Granville Sharp

Granville Sharp was born in Durham on 10 November 1735, the son of an archdeacon. Apprenticed to a London draper, he taught himself Greek and Hebrew to argue about the Bible, and later worked as a clerk in the government's Ordnance office. In 1765 he met Jonathan Strong, a young African who had been savagely beaten by his master and left in the street. Sharp and his brother, a surgeon, nursed him back to health, and when the master later tried to sell Strong back into slavery Sharp took the matter to court. Finding that lawyers assumed slavery was legal in England, he studied English law himself and published a pamphlet in 1769 arguing the opposite. He supported James Somerset in the case that Lord Mansfield decided in 1772, publicized the massacre on the slave ship Zong in 1783, and in 1787 became chairman of the new Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. He also helped settle free Black Londoners in Sierra Leone. A devout Anglican, he wrote on Greek grammar and Scripture. He died in Fulham on 6 July 1813.

Faith: An Anglican who taught himself Greek and Hebrew to argue questions of theology. Source: Wikipedia

See also: Lord Mansfield · William Wilberforce · John Newton