:[1] John Archbishop of York, is Dr. Sharp, he was a Rector of St Giles in the Fields, in the Reign of King James; when, preaching warmly against Popery, he was silenced, and the Bishop of London (Dr. Compton) suspended from his office, for not turning him out.

His father was a puritan who enjoyed the favour of Thomas Fairfax and inculcated in him Calvinist, Low Church, doctrines, while his mother, being a strong royalist, instructed him in the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer.

[3] Sharp was ordained deacon and priest on 12 August 1667 at St. Mary's, Westminster, by special faculty from Archbishop of Canterbury, Gilbert Sheldon and until 1676 was chaplain and tutor in the family of Heneage Finch, 1st Earl of Nottingham at Kensington House.

[5] In 1685 Sharp drew up for the grand jury of London their address of congratulation on the accession of James II and on 20 April 1686 he became chaplain in ordinary to the king.

However, provoked by the subversion of his parishioners' faith by Roman Catholics Sharp preached two sermons at St. Giles's on 2 and 9 May, which were held to reflect on the king.

The historian Lord Macaulay later described him as ‘the highest churchman that had been zealous for comprehension and the lowest that felt a scruple about succeeding a deprived prelate'.

[6] The mooted Comprehension Bill was intended to admit within the pale of the Church a large number of the Nonconformists was, eventually, allowed to drop.

[7] Under William III and Mary II he succeeded Tillotson as Dean of Canterbury in 1689, and (after declining a choice of sees vacated by non-jurors who were his personal friends) followed Thomas Lamplugh as Archbishop of York in 1691.

The Queen relied on Sharp to support her policies in the House of Lords, although she made it clear that he could vote against her wishes if his conscience so demanded it; he was also expected to act as one of her Parliamentary "managers", lobbying not only the bishops but also those Yorkshire MPs who were known to him personally.

He welcomed the Armenian bishops who came to England in 1713, and corresponded with the Prussian court on the possibility of the Anglican liturgy as a means of reconciliation between Lutherans and Calvinists.