Granville Sharp

Granville Sharp (10 November 1735 – 6 July 1813) was an English scholar, philanthropist and one of the first campaigners for the abolition of the slave trade in Britain. Born in Durham, he initially worked as a civil servant in the Board of Ordnance. His involvement in abolitionism began in 1767 when he defended a severely injured enslaved person from Barbados in a legal case against his master. Increasingly devoted to the cause, he continually sought test cases against the legal justifications for slavery, and in 1769 he published the first tract in England that explicitly attacked the concept of slavery. Granville Sharp's efforts culminated in 1772 when he was instrumental in securing Lord Mansfield's ruling in Somerset v Stewart, which held that slavery had no basis in English law. In 1787, Sharp and Thomas Clarkson founded the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The continuing campaigns of Sharp, Clarkson and William Wilberforce led to the abolition of slave trade through the Slave Trade Act 1807. Sharp died in 1813, two decades before the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which abolished slavery in most of the British Empire. In addition to his abolitionist cause, Sharp also championed the creation of a free colony in Sierra Leone, which encouraged black people in Britain to settle in west Africa. His efforts led to the founding of the Province of Freedom and later Freetown. He was also an advocate for the American colonists, parliamentary reform and the legislative independence of Ireland. An accomplished classicist and biblical scholar, Sharp was also one of the founders of the British and Foreign Bible Society.