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  on the general questions at issue between king and kirk (, Diary, pp. 659, 684, 724, 754, 760). In the same year he was appointed constant moderator to the Glasgow presbytery in the absence of the bishop, and encountered such opposition that the privy council were obliged to order the presbytery to receive him under pain of rebellion. Yet in the following year he was rebuked for endeavouring to extend the judicial powers of the presbytery to the decision of criminal cases (Reg. of Privy Council, vii. 379). In 1609 Sharp took part in the Falkland conference, which was intended to render matters easy for the bishops at the general assembly (, Diary, p. 770). On 15 May 1610 he was appointed to the Scottish court of high commission, and held the office till 11 Aug. 1614 (ib. pp. 788, 797; Reg. of Privy Council, viii. 481). He died in May 1615, having been twice married: first, to Mary Fowlls, widow of John Houlden of Balwill, on 1 Sept. 1593, by whom he had two sons, David and Christian, and two daughters; and, secondly, to Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Gale of Eastwood, by whom he had a son James.

Sharp was a distinguished scholar and the teacher of (1579?-1625) [q. v.] But only one of his works survives, viz. 'Doctrinae Christianae brevis explicatio,' printed by Robert Waldegrave in Edinburgh in 1599.



SHARP, RICHARD (1759–1835), known as ‘Conversation Sharp,’ the son of an English officer, was born in the British garrison at Newfoundland in 1759. He adopted a commercial life, and for many years was a partner in the West India house of Boddington, Sharp, & Phillips in Fish Street Hill, London. Afterwards he was a member of the firm of Richard Sharp & Co., hat manufacturers, at the same address, and in 1806 was described as of Mark Lane. In business he amassed a considerable fortune.

Through life Sharp took a keen interest in politics and in literature. In his early years he knew Johnson and Burke. His friendship with Rogers began in the spring of 1792, and in the following July they made a tour together in the south of England. They became the ‘closest and most intimate friends.’ He made the acquaintance of Sir James Mackintosh about 1788 at a meeting of the Society for obtaining Constitutional Information. Mackintosh said that Sharp was the best critic he had ever known, and discussed metaphysics with him for hours in the chambers of Rogers in the Temple. In the winter of 1791–2 Sharp co-operated with the leading members of the whig party in forming a society for obtaining a reform of parliament, which was known as ‘Friends of the People.’ He was a man of many clubs and societies, both literary and political. As a friend of [q. v.], he belonged to the Unincreasable Club in Holborn, of which Reed was president, and he joined the Eumelean Club at the Blenheim tavern in Bond Street (, Lit. Anecdotes, ii. 638, 672). He was one of the original members of the Literary Society founded in 1806 (, Notes, 1897, ii. 289). He also attended, with Canning and Mackintosh, a debating society held at the Clifford Street coffee-house at the corner of Bond Street, and when the King of Clubs was instituted by ‘Bobus’ Smith about 1801 at the Crown and Anchor tavern in the Strand, three of the earliest members were Erskine, Curran, and Sharp (, London, ed. Wheatley, i. 425, 480). He was elected F.S.A. on 19 April 1787, and F.R.S. on 12 June 1806.

From 1806 to 1812 Sharp sat in parliament as a consistent whig for the pocket borough of Castle Rising in Norfolk. At a by-election in March 1816 he was returned for the Irish constituency of Portarlington, and he was re-elected at the general election in 1818, but resigned early in 1819, and his friend [q. v.] took his place. He was returned for Ilchester at the general election of 1826, but by an order of the House of Commons on 22 Feb. 1827 his name was erased from the list and the seat given to another. For a time he was a member of the finance committee, and a high compliment was paid to him by [q. v.] for his services; but his name was not included in the renewed committee of June 1807 (Hansard, ix. 692–715). He was also a member of Horner's bullion committee (ib. xix. 1061). His chief speech was made on 21 March 1808 in introducing a motion condemning the expedition to Copenhagen (ib. x. 1185–1215), but this success was not followed up by later speeches. He was, however, on the testimony of Samuel Rogers, ‘very active in the background.’

Sharp, when in London, lived in Park Lane, and in the country his ‘cottage-home’ was at Fredley Farm in Mickleham, near Dorking (, Environs of London, ii. 430). At these houses he gathered around him the chief persons of the day, and he knew their characters so well that he could that he could