Author: Sharpe, John
Biography:
SHARPE, John (1769-1859: GM)
He was born at Dorking, Surrey, on 11 June 1769 and baptised on 21 June at West Street Independent, Dorking, Surrey, the only child of Rev. John Sharpe (1746-1824) and Mary Child (dates unknown), a widow, who had married in the established church of St. Martin’s, Dorking, on 17 Oct. 1767. His father may have been a dissenting minister before conforming and being ordained in 1790. Conformity allowed the son to be educated at St. Paul’s school, London, and Trinity College Oxford (matric. and Scholar 1788, BA 1792). He also entered the church and spent most of his career in Sussex, holding a number of curacies: Hoo, Ninfield, Shipton Bellinger Jevington, Littlington, East Blachington, Elsted, Treyford-cum-Didling. He was perpetual curate of Shipley (1822-47) before being presented with the living of Castle Eaton, Wiltshire (1847-59), where he died on 27 Dec. 1859, aged 90. He married Clarissa (Clara) Petrie (1780-1872) on 19 June 1802 at St. Nicholas, Brighton. They went on to have thirteen children, five of whom predeceased him. His only known poem, listed here, attracted little attention. He was, however, considered a capable classical scholar and was known for his antiquarian interests. He published a translation of William of Malmesbury’s twelfth-century Gesta Regum Anglorum as The History of the Kings of England (1815) and prepared but did not publish a translation of William of Newburg’s Historia sive Chronica. He also collaborated with Henry Petrie, his brother-in-law, on Monumenta Historica Britannica, or, Materials for the History of Britain [1848]). (GM Feb. 1860, 188-9; ancestry.co.uk 14 Mar. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 14 Mar. 2023; CCEd 14 Mar. 2023; Morning Post 30 Dec. 1859; Salisbury and Winchester Journal 16 March 1872) AA