James Sharp (archbishop)

James Sharp (4 May 1613 – 3 May 1679) was a Scottish minister, and later Archbishop of St Andrews (1661–1679).

James Sharp was born at Banff Castle on 4 May 1613 to William and Isabel Lesley Sharp, His father was the factor (property manager) of the Earl of Findlater. He graduated from King's College in Aberdeen with a M.A. in 1637. T.F. Henderson mentions that he may have been expelled from the college in 1638 for refusing to take the covenant oath. He then went to Oxford but returned due to illness, and became a professor of philosophy at St. Leonard's College at the University of St. Andrews. Sharp resigned his professorship to accept an appointment to a parish in Crail, where some parishioners considered him a Presbyterian minister holding Episcopalian principles.

Many Scottish churchmen had become Covenanters, a group of Presbyterians who bound themselves by oath to protect and defend their reformed church from the introduction of bishops and other Episcopalian features. This group had split into two factions, the Resolutioners and the "Protesters", who differed over how much power should be given to the King in the ordering of church affairs. Sharp was regarded as one of the leaders of the kirk, and following the execution of Charles I, Sharp, a skilled negotiator, became prominent as a leader of the moderate wing of the Church of Scotland, the Resolutioners, who supported the proposal that those who had left the covenanting cause should, on professing repentance, be admitted to serve in defence of the country against Oliver Cromwell.

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