Sharp, JAMES, Archbishop of St Andrews, was born at the castle of Banff on 4th May 1618, the son of the sheriff-clerk of Banffshire. Educated for the church at King's College, Aberdeen (1633-37), he afterwards visited England, and became acquainted with several eminent English divines, as Hammond, Sanderson, and Taylor. In 1643 he was appointed a 'regent' of philosophy at St Andrews, and in 1648 minister of Crail, an office which he held throughout Cromwell's ascendancy. In 1651, however, when Monk was reducing Scotland to obedience, Sharp was carried off to England with several other ministers; but he quickly regained his liberty, and for some years enjoyed the confidence of the 'Resolutioners,' or more moderate party in the church. In 1656 he was chosen by them to plead their cause in London before the Protector against the 'Protesters;' and Baillie speaks of him on this occasion as 'that very worthy, pious, wise, and diligent young man.' On the eve of the Restoration he was sent up again to London to use his utmost endeavours with Monk in favour of the Kirk of Scotland, and at Monk's suggestion he crossed over to Breda, and had several interviews with Charles II. His correspondence for some months after his return from Holland is full of apprehensions of Prelacy, 'cassock-men,' and the Service-book; but its perfidy stands revealed in his letter of 21st May 1661 to Middleton, which proves that he was then (as probably before) in confidential communication and hearty co-operation with Clarendon and the English bishops for the immediate re-establishment of Episcopacy in Scotland. The bribe was a great one, for on 16th December he was consecrated Archbishop of St Andrews, having first received Episcopal re-ordination. The supple and dexterous tool of Middleton or Lauderdale, as either gained the ascendancy, a liar and coward, and a vindictive oppressor of those he had betrayed, he soon became an object of detestation to the populace and of contempt to his employers. When in 1668 Robert Mitchell, a conventicle preacher, fired a pistol at him in the streets of Edinburgh, the bystanders suffered the fanatic to escape—only, however, to be executed ten years later on his own confession, enticed from him by an assurance of his life. At last, on 3d May 1679, on Magus Muir, twelve Fife Covenanters—Hackston of Rathhill, John Balfour of Kinloch, the rest peasants or artisans—fell in with him as he was driving with his daughter to St Andrews, and, dragging him from his coach, hacked him clumsily to death in spite of his frantic prayers. In his epitaph at St Andrews Sharp is described as 'a most pious prelate, a most prudent senator, and a most holy martyr;' but to-day even his apologists can plead little for him but that he was not licentious, that his portrait is not that of a monster of cruelty, and that he was simply an ambitious ecclesiastic of plausible and courtly manners, who may have thought that, if there must be an archbishop of St Andrews, there was no great reason why he should not be the man.
See vol. vii. of Hill Burton's History of Scotland (ed. 1874); O. Airy's Lauderdale Papers (Camden Soc. 1884); an article in the North British Review (1848); and two in the Scottish Review (1884-85).