalist party had not given a more salutary direction to his mind. At the hazard of Lord Fairfax's displeasure, and eluding all the searches that were made for Common Prayer Books in every house, she had preserved those of her family; and one of them she put into the hands of her son, instructing him to love and value it. The boy was particularly moved by reading the Litany; and to this first feeling was soon added a more powerful excitement by the accidental view of his father's secret devotions. Through a chink in the door of an adjoining room, he had perceived him at his private prayers: childish curiosity brought him back frequently to the same place, and he found "something in his father's manner of addressing himself to God in secret, something in the importunate earnestness of his devotions," so forcibly affecting his heart, that the impression was never effaced.

This boy was afterwards the venerable Archbishop of York*.

The disclosure of early talents in the child, probably induced the father to devote him to learned pursuits. At the age of sixteen, with no other helps to literature than he had gained at the grammar-school of his native town at Bradford, John was admitted of Christ's-Church College, Cambridge, under the care of a faithful and enlightened tutor, whose diligent services he gratefully recompensed on his first advancement in the church+.

In the course of his college studies, the intenseness of his application brought on an illness, which terminated in hypochondriac melancholy, and, to rouse himself from this benumbing malady, he left the

• He retained his affection for the Litany through life, "judging it," as he said, “as to the matter, extremely well suited to the wants of mankind; and, as to the manner of it, exceedingly well contrived for the helping our infirmities in prayer."

+ This was the Rev. Mr. Brooksbank, who, through the application of his pupil, then Archdeacon of Berks, obtained from the Chancellor the living of St. Mary's in Reading. Dr. Sharp offered to resign the archdeaconry in favour of his old master, to which the Chancellor would not consent, but added to his gift one of the prebends of Salisbury.

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university for a short time; after which, having succeeded in regaining his health, he returned, to commence his studies in divinity*.

His great attention to the church service procured him an unsolicited Living, and his excellent character the situation of Tutor and Domestic Chaplain in the family of Sir Heneage Finch, Solicitor General. He was admitted into Holy Orders in 1667, and ordained Deacon and Priest in the same day by a particular dispensation from the Archbishop of Canterbury. In Sir Heneage's family he had the care of four youths, two of whom, afterwards, entering the church, were made by him dignitaries of the cathedral of York.

He was scarcely twenty-eight years of age, when his patron (now made Attorney-General) informed him that the King had conferred on him the Archdeaconry of Berkshire. Sharp replied, that "he was too young and ignorant, and he wished to decline the preferment;" but the Attorney-General would not accept the excuse, and furnished him with all requisites for taking inmediate possession.

Sir Heneage, (created a Peer in 1674, and) succeeding to the Chancellorship of England in 1675, soon placed his chaplain in a more conspicuous point of view, by entrusting to him the entire charge of recommending persons properly qualified to take the numerous preferments in his gift. This arduous task he executed in so exemplary a manner, that no preferment passed through his hands, that was not bestowed on some one of the most learned and virtuous men of the timet. Three gifts only the Chancellor reserved for his own

*To unbend his mind from severer studies, he commenced a collection of medals; which he afterwards so improved and enlarged, that it was inferior to few in England, particularly in regard of the Saxon and English coins. The collection has been further augmented by his descendants.

His conduct in this respect was uniform through life. "During a part of King Charles's reign, as well as in that of King William (by being joined in an extraordinary commission with some other bishops to recommend fit persons to crown-preferments), and also in the reign of Queen Anne, through the respect the Queen paid to his recommendation, he became instrumental in promoting some of the most shining lights in literature that the age in which he lived, or perhaps any other age, ever produced; Archbishop Tillotson, who was made Dean of Canterbury (his first preferment) by his recommendation; Bishops Bull and Beveridge, whose learned and truly pious publications will ever do honour to their names; Dr. Prideaux, Dean of Norwich, author of the Connection between the Old and New Testament;'

disposal, and those he conferred on Mr. Sharp himself. Among them was the rectory of St. Giles's, which became his residence for sixteen years, and where he was revered as a minister, who zealously and faithfully discharged all the duties of his office, but particularly those most important ones of catechising the youth and comforting the sick. In the performance of the latter duty he bore an equal share with his curates, visiting the poor in the meanest garrets and cellars, and never refusing his personal attendance, wherever it was required*.

In 1679 he commenced Doctor in Divinity at Cambridge, and in 1681 was promoted to the Deanery of Norwich.

In 1686 he was appointed Chaplain in Ordinary to James the Second, and continued so till the Revolution; though the manner in which he spoke of the Church of Rome, in the pulpit, was so little agreeable to this monarch, that the Bishop of London (Dr. Compton) was advised to suspend him; but he refused, and, after a short time, Dr. Sharp was restored to the King's favour.

The Revolution which took place, did not, in any manner, alter the steady tenour of his conduct. With the same independence

Dr. Bentley, the learned Master of Trinity College; Dr. Potter, highly esteemed for his Greek Antiquities and other works of learning, and afterwards eminent as Archbishop of Canterbury; the worthy and amiable Sir William Dawes, who, by Dr. Sharp's particular recommendation to the Queen just before he died, succeeded him as Archbishop of York; the learned Dr. Mill; Dr. Hales, eminent afterwards as a philosopher; and Dr. Grube, a learned Prussian divine. Many other pious and worthy men were preferred by his means, but the above were the most eminent."-Letter from Granville Sharp to Dr. Witherspoon, 1764.

* "His compliance herein put him sometimes in hazard of his life. Once, when he was called, by two unknown gentlemen, to an unknown place, on pretence of visiting a dying friend, and not without suspicions of some treacherous design upon himself—(for it was a particular time in King James's reign, when he had grounds for such a distrust)-he nevertheless ventured with them, only taking with him the guard of a servant, which was not usual with him, and ordering him to stand in the street before the house whither he was carried, and not to stir from thence upon any account whatever, till he saw him come out of the house again. (This indeed was Mrs. Sharp's advice and precaution.) And it had this effect, that when the design of the servant's attendance in the street was observed, by his utterly refusing to enter the house, the Rector, after waiting some time, was told that the stranger patient was then taking rest, and could not conveniently be disturbed; and so he was dismissed, and never heard afterwards either of the patient or his friends."

MS. Life of Archbishop Sharp, by his Son, Dr. Thomas Sharp.

with which he had censured the Romish religion before James, he prayed for that monarch before the Prince of Orange, on the first Sunday after the opening of the Convention, and also before the House of Commons, on the Wednesday following; considering, that, though the vote of abdication had passed that House, it had not yet received the concurrence of the Lords, and that the Service of the Church had not yet been altered by any due authority.

In 1689, he was farther promoted to the Deanery of Canterbury, and was named by King William one of the persons appointed to fill the sees vacant by the deprivation of their bishops. But in this latter point he unexpectedly declined obedience, on account of the dispossessed bishops being still alive, and his unwillingness to remove to any of those honourable situations under such circumstances. He requested, therefore, to remain in his own humbler station. But the strong friendship of Dr. Tillotson (then nominated for Archbishop of Canterbury), and his interest with the King, prevailed in reconciling the feelings of all parties. He represented to Dr. Sharp, that the King was offended at his refusal of a bishoprick, and that the only measure which could restore him to favour, would be, that of consenting to accept the Archbishoprick of York, whenever it should become vacant. This point he carried, and then obtained from William the order for the succession. About a week afterwards, the Archbishop of York (Lamplugh) died, and the two friends, Tillotson and Sharp, received their archiepiscopal consecration nearly at the same period. Dr. Sharp took the most affectionate leave of his parishioners in St. Giles's.

He was in his forty-seventh year when he was advanced to the see of York, and he sate in it two-and-twenty years.

His life as an Archbishop is too important in history, to admit of adequate mention in this place. His constancy and integrity, his learning and piety, his disinterested zeal and loyalty, secured to him the favour of William, and made him the confidential friend of Anne to the last hour of his life.

After the virtuous fulfilment of a long course of exemplary and painful duties, he died at Bath, Feb. 2, 1713-14; and was succeeded in