JAMES, archbishop of St Andrew's, was born of a good family in Banffshire in 1618. He devoted himself very early to the church, and was educated for that purpose in the university of Aberdeen. When the solemn league and covenant was framed in 1638, the learned men in that seminary, and young Sharp in particular, declared themselves decidedly against it. To avoid the insults and indignities to which he was subjected in consequence of this conduct, he retired to England, where he contracted an acquaintance with some of the most celebrated divines in that country.

At the commencement of the civil wars he returned to Scotland. During his journey thither, he accidentally met with Lord Oxenford, who was so charmed with his conversation, that he invited him to his house. While he resided with that nobleman, he became known to the earl of Rothes, who procured him a professorship at St Andrew's. By the interest of the earl of Crawford he was soon after appointed minister of Crail; where he conducted himself, it is said, in an exemplary manner.

Sharp had always inclined to the cause of royalty, and had for some time kept up a correspondence with his exiled prince. After the death of the protector he began to declare himself more openly, and seems to have enjoyed a great share of the confidence of Monk, who was at that time planning the restoration of Charles II. When that general marched to London, the presbyterians sent Sharp to attend him in order to support their interests. At the request of General Monk and the chief presbyterians in Scotland, Mr Sharp was sent over to the king at Breda to procure from him, if possible, the establishment of presbyterianism. On his return, he assured his friends that "he had found the king very affectionate to Scotland, and resolved not to wrong the settled government of the church: but he apprehended they were mistaken who went about to establish the presbyterian government."

Charles was soon after restored without any terms. All the laws passed in Scotland since the year 1633 were repealed; the king and his ministers resolved at all hazards to restore prelacy. Mr Sharp, who had been commissioned by the Scotch presbyterians to manage their interests with the king, was prevailed upon to abandon the party; and as a reward for his compliance, he was made archbishop of St Andrew's. This conduct rendered him very odious in Scotland; he was accused of treachery and perfidy, and reproached by his old friends as a traitor and renegade. The absurd and wanton cruelties which were afterwards committed, and which were imputed in a great measure to the archbishop, rendered him still more detested. Nor is it probable that these accusations were without foundation: the very circumstance of his having been formerly of the presbyterian party would induce him, after forlaking them, to treat them with severity. Besides, it is certain, that when after the rout at Pentland-hills he received an order from the king to stop the executions, he kept it for some time before he produced it to council.

There was one Mitchell a preacher, and a desperate fanatic, who had formed the design of taking vengeance for these cruelties by assassinating the archbishop. He fired a pistol at him as he was sitting in his coach; but the bishop of Orkney, lifting up his hand at the moment, intercepted the ball. Though this happened in the midst of Edinburgh, the primate was so much detested, that nobody stopped the assassin; who, having walked leisurely home, and thrown off his disguise, returned, and mixed unsuspected with the crowd. Some years after, the archbishop observing a man eyeing him with keenness, suspected that he was the assassin, and ordered him to be brought before him. It was Mitchell. Two loaded pistols were found in his pocket. The primate offered him a pardon if he would confess the crime; the man complied; but Sharp, regardless of his promise, conducted him to the council. The council also gave him a solemn promise of pardon if he would confess his guilt, and discover his accomplices. They were much disappointed to hear that only one man was privy to his purpose, who was since dead. Mitchell was then brought before a court of justice, and ordered to make a third confession, which he refused. He was imprisoned for several years, and then tried. His own confession was urged against him. It was in vain for him to plead the illegality of that evidence, and to appeal to the promise of pardon previously given. The council took an oath that they had given no such promise; and Mitchell was condemned. Lauderdale, who at that time governed Scotland, would have pardoned him, but the primate insisted on his execution; observing, that if assassins were permitted to go unpunished, his life must be continually in danger. Mitchell was accordingly executed.

Sharp had a servant, one Carnichael, who by his cruelty had rendered himself particularly odious to the zealots. Nine men formed the resolution of waylaying him in Magus-moor, about three miles from St Andrew's. drew's. While they were waiting for this man, the primate himself appeared with very few attendants. This they looked upon as a declaration of heaven in their favour; and calling out, "the Lord has delivered him into our hands," they ran up to the carriage. They fired at him without effect; a circumstance which was afterwards imputed to magic. They then dispatched him with their swords, regardless of the tears and intreaties of his daughter, who accompanied him (A).

Thus fell Archbishop Sharp, whose memory is even at present detested by the common people of Scotland. His abilities were certainly good, and in the early part of his life he appears with honour and dignity. But his conduct afterwards was too cruel and insincere to merit approbation. His treatment of Mitchell was mean and vindictive. How far he contributed to the measures adopted against the presbyterians is not certain. They were equally cruel and impolitic; nor did their effects cease with the measures themselves. The unheard-of cruelties exercised by the ministers of Charles II. against the adherents of the covenant, raised such a flame of enthusiasm and bigotry as is not yet entirely extinguished.

Sharp, Dr John, archbishop of York, was descended from the Sharps of Little Norton, a family of Bradford Dale in Yorkshire; and was son of an eminent tradesman of Bradford, where he was born in 1644. He was educated at Cambridge, and in 1667 entered into orders. That same year he became domestic chaplain to Sir Heneage Finch, then attorney-general. In 1672 he was collated to the archdeaconry of Berkshire. In 1675 he was instituted a prebendary in the cathedral church of Norwich; and the year following was instituted into the rectory of St Bartholomew near the Royal Exchange, London. In 1681 he was, by the interest of his patron Sir Heneage Finch, then lord high chancellor of England, made dean of Norwich; but in 1686 was suspended for taking occasion, in some of his sermons, to vindicate the doctrine of the church of England in opposition to Popery. In 1688 he was sworn chaplain to King James II. being then probably restored after his suspension, for it is certain that he was chaplain to King Charles II. and attended as a court chaplain at the coronation of King James II. In 1689 he was declared dean of Canterbury; but never could be persuaded to fill up any of the vacancies made by the deprived bishops. Upon the death of Dr Lamplugh, he was promoted to the see of York. In 1702 he preached the sermon at the coronation of Queen Anne; and the same year was sworn of the privy-council, and made lord almoner to her majesty. He died at Bath in 1713; and was interred in the cathedral of York, where a monument is erected to his memory.—His sermons, which were collected after his death, and published in 7 vols 8vo, are justly admired.

Sharp, Abraham, an eminent English mathematician and astronomer, was born at Little Horton, near Bradford, in the year 1651. He was put apprentice to a merchant at Manchester; but so strongly was he inclined to the study of mathematics, that he soon found his situation both irksome and disagreeable. By the mutual consent, therefore, of his master and himself, he quitted the business of a merchant. He then removed to Liverpool, where he wholly devoted himself to mathematical studies, and where, for a subsistence, he taught writing and accounts.

Soon after this, a merchant from London, in whose house the celebrated Mr Flamsteed then lodged, engaged Mr Sharp to be his book-keeper. With this eminent astronomer he soon contracted an intimate friendship, and by his recommendation he obtained a more profitable employment in the dock-yard of Chatham, where he continued till his friend and patron called him to his assistance. Mr Sharp was chiefly employed in the construction of the mural arch, which he finished in the course of 14 months so entirely to the satisfaction of Mr Flamsteed, that he spoke of him in terms of the highest praise. In the opinion of Mr Smeaton, this was the first good instrument of the kind, and Mr Sharp the first artist who cut delicate divisions on astronomical instruments. When this instrument was constructed, Mr Sharp was but 25, and Mr Flamsteed 30 years of age. Mr Sharp assisted his friend in making a catalogue of nearly 3000 fixed stars, with their longitudes and magnitudes, their right ascensions and polar distances, with the variations of the same while they change their longitude by one degree.

But from the fatigue of constantly observing the stars by night, in a cold thin air, added to a weakly constitution, his health was much impaired; for the recovery of which he requested leave to retire to his house at Horton, where, as soon as he felt himself recovering, he began to fit up an observatory of his own, and the telescopes he made use of were all of his own construction, and the lenses ground and adjusted with his own hands.

It was about this time that he assisted Mr Flamsteed in calculating most of the tables in the second volume of his Historia Coelestis, as appears by their letters, to be seen in the hands of Mr Sharp's friends at Horton. The mathematician, says Dr Hutton, meets with something extraordinary in Sharp's elaborate treatise of Geometry Improved; by a large and accurate table of segments of circles, its construction and various uses in the solution of several difficult problems, with compendious tables for finding a true proportional part; and their use in these or any other tables exemplified in making logarithms,

(A) Such is the account given by all our historians of the murder of Archbishop Sharp; and that he fell by the hands of fanatics, whom he persecuted, is certain. A tradition, however, has been preserved in different families descended from him, which may be mentioned, and is in itself certainly not incredible. The primate, it seems, who, when minister of Crail, was peculiarly severe in punishing the sin of fornication, had, in the plenitude of his archiepiscopal authority, taken notice of a criminal amour carried on between a nobleman high in office and a lady of some fashion who lived within his diocese. This interference was in that licentious age deemed very impertinent; and the archbishop's descendants believe that the proud peer instigated the deluded rabble to murder their ancestor. logarithms, or their natural numbers, to 60 places of figures; there being a table of them for all primes to 1100, true to 61 figures. His concise treatise of Polyedra, or solid bodies of many bases, both of the regular ones and others; to which are added, 12 new ones, with various methods of forming them, and their exact dimensions in furls or species, and in numbers; illustrated with a variety of copperplates, neatly engraved by his own hands. Indeed, few of the mathematical instrument makers could exceed him in exactly graduating or neatly engraving mathematical or astronomical instruments. He possessed a remarkably clear head for contriving, and an extraordinary hand for executing any thing, not only in mechanics, but likewise in drawing, writing, and making the most beautiful figures in all his calculations and constructions.

The quadrature of the circle was undertaken by him for his own amusement, in the year 1699, deduced from two different series, by which the truth of it was proved to 72 places of figures, as may be seen in Sherwin's Tables of Logarithms. In the same book may likewise be seen his ingenious improvements on the making of logarithms, and the constructing of the natural sines, tangents, and secants.

Mr Sharp kept up a correspondence with most of the eminent mathematicians and astronomers of his time, as Flamsteed, Newton, Halley, Wallis, Hodgson, &c. The answers to whose letters are all written on the backs or empty spaces, of the letters he received, in a short hand of his own invention. Being one of the most accurate and indefatigable computers who ever existed; he was many years the common resource for Flamsteed, Sir Jonas Moor, Halley, and others, in all sorts of troublesome and delicate calculations.

Mr Sharp was never married, and spent his time as a hermit. He was of a middle stature, very thin, of a weakly constitution; but remarkably feeble during the last 3 or 4 years before his death, which happened on the 18th of July 1742, in the 91st year of his age.

He was very irregular as to his meals, and uncommonly sparing in his diet, which he frequently took in the following manner. A little square hole, resembling a window, formed a communication between the room where he usually studied, and another where a servant could enter; and before this hole he had contrived a sliding board. It often happened, that the breakfast, dinner, and supper, have remained untouched, when the servant was gone to remove what was left,—so deeply was he engaged in calculations.

Music. See Interval.