From The Scottish Review. overthrow of the Church of Scotland with UNPUBLISHED NOTICES OF JAMES SHARP, the highfliers in England,' while maintain ARCHBISHOP OF ST. ANDREWS. IN the list of Scottish divines who are the subjects of the charming monographs which compose the third series of the St. Giles Lectures, we notice a very natural, but a very striking, omission. That in a work which is designed to record the virtues and the heroism of the Scottish Church a slace should be denied to James Sharp by the side of Knox and Melville, Leighton and Ewing and the Robertsons, cannot astonish us. In each and all of the men whose labors are there gratefully summarized, whether fighter, saint, or statesman, there was indeed some visible ray of the divine. We question whether the apostate Covenanter, the hireling prelate, the false friend, the persecutor who oppressed, and the schemer who planned for none but selfish ends, the baffled and despised dupe of men older in practice, abler in condition, than himself, would, in the extremities of his self-deception, have claimed this as one of his attributes. But although, in the company of such men, James Sharp was "God bless us, a thing of naught," his career was nevertheless one without a due consideration of which the history of the Scottish Church is very incomplete. For, in an especial degree, he represented the effects upon men of base or uncertain tempers of the Sturm und Drang period which preceded the Restoration. The tremendous tyranny of the Covenant, its struggles and its triumphs, its censorship, hard, ignorant, and unflinching as that of the Holy Office itself, its audacious seizure of every departinent of political and family life, its bigotry ever narrowing as the political storm which called forth its enthusiasm gradually passed away, formed, no doubt, heroes and martyrs. But, inasmuch as it rendered life well-nigh intolerable to any who revolted from its despotism, and compelled ambitious and unscrupulous men to practise a feigned subjection for twenty years, it was sure, when opportunity of fered, to feel their revenge. Of the desire for that revenge James Sharp was not the spokesman, but the instrument. Hitherto the investigation into the character of Sharp has been confined to his dealings at the re-establishment of Epis copacy. An able article in No. 92 of the North British Review, 1848, states the critical question as to that point thus: "Did he act a false part throughout, enacting, in the language of Wodrow, 'the ing a friendly correspondence with those who trusted him, and representing himself as active in the pursuance of the objects they had at heart?" The writer of that article had had the opportunity of investigating copies of a number of letters from Sharp to Patrick Drummond, a Presbyterian minister in London, who was in Lauderdale's confidence, which are contained among the Lauderdale papers in the British Museum; and his verdict is as follows: "He labored, as it appears to us honestly, for its establishment at the Restoration, so long as there was any hope of its being established. He only abandoned the cause when it was hope. less." This article, however, bears upon its face such evidence of special pleading, and is framed upon so circumscribed an examination of the original sources, that even had we no other information to guide us, we should hesitate to accept the verdict without great reserve. Our own opinion, founded upon an independent examination of these letters, as well as of others equally important of the same date, and of after years, is clear. We do not believe that Sharp ever consciously said to himself, "I will betray this Church;' nor, we think, did he ever say that he would not. He appears, in an age of stern and intolerant conviction, to have been free of a strong and binding preference for any special form of Church 66 * The the writer had failed to examine letters written at the With regard to this article, it is to be observed that same period by persons other than Sharp himself, and that he was therefore unable to take account of many the fact that he had read only copies, he missed numerthings of a most suspicious nature. Moreover, from ous points of importance in the letters themselves; while not only many passages of great weight, but, notably, one whole letter, are passed over in silence, which, if it had been intentional, would have been convenient. But in support of our charge of "special pleading" we are compelled to observe that an attempt is made to influence the reader's mind by considerations wholly puerile and irrelevant to the discussion popular Presbyterian view" is contemptuously rejected as not correct, upon what? Upon historical investigation? No; upon no better evidence than Claverhouse is not, we might point out, that of a man "a glance at his portrait." The portrait of Graham of capable of his undoubted acts of cold-blooded cruelty nor from the face of the first Earl of Shaftesbury could hounded on Englishmen maddened with causeless terwe prophesy the remorseless wickedness with which he ror to the murder of the Catholics. But we are told, too, that Sharp once in his hot youth boxed the ears of directly drawn that he could not have been a deceitful a man who gave him the lie; and the inference is and treacherous man. When, on one occasion, Pepys saw his wife insulted, he records that he gave the age gressor "a cuff over the chops." Surely, then, Pepys was a courageous man. Fortunately, and as if to warn us against such remarkable deductions as that concernpose me, I gave him another." ing Sharp, Pepys adds, "and, seeing he did not opWe may add that Pepys was a self-confessed liar and would-be thief. government, except so far as it brought himself to the front. He was coldly and consistently selfish. He was a bigot to nothing but his own interests, and these he endeavored with perfect consistency and zeal, but with poor success, to serve all the days of his life. At the outset he sees that the idea of England accepting the obligations of the Covenant is obsolete and absurd, and he throws it over at once. As time goes on he becomes convinced that the pretensions of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland to interfere in civilibus must be given up; then, that even in ecclesiasticis it will with difficulty hold its own; then, as the intentions of the court become plainer, he finds that he never had, and has not now, any objection to a well-qualified presidency; and so on. He does not give the direction to the current, nor does he care much how it may turn; but he travels by its side, ready to snatch from it any good fortune it may carry to his hand. At length it is quite clear that Episcopacy is to come in all its simplicity; and his mind is made up at once, that by no honorable act or word of his will he embarrass the enemies of the Kirk, or jeopardize the chances which a complete and timely apostacy may proba. bly secure. and what was thought of him by some of 1660,* he vehemently asserted that he was "a Scotsman, a presbyter," that "whatever lot I may meet with, I scorne to prostitute my conscience and honesty to base unbecoming allurements; and to the end of April, 1661, he held the same language. On the forenoon of April 20, 1662,† he preached his first sermon, since his consecration, at St. Andrews, "and a velvet cushion on the pulpit before him, his text I Cor. 2, 2. “For I am determined to know nothing amonge you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.'" This is noticeable as the only instance that we know of where Sharp shows any sense of humor. We are not surprised to hear that the sermon of the sometime minister of Craill "did not run much on the words, but on a discourse of vindicating himselfe, and of pressing episcopacie and the utilitie of it, shewing, since it was wanting, ther hath beine nothing bot trowbels and disturbancies both in Church and State." The first notice of Sharp that occurs in the Lauderdale papers, subsequent to his appointment to the primacy, is on September 6, 1662. The billeting plot, the clumsy and futile method by which Middleton, the high commissioner (who did not suspect Sharp's intimate connection with Lauderdale), hoped to oust the latter from his post of vantage as secretary, was at its crisis. All Middleton's friends were expected to write on their billets the In the pages which follow, however, we are content to take an open verdict, to regard the more serious charge as, for the time being, "not proven," and to see what light Sharp's later career will throw back upon his action at this time. This, we feel, will be more useful and more interesting than once more to go over the well-trodden ground, in support of the opinion we have just offered. The pris-names of twelve persons of Lauderdale's oner may go free for want of evidence. But should it appear that in after years his career is one of consistent chicanery, that, to secure the price of his apostacy, he yields alternately to the threats and the cajolery of abler and stronger men, and consents to become the facile instrument of their designs and the object of their unmitigated contempt, it cannot be but that all former suspicions against him will be vastly strengthened. We propose, therefore, in the following paper, to quote as many of the notices which occur regarding Sharp in the private and unpublished correspondence between Lauderdale, Bellenden, Rothes, Moray, Tweeddale, and others, as our space will allow, preserving only the merest thread of his torical sequence. Our object, for the present, is simply to show how Sharp behaved under varying circumstances, party, previously decided upon, whom they wished to be incapacitated from public office. Sharp, of course, trimmed. "Sheldon (Sharp's pseudonym) and some others," § writes William Sharp, the archbishop's brother, and Lauderdale's private agent, gave in blank billets; he doubts not of Mr. Reid's (Lauderdale) favor in construeing aright his not wreating. He has difficultie enough to fend off at present." Four later days he was one of the scrutineers deputed by the commissioner to open the bag into which the billets were cast. The others, as was presumably the case with Sharp, were devoted adherents of Middleton, and all were Add. MSS., 23, 114, f. 94, British Museum. ↑ Lamont's Diary. Add. MSS. 23, 117, f. 79. § 23, 117, f. 80. "Sheldon" was the pseudonym for Sharp. sworn to secrecy. Nevertheless, on that day William Sharp was able to tell Lauderdale the names of the persons who were excepted," ," with the exact figures. How had he learned these details? Did James Sharp betray his trust? It is more than probable, and yet this too is "not proven." It is true that in this same letter there is absolute proof that the archbishop knew what his brother was writing, and that he was sending Lauder dale all the information he could collect. And it is also true that four years afterwards Dumfries openly charged him with the betrayal. William Sharp's phrase, however, that he "came by it strangelie," seems unlike this; and it must be admitted that Bellenden, who hated him immensely, reminds Lauderdale, in the letter which mentions Dumfries's charge, that that charge is untrue. It is, of course, quite possible that Sharp sent the information without Bellenden's knowledge. * To keep the thread of the narrative fairly continuous during the next two years, which as regards Sharp are but sparsely illustrated in the Lauderdale MSS., we have to borrow from what Burnet asserts as coming under his own personal knowledge. Sharp, it appears, went up to London to explain the billeting affair in Middleton's interest.t Finding Lauderdale, however, very strong, he at once changed sides. He had, it appears, written to the king in Middleton's favor, but, when challenged with this by Lauderdale, he denied it flatly until Lauderdale produced the letter. In the early summer of 1663, Lauderdale, now master of the situation, went to Scotland to unravel the billeting plot, and to complete his triumph over Middleton's faction. From the silence respecting Sharp in the remarkable correspondence which passed between the secretary and his deputy, the celebrated Sir Robert Moray, we gather that he was on his good behavior. All we know is that in the National Synod Act, the first great step in the intended subjection of the Church to the king, he appears to have readily co-operated. In the spring of 1664, however, he was again in London, busy with fresh projects to strengthen Episcopacy, "without which it is impossible to keep the king's author ity with these people." He returned to Edinburgh in April, having secured the grant of a new Church Commission, which gave free scope to his grudge against the Remonstrators, and which Lauderdale had thought best not to oppose. And his restless amour propre was gratified by being allowed (as in former days had been customary), to take precedence of the chancellor at the Council. On the 21st he reports to Lauderdale how he has harassed the ministers who were with his old friend, James Wood, when he signed the death-bed confession in favor of Presbyterianism, which had caused so much alarm and anger to the prelates; how he has cited some ministers, and fined others, as well as แ some people in the West for withdrawing from the churches." He urges the thorough prosecution of the arbitrary and cruel powers of the Commission, and complains bitterly of the slackness of his fellow-commissioners. The complaint is repeated several times in the letters from the two archbishops to Sheldon, on whose support they chiefly relied. It was intended to pave the way for a more serious attack upon Glencairn, who, as chancellor, stood in the way of the wished-for "thorough" policy. Glencairn, however, died on May 30th. In a moment the Churchmen were up and doing. On June 19th, Alexander Burnet, the Archbishop of Glasgow, wrote to Sheldon,t urging him to do all he could to secure a favorable appointment, and mentioning that Sharp himself had previously abstained from writing because "he wishes to avoid suspicion of being a suitor for the chancellor's place." The fact that there is a letter of the same date from Sharp himself,§ dealing with the subject in a way that could not be misunstood, is a curious illustration of his inveterate want of sincerity; and, in view of what he had said to his colleague, we are not surprised to find him requesting Sheldon to keep the fact of his writing absolutely private. He was not the man to let anything which promised well for his schemes rest for want of importunity. He determined to press the matter in person, and, in spite of a letter from Sheldon in the beginning of August, written, says Burnet, by the direction of the king himself to stop his journey, he came up to court, 1 ment.' ne sorrois comprander. Dieu nous guard de Mais, pour l'achevec, cet un person que je son esprit malign; c'il arrive james d'ete noster guard du soe (garde du sçeau) je crein que son avancement cosira de grand disorder ici. De gras soulagé moi de cet apprehension car cela me don trop souvent de palpitation de cœur. and while holding to Charles the language | hatred breaks out in well-nigh inarticulate of sincere abnegation, urged his own French: *— claims vehemently upon the archbishop. Rothes, too, the high commissioner, who had fallen for a while under the ascendancy of Sharp's "working head," and who on Feb. 8, 1665, "pretended great readiness to do what we (the archbishops) advised him," eagerly backed his suit. On July 1, 1665, he wrote to Lauderdale,† It did not yet suit Lauderdale's object "I positively assert nothing could So to assert himself violently and to declare much establish and secure the peace and quiet of the Church as if the king would nevertheless begun, and the secretary's open war upon Sharp; but hostilities had be pleased to pitch on my Lord St. An- adherents lost no opportunity of harassdrews for the discharge of that employing the common enemy. Sharp's attempts On July 19th he is again instant.‡ by all means to weaken the reputation of "I am from my heart sorry that the busi- the Lauderdale faction often laid him ness in which I humbly conceive there is open to a counter attack. The following so much advantage to the peace and tran- letter, dated Nov. 6, from Kincardine,† a quillity of this poor country should stick." man of the highest probity and ability, The contest, as we learn from a letter of speaks for itself, as to Sharp's methods, Alexander Burnet of Sept. 4th, was be- as does the latter's answer (the shortest tween Sheldon, Rothes, and the Scotch letter that, so far as we know, he ever archbishops, who were for curing disaffec- wrote), to his evasiveness. tion by severity alone, on the one side, thought it necessary to give Kincardine's and Lauderdale, Moray, and their corre- complete and contemptuous reply, which spondents in Scotland, Argyll, Tweeddale, ended the "commerce" between him and and Kincardine, to whom conciliation ap-"that notable person," as Moray calls peared the fittest means of quieting the exasperated people. On the same day as that on which he had Rothes's last urgent letter, Lauderdale received the first of a series of vehement denunciations of Sharp from Bellenden, of the cause of whose intense hatred of the archbishop we are ignorant. The first overt signs of the primate's attempted revolt from Lauderdale are found in what Bellenden relates on July 19.§ of his conduct on the question whether supply should be raised by taxation, as Lauderdale wished, a plan by which the Church would have to bear a 66 large share of the burden, or by cess. My lord primate," says Bellenden, "being for the way of cess, hath joined with the west country lords and others there, and at the present Dumfries and he are seriously consulting about it. It is generally believed here that the good old way of taxation was proposed by yourself, and upon that account will be vigorouslie op, posed, that a slur may be put upon you." It must be remembered that Dumfries had been a prominent enemy of Lauderdale at the time of the billeting. He was now high in favor with both Sharp and Burnet. On October 24th Bellenden's him. We have not hath made me hitherto forbeare showing yow The great respect I beare your high function injuries you have been doing me long ere I the just resentments I might have had of the was suspecting it of your hand; but now that they are come to that height as to endeavor the giving his Matie bad impressions of me I thinke I may be allowed to breake silence. For, since the main designe of my lyfe has been to serve his Matie with zeal and faithfulnes, his displeasur wold be to me of all things in the world the most insuportable; and now being toutched in this point I hope I may be ordinar. And therefor I must tell your Grace pardoned to expostulat with a freedom beyond that of all men I thought I hade least reason to exspeckt that by yow I should be represented to the King as disloyall or wanting that due respect I owe to any thing that is his Maties pleasur. Yow haue knoune me of a long tyme & with great familiarity, & yow have knoune me in the worst of tymes how freely I of my fortune for his Matie, and how that throu hazarded both sword and gallow & the losse the goodnes of God to me I continued to the end with the least staine; when others [e.g., Sharp himself], did take ingadgments to the usurpers, were courting and cajoling Oliver Cromwell, congratulating Richard, owning their authority, and even counseling their friends to commit these villainnies. Sharp's answer is as follows: And as your Grace has knoune my practice, | it is impossible for any man to justefy himself so I am sure you know my principles lykewise, of a thing he knows not he is accused of. for I never dissembled them from you. In the point of episcopacy I hope the declarations I have made your Grace of my judgement in it has satisfied yow, since yow have diverse tymes told me they hade, & your Grace may remember that I made advances & wishes to you for episcopacie when you wold not allow it. Your Grace knows lykewise that I have always been a better subject then to be for a jure divino in the particular forms of church government; and therefor, unlesse yow thinke me a foole, why should you judge me averse from any forme his Matie ordains? especially since I have professed to yow that I thinke a wellordered episcopacy the best of governments, & that I judge my selfe bound in conscience to defend episcopacie with my lyfe & fortune so long as his Matie & the laws are for it, and if your Grace expect more from any Scotishman I am confident yow take wrong measures. And now, my lord, after all the knowledge your Gr has hade of me, and after all the proofs I have given of my loyalty and at a tyme when I was expecting your recommendations according to your promise, to accuse me, & that no less then to his Matie, upon so slight an occasione as going to a communion in that which I may call my oune parish, I being almost sole heritor of it and patron of it, and it being nixt to that I live in, where I have hade no occasion to receave these three years, and the communion haveing been according to law, and the minister neither under processe nor sensure, give me leave to say it does ill become the character yow beare, for our Saviour prescribs a fair other methode in case of offences, & I am sure your Gr knows that if I hade thought any offence wuld have been taken at it I had forborne it. I have received your large accusation wreatin in such a strain & passion, that as yow do not desyre an answer, so my present busines will not allow me to give it; and therfor I shall only say this, yow have given under your hand a most unjust and causeles accusation in general of a very high nature and consequence against me who yow know I have not done yow wrong; yow best know upon what design yow have done it, when I shall have notice of the particulars of that heavy charge of a person invested with an office yow pretend to bear respect unto, your Lo | may expect I will be concerned to vindicat my innocency and the dignity of the place the king & the law hath put me into, from these audacious imputations, which in justice I suppose yow will not refuse to make good, and thereby it will be made appear what cause yow have to fix upon these in my station dareing to attempt the abusing of his sacred Maty. For the events which took place when Rothes and Sharp went up in the end of 1665 to London, and which ended in another complete humiliation for the archbishop, we must again refer the reader to Burnet. the breach which shortly took place beIt is noticeable, however, that tween the commissioner and the primate appears to have arisen from the desire of the latter, which again Lauderdale did not oppose, to apply the money resulting from fines, and intended for the relief of the broken royalist families, to the maintenance of troops, which, raised ostensi the Dutch, were to be employed, under Dalyell and Drummond, to crush all resistance to the authority of the Church. In September, 1666, Bellenden is heard again: "Le Primat est ancor a vostré opposit, car il a tanté de fabriquer un nouvell dessein, de quoi le C. de Tw. vous an dira d'avantage. Dieu nous conserve de la malignité de son esprit, car la seurté du Roy et de ces estats cerront fort en danger sil avait, l'execution de ces voluntes. He adds that Rothes is now entirely on Lauderdale's side. Rothes next day † tells us what the "Nouvell dessin " is: I thinke what I have said of my former car-bly to secure Scotland against attacks by rage, when there was no other incouragement to loyalty but that of a good conscience, & many temptations to the contrair, may be a suffitent evidence of my present inclinations, especially haveing then no other motive then the duety of a subject to his King. But haveing since these tymes hade opportunities to know his Maties extraordinary personall worth, & since his Maties blessed restauration haveing found so many proofs of his goodnes to me upon all occasions that ever I hade to put it to the test I thinke my self now engadged in a personall kyndnes for Charles the Second, as I am bound to him by my duety as my prince. And the Searcher of Hearts knows that I am still ready with the old faithfullnes to serve his Matie with my life & fortune against all his enemies either domestique or forraine ; so that if your Grace give any character of me not according to this I dare say yow know you'll do me wrong, & the great God judge of it; for it is hard for kings to shunne being abused when those of your station dare attempt it, & This admirably expresses the position of the more intelligent nobility with regard to church government. " To come to the business, there has been very strange ways taken to persuade me of your indifferency towards me, or anything that to me that I should enter on a strict friendship might concern me . . . In short, it is proposed with the Earl of Middleton; and a number of |