James MacSparran (10 September 1693 – 5 December 1757) was an Irish-born Anglican clergyman, writer, diarist, and slaveowner. Biography Early life James MacSparran was born at Dungiven, co. Deny, was educated at the University of Glasgow, where he was admitted M.A. on 5 March 1709. He appears to have been brought up as a Presbyterian, but having, as he says, been afflicted and abused by a false charge in his youth he was induced to become an Anglican clergyman in 1720, and in 1721 was sent by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts as a missionary to Narragansett, Rhode Island. Career He was minister of St. Paul's Church there for thirty-six years. Furthermore, he was also instrumental in erecting the church at New London in 1725, and occasionally preached there. When in 1729 Dean (afterwards Bishop) George Berkelev and the portrait-painter John Smibert, F.S.A., arrived at Rhode Island, they made a lengthened stay with Mac Sparran, and Smibert painted the portraits of both him and his wife. (The portraits are currently owned by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, respectively.) The climate did not agree with Macsparran, and he was besides involved in a lawsuit with the non- conformists about glebe land which lasted for twenty-eight years. In June 1736 he went to England for a year. The University of Oxford, to mark their appreciation of the sacrifices which he had made in resisting the dissenters, conferred on him the degree of D.D. on 5 April 1787. On 4 Aug. 1751 Macsparran preached at St. Paul's Church, Narragansett, a sermon on the 'Sacred Dignity of the Christian Priesthood vindicated,' which he afterwards had printed at Newport, Rhode Island. The object of his discourse was to correct sundry irregularities which had crept into the worship of the English church in America; but the congregational clergy chose to understand it as directed against themselves, and some vigorous pamphleteering ensued, in which, however, Macsparran declined to take part. In 1752 the lawsuit, on which Mac Sparran expended at least 600 pounds, ended in favour of the 'independent teacher,' The Bishop of London condoled with him on the loss of a cause 'so just on the church's side,' and hinted that there would be no difficulty in making him bishop of Rhode Island were he so inclined. Mac Sparran accordingly went to