Sharp had carefully kept on good terms with Lauderdale, and when the Billeting Plot was concocted in September 1662 against the latter by Middleton, he managed to avoid acting against him; indeed it is probable that, after being appointed under an oath of secrecy to be one of the scrutineers of the billets, he, in violation of the oath, was the cause of Lauderdale receiving timely information of the decision against him; and yet he shortly went up to London to explain the whole affair in Middleton’s interest. When Lauderdale’s supremacy was established he readily co-operated in passing the National Synod Act in 1663, the first step in the intended subjection of the church to the crown. In 1664 he was again in London, returning in April, having secured the grant of a new church commission. His vanity also had been gratified by his being allowed to take precedence of the chancellor at the council. He harassed the ministers who were with his old friend James Wood when he signed his well-known deathbed confession; he cited and fined others, as well as laymen, for withdrawing from the churches; he urged the thorough prosecution of the arbitrary powers granted to the commission, and complained of the slackness of his fellow commissioners. So oppressive was his conduct and that of others of the bishops that it called forth a written protest from Gilbert Burnet. Sharp at once summoned him before the bishops and endeavoured to obtain a sentence of deprivation and excommunication against him, but was overruled by his brethren. On the death of Glencairne, the chancellor’s greatest efforts were made to secure the vacant office for Sharp, and he was not inactive in his own interest; the place was not, however, filled up until 1667, and then by the appointment of Rothes. He was in strict alliance with Rothes, Hamilton, and Dalyell, and the other leaders of oppression, and now placed himself in opposition to the influence of Lauderdale, attacking his friends, and especially the earl of Kincardine. In 1665 he was again in London, where, through his own folly and mendacity, he suffered a complete humiliation at the hands of Lauderdale, well described by the historian Burnet. With Rothes he now in great part governed Scotland, and the result of their system of violence and extortion was the rising of the Covenanters, during which, being in temporary charge during Rothes’s absence, he showed, according to Bellenden, the utmost fear, equalled only by his cruelty to the prisoners after the rout of Pentland. When the convention of estates met in January 1667 he received his first rebuff, Hamilton being substituted for him as president. He now tried to curry favour with Lauderdale, to whom he wrote letters of the most whining contrition, and who extended him a careless reconciliation. The expressions of contempt for him which occur at this time, as previously, in the letters of Robert Moray,

Argyll, and others of Lauderdale’s correspondents, are frequent and very amusing. For a time he made himself actively useful, and was instrumental in restraining his brethren from writing to London to complain of the conciliation policy which for a while Lauderdale carried out, a transaction in which he displayed the utmost effrontery of lying; and, with slight attempts to free himself, he continued faithful in his new service. On July 10, 1668, an attempt was made upon his life by Robert Mitchell, who fired a pistol at him while driving through the streets of Edinburgh. The shot, however, missed Sharp, though his companion the bishop of Orkney was wounded by it, and Mitchell for the time escaped. In August Sharp went up to London, returning in December, and with his assistance, nominally indeed at his suggestion, Tweeddale’s tolerant proposals for filling the vacant parishes with some of the “outed” ministers were carried out. In the debates on the Supremacy Act, by which Lauderdale destroyed the autonomy of the church, he at first showed reluctance to put in motion the desired policy, but gave way upon the first pressure. When, however, Leighton, as archbishop of Glasgow, endeavoured to carry out a comprehension scheme, Sharp actively opposed him, and expressed his joy at the failure of the attempt. From this time he was completely subservient to Lauderdale, who had now finally determined upon a career of oppression, and in 1674 he was again in London to support this policy. In this year also Mitchell, who had shot at him six years before, was arrested, Sharp himself having recognized him, and, upon Sharp’s promise to obtain a pardon, privately made a full confession. When brought into the justiciary court, however, he refused to repeat the confession, whereupon the promise of pardon was recalled; the prisoner was sent to the Bass, and was not brought to trial for four years. In 1678, however, the country being again in great disorder, he was tried on his own confession, which, not having been made before judges, could not legally be brought against him. This plea being overruled, he claimed the promise of pardon. Sharp, however, basely denied that any such promise had been given. His falsehood was proved by the entry of the act in the records of the court. Mitchell was finally condemned, but the condemnation was so evidently unfair and contrary to solemn promise that a reprieve would have been granted had not Sharp himself insisted on his death. This, perhaps the basest action of his base life, was speedily avenged. On May 3, 1679, as he was driving with his daughter Isabel to St Andrews, he was set upon by nine men, who were looking for one of the instruments of his cruelty, and, in spite of unmanly beseechings and of the appeals of his daughter, was cruelly murdered. The place of the murder, on Magus Muir, now covered with fir trees, is marked by a monument erected by Dean Stanley, with a Latin inscription recording the deed. It is only right, while recording a career of cold-blooded cruelty and almost unexampled political baseness, to remember that no charge that can be seriously maintained has ever been brought against the morality of Sharp’s private life.

Unless otherwise mentioned, the proofs of the statements in this article will be found in vols. i. and ii. of the Lauderdale Papers (Camden Society) and in two articles in the Scottish Review, July 1884 and January 1885.

SHARP, William (1749-1824), an eminent line-engraver, was born at London on the 29th of January 1749. He was originally apprenticed to what is called a bright engraver, and practised as a writing engraver, but, gradually becoming inspired by the higher branches of the engraver’s art, he exercised his gifts with surprising success on works of the old masters. Among his earlier plates are some illustrations, after Stothard, for the Novelists’ Magazine. He engraved the Doctors Disputing on the Immaculateness of the Virgin and the Ecce Homo of Guido Reni, the St Cecilia of Domenichino, the Virgin and Child of Dolci, and the portrait of John Hunter of Sir Joshua Reynolds. His style of engraving is thoroughly masterly and original, excellent in its play of line and rendering of half-tints and of “colour.” He died at Chiswick on the 25th July 1824. In his youth Sharp was a violent republican, and, owing to his hotly expressed adherence to the politics of Paine and Horne Tooke, he was examined by the privy council on a charge of treason. He was also one of the greatest visionaries in matters pertaining to religion. No imposture was too gross for him to accept, no deception too glaring for his eyes to admire. The dreams of Mesmer and the rhapsodies of Brothers found in Sharp a staunch believer; and for long he maintained Joanna Southcott at his own expense. As an engraver he achieved a European reputation, and at the time of his death he enjoyed the honour of being a member of the Imperial Academy of Vienna and of the Royal Academy of Munich.