Granville Sharp

English social reformer

• Born: November 10, 1735
• Birthplace: Durham, England
• Died: July 6, 1813
• Place of death: Fulham, England

A Radical pamphleteer who championed several humanitarian causes, Sharp had his greatest success in securing the abolition of the slave trade.

Early Life

Granville Sharp’s father was Thomas Sharp, archdeacon of Northumberland; his grandfather was John Sharp, archbishop of York. There were fourteen children in the family. Granville was the youngest of nine sons. His older brothers went to Cambridge and entered the professions; Granville’s formal education was slim by comparison. He did attend Durham Grammar School but began work at age fifteen when he was apprenticed to a linen draper in London, where two of his older brothers worked at the time. Here, he continued his education by teaching himself Greek and Hebrew.

Sharp was always more interested in religion than business. He obtained a clerical post in the ordinance department in 1758 and in 1764 moved to the minuting branch as a clerk in ordinary. With more time to write, he now began his long career as a pamphleteer. His first pamphlet dealt with an interpretation of the Old Testament as presented by Benjamin Kennicott. Sharp took issue with Kennicott, who had stated that names and numbers in the text were unreliable. Sharp was an Evangelical Christian, a fundamentalist who objected to the claims of the rationalists on the one hand and the Roman Catholics on the other. He was one of the founders of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804 and the Society for the Conversion of the Jews in 1808. In spite of his great interest in religion, Sharp never took orders, although he was offered a living in Nottinghamshire in 1767.

Life’s Work

Sharp’s main claim to fame grew out of his involvement in the movement to abolish slavery, another humanitarian interest of the British Evangelicals. Jonathan Strong, a black teenager found in the London streets by Sharp, brought national attention to the issue of slavery. Strong had been beaten by his master, David Lisle, a lawyer and planter who had brought him from Barbados as a slave. Sharp and his brothers provided for Strong while he recovered his health, but they were then charged with depriving the owner of his property. This forced Sharp to begin a study of law and to write one of the seminal pamphlets of the abolitionist movement, A Representation of the Injustice and Dangerous Tendency of Tolerating Slavery (1769). It was a brilliant legal and moral argument that applied to many cases similar to that of Strong, who never fully recovered from the beating Lisle had given him and died a few years later. Sharp was obsessed with the need to get a decisive ruling, and this came with the case of James Somersett, a runaway slave who was recaptured and was about to be taken from England to Jamaica. The case was tried by William Murray, the first earl of Mansfield, and the famous June, 1772, decision was that Somersett, although legally a slave in the colonies, could not be taken by force from England.

The decision in the Somersett case was a great victory for Sharp but not the end of slavery in Great Britain. The courts were still not in sympathy with the abolitionists. Much more work needed to be done, and Sharp remained part of the effort as chairman of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery, founded in 1787. Sharp was also involved with the Sierra Leone scheme to resettle some of London’s poor blacks in West Africa. One of the towns in Sierra Leone was to be named Granvilletown, but the project ended in disaster. Of several hundred blacks who left England in 1787, only one-fourth were still alive a year later. These survivors were saved by provisions sent out by Sharp in 1788, but the colony, even under Governor Clarkson, brother of the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, was not to prosper.

Fears engendered by the French Revolution and the revolt of the Haitian blacks in the 1790’s delayed the reform movement at all levels. Success came gradually on the slavery issue. In 1792, the House of Commons voted overwhelmingly for the eventual abolition of the slave trade, and in 1807 victory was realized when the slave trade was abolished. Sharp was not directly involved in the parliamentary maneuvering that brought this about, but he was clearly part of the moral crusade that prepared the groundwork for this legislation.

In addition to his role in ending the slave trade, Sharp was active in the cause of parliamentary reform and sided with the American colonists in their struggle for independence. He was a backward-looking Radical in the sense that he found medieval precedents, the Anglo-Saxon frankpledge and tithings, for parliamentary reform and the American position in their dispute with England. To promote his ideas and disengage himself from the government of George III, he resigned his position in the ordinance department and joined the Society for Constitutional Information. His pamphlet A Declaration of the People’s Natural Right to a Share in the Legislature (1774) was an argument for colonial representation, and his Address to the People (1778) denounced the Lord North ministry and asked for political reform in England, especially annual parliaments. The latter idea was carried further in his A Defense of the Right of the People to Elect Representatives for Every Session of Parliament (1780). Sharp’s interest in reform was clear, but he did not work well with others. Christopher Wyvill and the Yorkshire Association, for example, had declared themselves in favor of triennial parliaments, but Sharp refused any bids for unity on this issue. He also opposed some of the points such as universal manhood suffrage, which had been adopted by many of the leading Radicals. Sharp did support equal electoral districts modeled on the Anglo-Saxon divisions but could find no historical precedents for universal suffrage.

The Gordon Riots of 1780 shocked London, and within the decade came the violence of the French Revolution. These events turned many in England away from political reform. Sharp, however, was not deterred by these events and continued to write for the cause of parliamentary reform, but with little success. Unlike the members of the London Corresponding Society, Sharp was not persecuted by the Pitt government, perhaps because the government knew that he, unlike Thomas Paine, had a very limited audience.

Sharp’s interest in reform was wide-ranging, but his turgid style made his pamphlets nearly unreadable. His greatest success was as an abolitionist. In addition to his efforts against the slave trade, he was active in General James Edward Oglethorpe’s crusade against press gangs and the efforts to abolish the impressment of seamen. His pamphlet On Duelling (1790) called for the end of this practice of settling disputes or avenging honor. These were matters for the courts and the law.

At times, Sharp seems more the conservative than the radical. This is particularly true in the area of religion, where he remained throughout his reforming years a devout and orthodox member of the Church of England. He was also the first chairman of the Protestant Union and consistent in opposing Catholic emancipation. At the close of the American Revolution, he corresponded with Benjamin Franklin and John Jay and worked with Thomas Secker, the archbishop of Canterbury, to bring about the introduction of episcopacy in America.

Sharp’s interest in biblical scholarship continued throughout his adult life. His most important contribution was to the study of the New Testament. The pamphlet Remarks on the Uses of the Definitive Article in the Greek Text of the New Testament (1798) established what is known as Granville Sharp’s canon and was an important reference in the debate about the theological position of the Unitarians. The rule in translation, as put by Sharp, was that in references to “our God and Lord Jesus Christ,” “God” and “Jesus” are one and the same. Sharp was a rigid Trinitarian and regarded the Unitarians as heretics. He also put a great emphasis on the prophecies of the Bible, especially those in the books of Daniel and Revelations.

Sharp never married but lived in his last years at the home of his sister-in-law in Fulham. He died there on July 6, 1813, and was buried in the family vault.

Significance

The American Revolution and English reform ran together in the reign of George III. Granville Sharp was one of the English Radicals who saw the two causes as one. The solution in both cases rested with the historic English constitutional system and the common law. The English constitution in turn rested on religious foundations. The frankpledge structure, for example, was, according to Sharp, derived from the teachings of Moses and was introduced into England in the time of King Alfred. Slavery was abhorrent to both Christian principles and was, according to Sharp, an institution unknown in English law. Sharp worked for and lived to see the end of England’s participation in the slave trade but not the end of slavery, which was abolished by the 1833 Act of Parliament, twenty years after his death.

He witnessed the success of the Americans in the Revolutionary War but would have preferred concessions to the American colonists to avoid the conflict. Parliamentary reform was not yet a major political movement in his lifetime, and his call for annual parliaments was never to be realized. Sharp expended his energies on too many causes and lacked the temperament of a fiery Radical, but his sense of justice was profound. A memorial placed by the African Institution in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey, has an inscription noting that “he was incessant in his labours to improve the condition of mankind.”

Bibliography

Armstrong, Anthony. The Church of England, the Methodists, and Society, 1700-1850. London: University of London Press, 1973. An excellent introduction to the religious revival in the Church of England at the end of the eighteenth century. A good background for the humanitarian reforms of Sharp and the other Evangelical leaders.

Bonwick, Colin C. English Radicals and the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977. A well-integrated discussion of English Radicalism and the movement for parliamentary reform during the revolutionary era. Sharp receives major attention with his interest in abolition and his correspondence with Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush before and after the American War of Independence.

Fryer, Peter. Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain. London: Pluto Press, 1984. Provides excellent background material on slavery in Great Britain and includes a good summary of Sharp’s role in the Somersett case, which led to the abolition of the slave trade and finally to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire.

Gerzina, Gretchen. Black England: Life Before Emancipation. London: J. Murray, 1995. Gerzina offers a different perspective of the abolition movement by viewing it through the eyes of black people living in eighteenth century England. She questions the motives and commitment of some of the white abolitionists, arguing, for example, that Sharp probably did not believe in racial equality.

Hochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. A history of the British abolition movement, including the role of Sharp and others in founding the Society for the Abolition of Slavery. Sharp’s participation in the abolition movement is prominently featured; there is information about his personality, eccentricity, legal career, and his dream of founding a colony of free blacks in Africa.

Lascelles, Edward. Granville Sharp and the Freedom of Slaves in England. London: Oxford University Press, 1928. A well-written, brief account of Sharp’s many interests in philanthropy and reform, with an emphasis on the issue of slavery.

Stuart, Charles. A Memoir of Granville Sharp. New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1836. A tribute to Sharp written by an American abolitionist. This is more of an antislavery tract for the movement in America than a biography, but it does provide some insights into Sharp’s moral objections to slavery.

Wise, Steven M. Though the Heavens May Fall: The Landmark Trial That Led to the End of Human Slavery. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2005. Recounts the trial of James Somersett. Includes information about Sharp’s role in the trial, his legal arguments to challenge slavery, and his legal career.