m 
 
 N N 1 N 
 
 
 uS oP
 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 ELLAN VANNIN: 
 
 SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY, THE PEOPLE, THE 
 
 LANGUAGE, AND SCENERY OF THE 
 
 ISLE OF MAN. 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. W. T. RADCLIFEE. 
 
 IP o it b n : 
 CHARLES H. KELLY, 2, CASTLE ST., CITY RD., E.C., 
 
 AND 66, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G. 
 I8 95 .
 
 TO THE 
 
 MANX PEOPLE, 
 
 BY THEIR FELLOW COUNTRYMAN, 
 
 THE AUTHOR.
 
 QA 
 
 67O 
 IV? * 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE UNRECORDED AGES 9 
 
 II. HISTORIC TRACES ...... 15 
 
 III. AGES DIMLY SEEN : DRUIDIC AND EARLY 
 
 CHRISTIAN . . . . . . .21 
 
 IV. AGES DIMLY SEEN (continued] : RUNIC AND 
 
 PAPAL . . . . . . -31 
 
 V. ELLAN VANNIN : PAST AND PRESENT . . 39 
 
 VI. THE MANX PEOPLE : CHARACTERISTICS, RACE, 
 
 AND LANGUAGE ...... 49 
 
 VII. THE MANX PEOPLE : CHARACTERISTICS (con- 
 
 tinued] PROVERBS AND SUPERSTITIONS . 59 
 
 VIII. MANX FREEDOM: THE NEED . . . -71 
 
 IX. MANX FREEDOM : THE PROGRESS . . -87 
 
 X. MANX WEALTH : HINDRANCES 95 
 
 XI. MANX WEALTH : HEF PS AND SOURCES . . 107 
 
 XII. SOCIAL CHANGES : TRANSITION FROM ROMANISM 119 
 
 XIII. SOCIAL CHANGES : THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH 127 
 
 XIV. SOCIAL CHANGES : MANX METHODISM . -139 
 XV. SUMMARY AND REVIEW . . . . 153 
 
 711046
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 DOUGLAS ..... 
 
 THE STONE CIRCLE . 
 
 ST. MICHAEL'S, LANGNESS 
 
 MAUGHOLD .... 
 
 OLD FORT, LANGNESS 
 
 BALLAGLAS ROAD 
 
 PEEL CASTLE .... 
 
 GLEN COAN, GROUDLE 
 
 HANGO HILL .... 
 
 INJEBRECK RIVER 
 
 CASTLE RUSHEN, CASTLETOWN . 
 
 BALLURE CHAPEL 
 
 TYNWALD HILL 
 
 THOLT-E-WILL BRIDGE 
 
 RAMSEY ..... 
 
 RUSHEN ABBEY 
 
 BISHOP'S COURT 
 
 WESLEYAN CHAPEL, SULBY GLEN 
 
 LAXEY GLEN 
 
 Frontispiece 
 10 
 14 
 16 
 20 
 
 22 
 
 3 2 
 
 40
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE design and special feature of these pages may be noted 
 as a summary of the History of the Manx People from the 
 early ages to the present. The fabulous and the doubtful are 
 omitted. The external events are recorded only as related to 
 the central idea of the book. The research necessary has 
 demanded an area of wide extent and much care in statement. 
 The valuable volumes of the Manx Society, the Histories of 
 Governor Walpole and of Train, the useful Guides, the Manx 
 Note Book, and other local sources the Manx ruins included 
 have been laid under contribution, with a grateful acknow- 
 ledgment which the writer would now record. In addition, he 
 may mention the Manx Dictionaries of Kelly and Cregeen, the 
 Memorials of the Derby Family by Seacombe, the writings of 
 Patrick, the works of Bede, Dean Murray's Irish Church, 
 Bishop Lightfoot's Leaders in the Northern Church, Canon 
 Wright's History of the Early English Church, the Lecture 
 on St. Patrick by Rev. W. T. Hobson, M.A., the recent 
 pamphlet on Early Manx History by Rev. T. Talbot, the 
 Biographies of Bishop Wilson by Stowell and Keble ; col- 
 lateral Histories of England, Scotland, and Ireland, such as 
 by Dr. Smith of Cornwall, Wylie, and, for more general 
 purposes, Green and Gibbon ; other works, ecclesiastical and 
 secular, giving incidental light on Manx topics, have been 
 passed in review. The reference to volume and page was at 
 one time intended, but abandoned in the interest of simplicity 
 and economy. The writer has had in view his Manx fellow- 
 countrymen as his chief readers, and specially the young people 
 of the Island ; at the same time he hopes that the visitor will 
 not find the volume too exacting, but, on the contrary, helpful 
 in glen and upland and ancient ruin, on Snaefell with its grand 
 panorama, or sailing round the rock-bound shores from the 
 Calf to the Point of Ayre and their connecting lines east and 
 west. An area of thirty miles by twelve in the midst of a vast 
 continent might easily pass without notice, but the same area 
 fixed in the Gulf Stream, where Elian Vannin has its position,
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 or elsewhere in the ocean, strangely becomes more important 
 and suggestive. The Island is but a rock in the centre of the 
 British Empire, too small to belong to itself, too feeble to resist 
 invasion, too isolated to share quickly in general external pro- 
 gress, but its historic interest is uncommon. The ocean storms 
 around have helped its beauty and grandeur. Its solitude has 
 left it rich in ancient ruins, guarded by a useful superstition ; 
 its nearness to other lands has given it a place in collateral 
 history, specially of Britain, Ireland, and Scandinavia ; its 
 language, still on the printed page, though falling into disuse, 
 remains without material change from past ages, though the 
 languages of England and of lands once in the Roman Empire 
 have been lost in modern developments ; its form of govern- 
 ment comes from a more remote antiquity than that of any 
 neighbouring kingdom ; its liberties have been won without 
 violent revolution ; its evangelical religion has triumphed 
 without the blood of martyrs ; its prosperity has grown from 
 conspicuous poverty into a degree which, with not many of 
 distinguished wealth, leaves few without money, and those few 
 generally too independent to be paupers. The country, the 
 people, the progress in freedom, wealth, morals, religion, and 
 social life, form a subject of unusual interest. The position 
 of a Manxman in his native land is richly historic, with 
 glimpses of the neighbouring countries and of European 
 affairs in the remote past, and he owes it to himself to know 
 what he may of Elian Vannin. Immediately around him are 
 monuments and institutions which recall two thousand years. 
 It is hoped by the writer that these pages may have some- 
 thing to interest the youth of his native Island, and that, 
 perhaps, wandering across the sea, they may remind a Manx- 
 man of the land he and his fathers have left behind. 
 
 W. T. R. 
 
 P.S. I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Dean, photo- 
 grapher, Finch Road, Douglas, for most of the illustrations, 
 which have been selected from his admirable collection of 
 Manx scenes. 
 
 1895.
 
 ZTbe
 
 ELLAN VANN IN 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE UNRECORDED AGES. 
 
 OR about a thousand years of the Christian era, 
 we have but little that is authentic for Manx 
 history. Much related is simply fabulous ; 
 much is without adequate evidence. Under 
 the former may be classed the mists of 
 " Manninan Mac Lear," the miracles of St. Patrick in the 
 Island, the adventures of St Maughold in his coracle from 
 Ireland to Maughold Head, and some other marvels of the 
 same class. Considerable confusion as to alleged facts has 
 been caused by the confounding of the two Monas, the 
 Welsh Anglesey and the Manx Man. In a communication 
 to a Welsh friend of mine, Professor Rhys writes that 
 " Manxmen seem to have forgotten that there was a Welsh 
 Mona as well as a Manx Mona," and that they have 
 " confounded the history of the Welsh island with the 
 Manx island." He adds, " This, I am told, is the explana- 
 tion of the assertion that a dynasty of Welsh princes ruled 
 over Man. The conquest of Man by Edwin rests, I 
 believe, on two passages in Bede's Hist. Etdes., ch. v. and 
 ix., where he mentions, among the Englishman's conquests, 
 Menavias Insulas. This has easily been supposed to 
 mean Anglesey and Man, but I am by no means sure that
 
 12 ELLAN V ANN IN. 
 
 Man is included." Adequate historic evidence seems to 
 require the exclusion of much that some have held to be 
 true in relation to the Druids and their connection with 
 Man. In a pamphlet by the Rev. T. Talbot, of Douglas, 
 the point is dealt with in the light of the knowledge of an 
 expert in Manx history, and their presence in Man he 
 regards as without evidence. What has often been 
 assumed as true of St. Patrick in Man, seems to belong to 
 the same category of things doubtful. In his auto- 
 biography, published by the Religious Tract Society in 
 its Christian Classic Series, and under the editorship of 
 the Rev. C. H. H. Wright, D.D., St. Patrick never 
 mentions the Island, and in the record of his life leaves no 
 room for a Manx mission and episcopate. The question has 
 been ably argued in the negative in a pamphlet by the Rev. 
 W. T. Hobson, M.A., of Douglas; but further remarks must 
 be reserved for a later chapter. Edwin of Northumbria 
 ruled from Edinburgh, south and west, over a large strip of 
 England as well as Anglesey, but there is no proof of sway 
 over Man. 
 
 The list of the Bishops of Man falls under the same 
 remarks as to want of evidence ; and the line of Welsh 
 rulers ; and things alleged of the earlier of the ages deemed 
 Scandinavian. The list of the early Bishops did not appear 
 in print until about 1671. The monks of Rushen, in their 
 Chronicle, say nothing of the Druids, nothing of King 
 Orry and his dynasty, and nothing of Bishops until the time 
 of Godred Crovan, in and after 1077, when they mention 
 Roolwer as Bishop. And that chronicle is taken to date 
 from about 1250, its record beginning at 1065, and is the 
 earliest reliable account of the Island. The earliest history 
 is in 1482 ; it contains the oldest map of the Island, with 
 the outlines of the ancient lakes. " The supposed original 
 Chronicle of the Isle of Man" professing to go on to the
 
 THE UNRECORDED AGES. 13 
 
 time of the Revestment in 1765,13 not of much help in 
 the history. The parish registers give no light ; with the 
 exception of Ballaugh in 1598, they are not earlier than 
 the seventeenth century, the period of Chaloner's history, 
 Bishop Wilson's coming a little later, and beginning its 
 account at the Norwegian conquest, with no notice of a 
 Bishop until 1151. Thus blank are the days of old. 
 
 The dearth of historic material may be explained in part. 
 It is not entirely peculiar to Man. The early light on 
 British history comes from its place in the empire of 
 Imperial Rome. It was the same with other nations, the 
 Huns, the Goths, the Vandals, Lombards, and Franks ; 
 their early history is not from themselves, but from the 
 annals of the great empire. Manxland was not within that 
 empire. Tacitus relates that Agricola, with his forces, 
 reached the Grampian range of Caledonia, but the little 
 Island not far away on his left, was outside of his sphere. 
 When Ireland had the fame of Christian culture, and Scot- 
 land had its lona, the Manx Mona from its obscurity was 
 not seen. Few wrote history in those ages. The monk 
 Gildas, as a writer of British history, seems to stand alone, 
 between 449 and 607, and he writes chiefly about Kent 
 and the Saxon invaders. Writing itself was rare. The laws 
 of Saxon England were in writing until about 600 ; those 
 of Man, not until 1422 ; and, in the Manx language, no 
 Book until 1709. 
 
 There were also special causes for the dearth in Man. 
 The successive transfers of the Island would imperil histcric 
 documents, and the various invasions ; Mary, daughter of 
 Reginald, in her escape, might remove some of the Manx 
 records ; and yet more, the Countess of Derby, when she 
 left amid the troubles of the Commonwealth. Sacheverell 
 states, in his history, that some of the early Christian records 
 of Man might be destroyed in the Papal ages to avoid the
 
 14 ELL AN V ANN IN. 
 
 comparison of more modern corruptions of the truth with 
 the earlier purity ; just as the early annals of lona were 
 destroyed under a decree of the Popish Synod of Argyle. 
 
 The historic light reaches Man just as the Scandinavian 
 comes to plunder the "little nation," which even in the 
 time of Bede was not supposed to number more than three 
 hundred families. 
 
 ST. MICHAELS, LANGN'ESS.
 
 Ibfstoric Uraces,
 
 MAUGHOU)
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HISTORIC TRACES. 
 
 NE of these is the Norse invasions. They have 
 left their impress on Man, just as they did on 
 Shetland and Orkney and the Hebrides, on 
 their southern course to Britain and the Irish 
 Sea. The Island then was held as a " Nor- 
 wegian Principality." The conquest of it by Godred 
 Crovan at the battle of Sky Hill, in 1077, stands con- 
 nected with his escape from the Norwegian defeat at 
 Stamford Bridge by the English King in 1066, the same 
 who, later in that year, fell at Hastings before William the 
 Conqueror. The list of Godred's successors included 
 Reginald (1229), Olaf (1237), Harold (1248), the last of 
 the dynasty being Magnus (1265). The Scotch supremacy 
 followed under Alexander III., who changed the arms of 
 Man from the Norwegian ship to the Three legs. The 
 Manx kingdom was "Man and the Isles" until 1156. On 
 the conquest of " the Isles " by Somerled, it became simply 
 " Man." Early in the thirteenth century Reginald had 
 surrendered it to the Pope. Leaving the marks of these 
 violent times, let us go to the ages of early Christianity in 
 the ruins of the Treen Chapels. These are traces of a 
 happier memory. They may belong, perhaps, to the age 
 of St. Ninian at Whithorne, when he laboured within sight 
 of the Island, and will be considered in the next chapter. 
 Earlier than these, some of the ruins have been deemed 
 Druidic. Next, come the Runic memorials, after the early
 
 1 8 ELL AN VANNIN. 
 
 Christian, and found chiefly in the churchyards. Lastly, we 
 have the Romanist ruins, most conspicuous of all, and of 
 which a summary may here be given. Chief among them 
 is the Cathedral on the Islet of Peel, with its five acres of 
 land and rock, anciently termed "Holme," a term signify- 
 ing, according to Canon Bright, of Oxford, in his work on 
 The Early English Church, ground surrounded or washed 
 by a river. The tower near the Cathedral is not unlike the 
 round towers of Ireland. The outline of the Cathedral may 
 be easily traced, chancel, nave, and the prison beneath 
 suggestive of the " moddey dhoo." There are also the 
 ruins of official residences and of erections for military 
 defence. Dating from about 1 1 34, in their foundation, are 
 the ruins of Rushen Abbey, once belonging to Furness 
 Abbey, but less extensive than the ruins on the islet. A 
 few fragments remain of the Friary in Arbory. In Kirk 
 Michael, Bishop's Court stands in its own domain. The 
 Nunnery, near Douglas, has a few ruins where, two 
 centuries ago, were remains of some extent and importance. 
 The old churches, mostly of humble structure, and St. 
 Trillion's, must also be included. To these traces in ruins 
 must be added some which may be termed literary. They 
 are partly in the ancient laws-, partly in the Manx language 
 itself, as it bears the marks of its historic course. The 
 Manx " Carvals," though an interesting feature, belong to 
 later times ; they are a literature of themselves, rich in 
 correct Manx, and, if not of a high order in poetry, are 
 characteristic, and have been of central interest when sung 
 in the " Oie '1 verry " ; the solitary singer with his MS. in 
 hand, and a lighted candle, and words of his own choice, 
 all bearing the memory of Romish times. Under the head 
 of " literary," the publications of the Manx Society are 
 entitled to a foremost place. Of course, all are not of 
 equal merit : Feltham's tour was hastily written and lacks
 
 HISTORIC TRACES. 19 
 
 research ; Waldron's volume abounds in the ^fabulous ; and 
 Camden admits the absurd, as when he states that Manx 
 women never went abroad but in their winding-sheets, and 
 that only one sheep in a flock was " loughtin " in colour. 
 Then there are the traces of surviving civil institutions, in 
 wh ch the " Tynwald " is chief, and full of suggestions of 
 the past. The Tynwald Court represents a system of 
 government more ancient in its basis than the English 
 House of Commons with its date of 1264 in the reign of 
 Henry III. Its Norwegian origin appears on the surface; 
 according to Professor Munch it means " a field for 
 Parliament." It is assumed to have been founded by 
 King Orry ; it includes the " Kair as feed," the twenty-four 
 members of the House of Keys, of whom eight, when it 
 was "Man and the Isles," represented the Hebrides, and 
 has as essential members the Council and the Governor 
 who presides. The proceedings of the annual assembly, on 
 each July 5th, are full of Manx history which looks back to 
 the time of Scandinavian conquest, while it now tells of 
 constitutional freedom. With all their value, however, 
 these historic traces leave much untold of a long interval, 
 and of much bearing on the condition of the Manx people 
 in the ages now long past, while the modern annals 
 abound in interest.
 
 OLD FORT, LANGNESS.
 
 HMmlv Seen : S>rutofc anfc Earls 
 Cbristian,
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 AGES DIMLY SEEN : DRUIDIC AND EARLY CHRIS! IAN. 
 
 JE have seen that, in the ancient ruins and 
 surviving institutions and laws, will be found 
 the alphabet and elements of Manx history. 
 The island is rich in such memorials. At the 
 same time it may be noted that none of the 
 ruins suggest Wales, and there is nothing of Imperial Rome. 
 The Romans never came nearer than Galloway, on the 
 opposite coast of Scotland. 
 
 i. Druidic Ages. Were there such in Man? In the 
 Welsh Mona, of course, all admit the idea ; but how as to 
 the Manx Mona ? Professor Rhys, as has been noted, is of 
 opinion that the two Monas have been confounded, and 
 some may hold that the Druidism credited to the Manx 
 Mona really belonged to the Welsh. 
 
 On the affirmative side of the proposition, which asserts 
 a Druidic period in Man, are such arguments as these : 
 
 Druidism was the religion of the Celtic race two thou- 
 sand years before the Christian era, though it had no place 
 south of the Alps, or east of the Rhine, or in the lands 
 between the Adriatic and the Tigris ; or, east of a line 
 having Germany on its west, from the Mediterranean to 
 Scandinavia. But Gaul and Britain and, though less con- 
 spicuously, Ireland, were its home ; and Man, within a few 
 miles, with a pecple of the same lace and language as the 
 greater islands, was not unlikely to come under the power 
 of the same system. The expulsion of the Druids from
 
 24 ELLAN VANNIN. 
 
 Anglesey in the year 59 of our era, by the Imperial forces, 
 might naturally lead them to seek refuge in the other Mona, 
 which was not far away. The more intimate relations of 
 Man to Ireland might suggest the same thought of prob- 
 ability ; for, as late as 636, the Druidic pretender had con- 
 tended with Donald, the Christian king, for the crown of 
 Ulster, according to an Irish account of the time. In the 
 Manx language, again, are found terms in which ths Druidic 
 idea is suggested ; as " Glendarragh," the oak glen. Manx 
 has the word for Druid, " Druaight." The English word 
 "enchanters," in Jeremiah xxvii. 9, in the Authorised 
 Version, is, in the Manx version, " Druaightee." Dr. Kelly 
 states in his Manx Dictionary that "Laa yn Ullick," 
 Christmas day, means the day of the mistletoe (uil or 
 guil = mistletoe), the sacred plant of the Druid. The Enc. 
 Brit., in its article en Druidism, states that Baal worship, 
 with its fire, was a part of its ritual. "Laa Boaldyn," 
 according to Cregeen, May day, contains a reference to the 
 fires (teine) of May eve, the term " Belthane " being also 
 used for the same fires, meaning, as is stated by Dr. Kelly, 
 Baal's fire. The " Oie Vaaltin " of the eve of May day, 
 was the night of Baal's fire. In years which some have not 
 yet forgotten, the line of fire was still kindled along the 
 heights of the island. " Tinvael " is the fire of Baal. The 
 " breast law " of the Druid finds its parallel in the " breast 
 law " of Man before the laws were written, as also in the 
 Brehon laws of Ireland. In " Hunt the wren " on St. 
 Stephen's day is the sacred bird of the Druid, in Manx 
 termed "Dreain," the feathers supposed to have special virtue. 
 Ruins at Mount Murray, Bellown, Spanish Head, Cregneash, 
 Port Soderick, and the Cooil, not to name others, have been 
 taken as Druidic, and Druidism in the island has been ad- 
 mitted as a fact by the general authorship on Manx history. 
 On the other hand, some may doubt the force of such
 
 DRUIDIC AND EARLY CHRISTIAN AGES. 25 
 
 inductive considerations. There is no Druidic life, as still 
 in Wales which has its Arch Druid, and no trace of the 
 traditional mental culture, unless it be in the knowledge of 
 the medicinal properties of herbs, in charms still spoken of, 
 and in devices by which witchcraft may be defeated. 
 
 If the system ever had a place in the Manx Mona, it did 
 little for the elevation of the people. With the soul's im- 
 mortality, it held the soul's transmigration, the worship of 
 Baal, and human sacrifices. The oak forest, the unhewn 
 stone circle open to the hkies, the central stone for the 
 human sacrifice, the auguries, omens, and incantations, the 
 huge image of wickerwork with its crowded victims, the 
 great festivals in May and November, would be a terror not 
 a power to uplift. Bondage to the priesthood held the 
 system together. At fixed times the fires must be kindled 
 from his sacred flame, the smoke drifting over the fields 
 believed to be a protection of the crops and cattle from 
 witchcraft, because from the fires of Belthane. 
 
 On the whole, some might hold that the alleged ruins 
 are wanting in the specific marks of Druidism, and that it 
 was late in the centuries (about the sixteenth) before any 
 writer favoured a Druidic era. Still some shadows of the 
 system seem to linger in Man, in thought, language, and 
 memorials ; and some probabilities remain with the thought 
 that it is not unnatural that the religion of Britain and 
 Ireland, in the pre-Christian ages, was the religion of people 
 of the same race and language in Man. 
 
 2. The "Treen Chapels" touch the times of early 
 Christianity in the island. 
 
 The term " Treen " seems borrowed from later times, 
 and implies an ecclesiastical and parish organisation of great 
 completeness for the tithes of the Church, such as could 
 not have obtained a place among the simple, early struc 
 tures whose ruins evidently belong to an age when that
 
 26 ELL AN V ANN IN. 
 
 arrangement did not exist. In Cregeen's Dictionary the 
 " Treen " is defined to be an arrangement which divided the 
 tithes into three parts. One-third was for Rushen Abbey ; 
 the remaining two-thirds were divided between the Bishop 
 and the parish clergy. 
 
 Each "Treen " was a group of " quarterlands," by which 
 the Island was broken up as a basis for taxation for both 
 civil and church purposes. The parish arrangement was 
 also an element, for to each of the seventeen parishes were 
 allotted ten Treens : each Treen forty quarterlands; the whole 
 Island being thus measured into 680 quarterlands. The 
 Treen, in its taxation, had a threefold reference to Bishop, 
 Abbey, and parish clergy ; it was therefore after and for these 
 organisations in chief. 
 
 The Treens are not mentioned by the monks of Rushen 
 Abbey, who have indeed left without notice all things 
 ecclesiastical for more than a thousand years. The Abbey 
 lands seem to have been before the time of the Treens, 
 for there are no Treens in them, though they include so 
 much land. The quarterlands were mapped out before 
 the parishes; for some of them extend into more than 
 one parish, while they differ also in size. The Chapels did 
 not belong to the time of parishes, but to a previous age. 
 The full arrangement designated by the term Treen agrees 
 better with the middle ages of Manx Romanism. The 
 parish idea did not come early into the Celtic Church. In 
 Ireland, as late as the eighth century, there were, in the 
 modern sense, no parishes, and no dioceses ; and Man, so 
 closely related to Ireland, would not be likely to be in 
 advance in its church plans. The term Treen therefore 
 seems to have its origin in the later and better ordered times, 
 while the Chapel precedes the setting up of parishes. It 
 may have been at first used as a convenient term of 
 description for ruins which were of old. The Treens are still
 
 DRUIDIC AND EARLY CHRISTIAN AGES. 27 
 
 a basis for taxation in the civil and ecclesiastical ; they are 
 still manorial divisions of the land, with a charge for the 
 church as well as for the lord of the manor. A Manx friend 
 informs me that his farm of 140 acres is assessed to the 
 lord's rent as three-fourths of a Treen, and that the Moar, in 
 collecting the yearly sum for the rent, also demands a 
 curious item termed "Prescriptions," for the church, in lieu 
 of an old tithe charge for the farmer's live stock and the 
 poultry of the farmyard. 
 
 The character of these Chapels points to the early ages 
 in the dawn. On an average, they are twenty feet 
 by ten, with space for about twenty adults, a door at one 
 end and a window at the other, east and west ; constructed 
 of wood and earth ; sometimes with burial-ground around ; 
 rectangular in outline; and with nothing of the solid masonry 
 of later ages as at St. Ninian's and the Islet of Peel. Their 
 number, from the ruins, was considerable. At Nappin, in 
 Jurby, on to the south ; " Lag ny Keillen," the glen of the 
 churches ; " Cronk ny ira laa," the hill of the rising day ; 
 St. Michael's Isle ; ruins at Mount Rule, Laxey, Port St. 
 Mary, and many other places, are the outlines in ruins of 
 these ancient structures distributed through the Island. 
 Belonging to the ages of early British Christianity there are 
 similar structures in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Canon 
 Bright, in his work on The Early English Church, tells of 
 such in Scotland and Ireland built of wood, or of wattles 
 plastered with clay, with a roof of thatch. There were 
 some such in Galloway in the fourth century, in the High- 
 lands of Scotland, and in the Hebrides. Their style is 
 noticed by the poet Wordsworth at the grave of Rob Roy. 
 The " Candida Casa " of Ninian, the church of white stone, 
 which gave its name to Whithorne, was an exception in its 
 time. The more substantial and stately belonged to the 
 later Romish period.
 
 28 ELLAN VANNIN 
 
 These Chapels, therefore, fit into collateral history and 
 into the early ages of British Christianity. Within the first 
 four centuries British Christianity was in the fulness of its 
 energy. In his Religion of Early Britain Dr. George Smith 
 deems it probable that Christianity reached Britain in the 
 Apostolic age, noting specially his own county of Cornwall, 
 in its relations to the Eastern lands, near to Judea, relations 
 of commerce with marks of Christianity in the early cen- 
 turies. Tertullian writes, in the second century, that the 
 Gospel had reached some parts of Britain which had not 
 been conquered by imperial Rome. British Christianity, 
 in 314, had its representatives in the Council of Aries ; and, 
 in 325, in the Council of Nice. In the Dioclesian persecu- 
 tion, from 303 to 310, British Christians had sought refuge 
 in Cornwall, in Wales, and in the northern parts near the 
 Solway, almost inaccessible to the Roman power. It is 
 thus that the Celtic, and not the Roman, Christianity marks 
 the early ages in the British Islands. It was a power of 
 resistance to the monks of Augustine. It sent forth from 
 the Irish Bangor, for example, missionaries to Cornwall, in 
 the early evangelisation, who, in passing down the Irish 
 Sea within sight of Man, would not forget their kinsmen on 
 the little island. St. Bees, also, was not far off, on the 
 edge of Cumberland ; nor Whithorne, at the Mull of 
 Galloway. Canon Bright relates that, in 597, Augustine 
 found the ruins of British churches which had been de- 
 stroyed by the invading Anglo-Saxons. Before 597, Rome 
 had no church position in these lands. St. Alban, St. 
 Patrick, Columba, Columbanus, and many other great 
 names, belonged to another fellowship. The last, with his 
 helpers from lona, led on the mission to France, south and 
 east ; and so, from and after 612, was Christian truth dis- 
 seminated in Germany, in Switzerland, and across the Alps 
 into Lombardy. There is evidence that the Irish Bangor
 
 DRUIDIC AND EARLY CHRISTIAN AGES. 29 
 
 held its theology free from Roman interference in the 
 seventh century. The successor of Augustine complained 
 that the Irish Bishop would not eat with a Bishop from 
 Rome, as is recorded by the Venerable Bede. Not only 
 from Ireland, and places already named, was there near 
 Christian light ; but perhaps, not the least from the Mull 
 of Galloway where Ninian, in 370, had his school of train- 
 ing for young evangelists who, as they rose early in the 
 winter for their studies, as tradition says, could see the 
 lights of the early risers on the opposite shore. The outer 
 ecclesiastical Baronies, with their independent jurisdiction 
 and powers in the legislature, may have grown out of the 
 simple relations of missions to the Manx people in the 
 earlier ages. 
 
 The position of Bangor and Sabal in this circle of 
 Christian zeal was conspicuous in other directions also. 
 Under Columba, the Irish evangelist in the sixth century 
 (born 521), and who had lona as his centre, the men 
 trained for Christian service were sent to labour among the 
 Picts and Scots, from about the year 563. From lona, Aidan, 
 himself Irish, was sent to be Bishop of Lindisfarne, with 
 the Saxon kingdom of Northumbria as his diocese. He 
 had to lay aside his Irish speech and learn the Saxon for 
 his new sphere, while the king, meanwhile, often acted as 
 his interpreter. It was a warm stream issuing at first from 
 the coast of Erin round to Northumbria by the line of 
 lona, and had relations to Man as well. The circumstances 
 of British Christianity from the fourth to the seventh cen- 
 turies coincide with the theory of an early Christianity in 
 Man during the same interval. The records of the Middle 
 Ages make no mention of these Treen Chapels ; they had 
 then probably fallen into ruin and were forgotten. They 
 belonged to the class of "rural oratories" of which Bede 
 writes in his time, and which served the outlying hamlets
 
 30 ELL AN VAN N IN. 
 
 of England in the seventh and eighth centuries ; " quarter- 
 land oratories," as Gumming terms them, and at a period 
 before England submitted to the Papacy in 664, and long 
 ages before Ireland submitted in 1172.* The modern 
 Irish patriot, as he glories in the ancient fame of his 
 country for Christian culture and civilisation, is apt to 
 forget that, whatever might be its value, it belonged to the 
 ages before 1172. To that interval the Christianity of Man 
 belonged also. 
 
 * The " Treen " arrangement does not seem to belong to the 
 " Chapel " era ; it was part of a system of taxation for Bishop, Abbey, 
 and Clergy towards the Middle Ages. The Christianity of thej' Chapel " 
 ages was no part of the Papal system. The time of absorption by 
 Romanism is not certain ; but it was, perhaps, after the Norwegian 
 conquest, when we read of royal gifts to the clergy, and of the Island 
 itself to the Pope.
 
 Seen (continue*)) : IRuntc anfc 
 papal.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AGES DIMLY SEEN (CONTINUED) : RUNIC AND PAPAL. 
 
 HE Runic remains are chiefly stone monu- 
 ments, with the symbol of the Cross, set 
 up by one friend in memory of someone 
 else, and inscribed with " runes," or letters 
 of the Runic alphabet, whose twenty-four 
 letters served the literature of Scandinavia of old. They are 
 cut in deep, straight lines, long and short, on the edges of the 
 stones. The Runic language was that of Scandinavia, and 
 included the peoples of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. It 
 was closely related to the Gothic language. Gibbon states, 
 in his Decline and Fall, that the oldest runic inscriptions 
 are supposed to belong to the third century, and that the 
 first ancient writer who mentions the runic crosses lived 
 towards the end of the sixth century. In order of time, the 
 runic remains follow the early Christian of the Treen 
 Chapels, and belong to the Norwegian era, which begins 
 about the ninth century. The Encyclopedia Britannica 
 states that about the tenth and eleventh centuries the 
 Runic letters gave place to the Roman. The monuments 
 are found, perhaps, more in the north of the Island than in 
 the south. They relate to persons of Norse descent and 
 name. There is no expression of Christian sentiment in 
 what they bear, unless it be in one of which my 
 friend, Mr. Kneale, of Victoria Street, Douglas, informs 
 me, and which has the words "for his soul." They 
 are not now in their original sites ; some are built 
 
 33 3
 
 34 ELLAN VANN1N. 
 
 into other structures, some carefully placed in church- 
 yards. Their date is supposed to be about the tent 
 century. 
 
 The Runic interval seems to have been a passing phase 
 rather than a substantial change in the religious life of the 
 Island. It points to Norwegian supremacy. Iceland shares 
 in the same kind of memorial, basaltic columns bearing the 
 runic inscriptions. On the lines of more general history, it 
 suggests the great movement of the northern nations of 
 Europe to takepossession of the fairer landsof thesunnysouth. 
 The date when the movement reached England, Ireland, 
 and Man, has been stated by Professor Manch to be from 
 800 to 850. The Manx kingdom was then " Man and the 
 Isles." In England, the Norsemen seized Cumberland and 
 Strathclyde, the western half of Britain from the latitude of 
 Edinburgh to that of York, and from the northern boundary 
 of Wales to the Clyde. In 882, on the eastern coast, the 
 Danes had subdued Northumberland, and had made York 
 their capital. In Ireland, the Norwegians had formed a 
 kingdom in Dublin, taking possession also of Waterford 
 and Limerick. A little earlier the Norwegians had con- 
 quered Shetland, the Orkneys, and the Sudreys, the last 
 including the western islands of Scotland and Man. These 
 western islands, as south of Norway, received the name 
 " Sodorenses," a term at last joined to " Man." It suggests 
 the possible origin of the title, " Sodor and Man," given to 
 the Manx diocese, in which case the ancient " Sodor " 
 would be "the Isles," now included in "Argyle and the 
 Isles," and would, as the more important part, naturally 
 come first ; thus, " Sodor and Man." The great northern 
 movement which thus reached our little Island was, in its 
 general features, a repetition of the more ancient movement 
 of Goth, Vandal, and Scythian, before whom the Roman 
 empire fell ; and of that yet earlier movement from the
 
 RUNIC AND PAPAL AGES. 35 
 
 northern regions down to India, the Dravidian invasion 
 sweeping before it the aborigines of India, to be driven 
 southward in its turn by the Aryans from the north-west. 
 So Gibbon, already referred to, writes that "the men of 
 Scandinavia had been concealed by a veil of impenetrable 
 darkness " in their northern lands, strangely quiet, though, 
 a little south of them, in an earlier age, on the southern 
 line of the Baltic, Goth, Frank, Vandal, and Lombard had 
 left their country to subvert the imperial power of Rome ; 
 at last, however, came the Norsemen from their cold 
 recesses to seize Man and greater countries, Normandy as 
 well, and not resting until they had established their power 
 as far south as the Mediterranean. It is a curious fact that 
 recently, on the coast of Norway, a vessel of the " Viking " 
 class, built of oak, has been found embedded in the soft 
 earth, in good preservation, though supposed to be of the 
 ninth century. An exact copy has been built by the 
 Norwegian Government, and sent as a present to the 
 "World's Fair" of 1893, in Chicago. The measurement 
 is : Over all, 76 1 feet; beam, 16^ feet; hold, 5! feet. The 
 bow and stern are higher than amidships. There is no deck ; 
 the planks overlap ; it is fitted for thirty-two oars, each 
 1 7 feet long ; and the lines are graceful as those of a modern 
 yacht. Perhaps it was such that once came to Lhen Mooar. 
 
 4. Manx Mediceval Romanism comes within the ages 
 seen but dimly, though its ruins are the most conspicuous. 
 In the dimness may be seen something of its system, its 
 resources, its government, and its relations. 
 
 Its date in Manx History, as an organised church, could 
 not be earlier than the mission of Augustine in 597, but 
 must have been much later. Irish Christianity withstood 
 the Papacy until 1172, as already noted, and Manx 
 Christianity has been more closely related to it than to 
 Scotland or England, and would therefore, under the
 
 36 ELLAN VANNIN. 
 
 shelter of Ireland, be free from subjection to Rome to a 
 much later date than England, in 664, at the Synod of 
 Whitby. In order of time, Manx Romanism comes after 
 Manx Christianity. The oak had long grown and flourished 
 before the ivy crept along its branches. The date would be 
 long after the time of St. Patrick, which was about the middle 
 of the fifth century. Many of the fallacies of the Papal system 
 in Man, as elsewhere, gather around the grand personality of 
 St. Patrick. The claim that he laid the foundation of the 
 Church in Man falls for want of historic evidence. Pro- 
 babilities are against the supposition that he was ever Bishop 
 of Man, or was ever within its bounds. The monks of 
 Rushen Abbey never name him in their chronicle, and 
 state that they had no knowledge of any Bishop in Man 
 before the eleventh century. To them the first thousand 
 years of the Christian era in the Island were a blank in its 
 Church history. In his autobiography, St. Patrick makes no 
 mention of the Island. Born in Dumbarton in 372, the 
 capital of the ancient Strathclyde of British history ; taken 
 captive by pirates when he was sixteen years old, and sold 
 into slavery in Ireland ; escaping to his British home after 
 ten years of bondage ; it was not until some years after his 
 conversion to the Christian faith that he returned to 
 Ireland, and, according to his own account, gave 
 his whole life of Christian labour to Ireland alone. His 
 first landing, we are told in the narrative, was in Ulster, two 
 miles from Sabal, near where now stands Downpatrick. 
 His first sermon there was in a barn, to which was given 
 the name " Sabhal Padrine " (see the volume published by 
 the Religious Tract Society, and edited by the Rev. Dr. 
 Wright), the title meaning the Barn of Patrick. On that site 
 was afterwards erected a memorial church, standing north 
 and south. Of his presence in Man there is no adequate 
 proof or record ; none in the writings of Gildas, the monk
 
 RUNIC AND PAPAL AGES. 37 
 
 of the Welsh Bangor, and the historian of the British 
 Church in the sixth century ; none in the writings of Bede 
 in the eighth century, though he refers to the Isle of Man ; 
 none, therefore, in the early ages, for to these two writers 
 are we indebted for the Christian history of Britain and the 
 neighbouring lands. The first published statement that St. 
 Patrick had been in Man was by the monks of Furness 
 Abbey in 1112, six hundred years after he had passed away; 
 the next mention of the idea is in 1573. In the dark ages 
 there were published lives of St. Patrick full of fabulous 
 inventions, and these have been repeated from age to age. 
 The saint himself never mentions the Island, or Rome,. or 
 the Pope, or any commission from Rome, or any miracle by 
 himself. His writings, composed towards the end of his 
 life, have much of the Gospel spirit, and include his cele- 
 brated hymn, which he wrote in ancient Irish, the rest of 
 his writings being in imperfect Latin. Had the alleged 
 wonders of a Manx episcopate been real, they could hardly 
 have been omitted from his review of life. One thing 
 seems clear, that the island had no share of his labours, or 
 even his presence ; that his achievements had nothing to do 
 with early Manx Christianity; that his British usefulness 
 had no part in laying the foundations of Romanism ; that 
 those foundations were different in outline and plan from 
 those of the early ages, and that the ultimate absorption of 
 the Celtic Churches of Britain and Ireland and Man is no 
 proof that they belonged at first to the organisation of the 
 Romish system. 
 
 The system of Manx Romanism appears in its ruins, the 
 Cathedral, Bishop's Court of its time, but not now in ruins, 
 the Abbey at Rushen, the Nunnery, the Friary, the Church of 
 St. Ninian's,and old parish churches whose traditions survive; 
 and, lastly, its early relations beyond its immediate circle 
 in the Baronies beyond the sea. Together, these suggest a
 
 38 ELLAN VANNIN. 
 
 comprehensive and imposing ecclesiastical plan. Beyond 
 the Baronial relations were those to the Archbishop of 
 Drontheim, in the Norwegian time ; to the Pope of Rome, 
 made its master by the usurping king ; to the Archbishops 
 of Canterbury and York ; to the lord of the isle as, for a 
 time, independent of his authority in their local jurisdic- 
 tions. The priestly arrogance which thus arose, and refused 
 feudal homage to the Stanley ruler, was quickly put down 
 by a firm hand, those abroad dismissed, those within 
 the island escaping by submission. The discipline and 
 government thus established over the Manx people show 
 Rome's method as a Church. There are words in the 
 Manx language that bear the Papal impress : " Oie 
 innyd " is the special name given to the eve of Ash 
 Wednesday ; " Oie '1 varry," " the night of Mary," is Christ- 
 mas Eve. Places sometimes bear a suggestive name, as 
 "Magher y Chairn," the field of the Lord. It does not 
 appear that the priests used the Manx language in public 
 worship. The Canon Law was in full force ; the doctrines 
 were those of the Papacy ; the discipline was true to the 
 Romish model ; the claim was exclusive, as being the only 
 true Church, and with powers in the priesthood which 
 approached the divine ; the supremacy over the civil power 
 held in theory, as was natural to a system whose chief 
 feature is that under the Christian name it aims at political 
 supremacy. 
 
 The revenue comprehended large resources : tithes and 
 fees from every property and business, and from the chief 
 events in family life, as well as all the offices of religion ; 
 extensive properties in land and houses ; other rights and 
 claims of a substantial nature also ; and this, not only for 
 insular Popery, but also for the outer establishments. Other 
 facts bearing on Manx Romanism must be reserved for the 
 chapters on "Freedom" and "Wealth."
 
 jUan Dannin: Ipast ant> present.
 
 GLEN COAN. GROUDLE.
 
 CHAPTER v. 
 
 ELLAN VANNIN : PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 BOLD words affirmed, in days when faith was strong 
 And doubts and scruples seldom teased the brain, 
 That no adventurous bark had power to rjain 
 
 These shores, if he approached them bent on wrong ; 
 For suddenly, up-conjured from the main, 
 
 Mists rose to hide the land that search, though long 
 
 And eager, might be still pursued in vain. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 TjE have now passed through the mists in which 
 some real things could not be seen, and in 
 which often some things have been unduly 
 magnified; and we have at last landed on Elian 
 Vannin, and can see it apart from the fabulous. 
 Much of its history grows out of its geographical posi- 
 tion in the northern angle of the Irish Sea, between the 
 54th and 55th degrees of north latitude, and between the 
 4th and 5th degrees of west longitude, in the line of the 
 North Channel as it enters the Irish Sea from the Atlantic, 
 almost directly south of the Hebrides along which the 
 Norwegian pirates came on their southern raids. It lies, as 
 if pointing to the Sol way Firth, just where the three king- 
 doms come within sight of each other and of Man. On its 
 west, Ireland is within sight ; on its north the Scotch shore 
 round to the Mull of Galloway; on its north-east, White- 
 haven, St. Bees, and the mountains of Cumberland ; by a 
 line direct towards the north from Kirk Bride, the fields of 
 Scotland show their workers in harvest. The main features 
 of Manx history arise from this central position among greater
 
 42 ELL AN V ANN IN. 
 
 countries. It was in the natural course of things that the 
 island should be peopled by the Celtic race near to it on the 
 neighbouring countries, and that those countries should 
 covet its possession ; that, small and helpless, it should 
 tempt the violent injustice of the early ages; that, when 
 Christianity triumphed on the shores not distant, Chris- 
 tian zeal should seek the welfare of the little island 
 within sight; that, in the line of the pirates from 
 Scandinavia as they came south, the Manx, as well as the 
 people of the Hebrides, should be plundered and oppressed ; 
 that, sheltered in comparative seclusion, its ancient ruins 
 should be among the least disturbed ; that, with its climate 
 and attractions, and so easily accessible, it should now be a 
 chief watering place for the peoples around ; a climate not 
 so severe in winter, or so oppressive in summer, singularly 
 even in temperature, and in quality for health not inferior 
 to some favoured places in the south of Europe. Plants 
 and flowers elsewhere needing artificial shelter in winter, or 
 cold season, flourish in the mild open air. The sea breezes 
 are everywhere ; the atmosphere is full of health ; vegetation 
 is rich, and sometimes rare ; scenery is varied in form and 
 colour ; the free outlines of the fields tell of freeholds and 
 independence of great ownership. The bold outline of the 
 rocky coast agrees with the storms and tidal currents 
 around. The transparent sea is free from the pollution of 
 great rivers with crowded cities and towns on their banks ; 
 there is pleasant fishing in stream and sea, and opportunity 
 for searching the rocks for shell-fish. The position of the 
 island is thus an explanation of past and present, and a 
 prophecy of its future. Its Ordnance Survey reports as its 
 area 145,325 acres (Blue Book, 1893, p. 50). 
 
 Judging from the oldest map, the island has undergone 
 great changes in outline and interior. On the north-west, it 
 has been worn away by the tidal current that sweeps around
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 43 
 
 Point of Ayre ; on the north-east, it has gained on the sea : 
 from the " Lhen Mooar," the great lake, to " Carlhane," the 
 crooked lake, there are traces of the channel of the sea 
 which once made Jurby an island. In the interior, there were 
 extensive bogs where remains of the oak forests have been 
 found in the depths, and lakes of which vestiges are still 
 visible. Ballaugh was anciently Ballalough, the last syllable 
 being the Manx for lake. In Lezayre, and Closelake, and 
 Kirk Andreas, and Kirk Bride, were lakes whose marshy 
 lines have not been entirely dried up ; from the Sulby river, 
 across the Regaby road, and towards Ballavoddan, are still 
 traces for a student of the past when what is now land 
 abounded in fish, in which the monks and bishop had an 
 interest. The tenure of the land in some of those parts, 
 I understand, is " Intack," which means that it was once 
 common, as it would be if formerly the bed of a 
 lake. Along the depressed line of road from Douglas 
 to Peel, lakes are marked on the oldest map. At Port e 
 Chee, near Douglas, is the wide area where probably 
 the tide used to spread out beyond the point of meet- 
 ing where the " Dhoo " (Black), flowing past Kirby, and 
 the " Glass " (Grey) past Port e Chee, blended, and gave 
 to Douglas its name. The idea seems not improbable 
 that, once, the valley between Douglas and Peel was a 
 channel of the sea, making the southern section an island. 
 The skeleton of the Elk, and similar remains, found in 
 the deep turf of the north, tell of a fauna different from 
 the present, when animals of orders now unknown to 
 Man had their place and home within its bounds. To pass 
 from the animal to the human, there are the graves without 
 a history, with inverted urns suggestive of heathen burial, 
 as at Cronk ny Marroo, "the hill of the dead." There are 
 the " Cronks," whose line from the north might be part of a 
 system to telegraph round the Island the news of an invasion
 
 44 ELLAN VANNIN. 
 
 from Norway or elsewhere. The cross roads still remain, 
 narrow and steep, that used to shorten the road from 
 Douglas to Ramsey, and in other parts ; they were the high- 
 ways, at last set aside by easier roads, some of which are 
 now superseded by the electric tram. 
 
 In the modern changes there has been loss as well as 
 gain to the scenery. The piers, the breakwater, the tower 
 of refuge, in Douglas Bay ; the marine drive on the Head, 
 and the improvements at Port Skillion, on the one side ; 
 and, on the other, the splendid promenade to the hill of the 
 Burnt Mill, with the electric tram to Laxey and Snaefell as an 
 extension, are all additions to nature's beauty ; and yet there 
 is some loss of beauty in having Castle Mona shut in by 
 other buildings, however comely, instead of being alone in 
 grounds extending from Broadway to the ancient dwelling 
 of McCrone, and from the coast line back to the road where 
 the duke's gardener had his cottage in the good old times. 
 To the modern improvements at Douglas should be added 
 those at Ramsey, Peel, Port St. Mary, Port Erin, Laxey, and 
 other places. Obscure recesses, but full of curious 
 beauties, are rapidly opening out, such as Cregneash, which 
 represents the oldest times in Man. The modern advance 
 of agriculture also adds to the scenery as well as the 
 wealth : fields once lying waste are brought under cultiva- 
 tion, and districts unsuited for the plough are planted with 
 trees, a measure which, if fully followed out, would, in the 
 course of years, add much to the resources of the Island. 
 
 It may not be easy to define the special attractions of 
 the Island. There is, of course, the sense of seclusion 
 from the whirl of ordinary life in the larger country ; there 
 may be the sense of solitude in the quiet recesses by sea, or 
 on mountain range. Besides isolation from the wider world, 
 there is the life-giving atmosphere, the fresh scenery, the 
 pure sea ever near. On each week-day there are the stirring
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 45 
 
 scenes of departure and arrival from the chief places on the 
 opposite coasts of England, Ireland, and Scotland. In 
 addition to the unusual variety of fine scenery, there are 
 the ruins a study by themselves. To some, no doubt, the 
 sail is a drawback, with liability to storm ; but the steamers 
 are among the finest in the home navy of the United 
 Kingdom, and the voyage is not much beyond three hours 
 and a half, and the accommodation, easily obtained, all 
 that reasonableness in charge, courtesy in bearing, and 
 trustworthiness in provision, can make it. 
 
 There are three methods of seeing the Island. One is 
 by sailing round it on a fine day, a trip of six hours from 
 Douglas Bay, turning northwards. Along the coast head- 
 land and bay alternate, Groudle, Laxey, the Dhoon, Maug- 
 hold Head, Ramsey. At Ramsey the Bahama Bank, with 
 its flashing light by night, is not far away ; King William's 
 Bank also, so named from his narrow escape there from 
 shipwreck on his way to the battle of the Boyne. Then, 
 with glimpses of Scotland on the right hand, the course, 
 bending round Point of Ayre, brings to the north-west, 
 where the brave Elliot, in 1760, defeated the French 
 Squadron under Thurot. Along the west side of the Island 
 rich views rise in succession : the Islet of Peel, with har- 
 bour behind ; " Purt ny Hinshey," as it used to be named 
 in English, "The Harbour of the Island"; and just 
 opposite to it, on the sea, the meeting-place of the tidal 
 currents from north and south at "Contrary Head." 
 Farther south projects the rock of Niarbyll, where crabs 
 shelter in good numbers, and Fleshwick Bay ; yet grander 
 scenes open next at The Calf, Spanish Head, and 
 Langness ; and so, passing Port Soderick, Douglas Bay 
 finishes the excursion. 
 
 There is a grander view of the Island from the summit 
 of Snaefell, two thousand feet above the level of the sea,
 
 46 ELL AN V ANN IN. 
 
 and commanding, at one glance, one of the finest views in 
 the United Kingdom. Immediately under the eye of the 
 spectator is the Island, with its range of mountains from 
 north to south, with many a valley and glen, and an area of 
 140,985,470 acres of land ; beyond the sea are Whitehaven 
 and the mountains of Cumberland, the fields of Scotland, the 
 Mull of Galloway, the mountains of Mourne, and perhaps, 
 if the day be clear, Snowdon a total extent of prospect of 
 about 3,000 square miles. 
 
 But neither the sail nor the ascent should prevent a 
 minute inspection of the inland scenery. I knew a visitor 
 who, becoming specially absorbed in one object, made the 
 view from Snaefell suffice for his sight of the Island. The 
 better method is to take road and rail and walk, to trace the 
 pure streams in the cascades of Glen Helen, Glenmay, 
 Rhenass, the Dhoon, and elsewhere ; and to find out in 
 valley and quiet recess the gems of the scene, the rare 
 plants or flowers, the glimpse of the sea, the secluded places, 
 where most of the poetry of the Island will be found. 
 
 The authorities of the Island are awake to the import- 
 ance of guarding public order amid the myriads of visitors 
 from all parts of the kingdom. In such vast gatherings 
 there will naturally be some of the less reputable. The 
 large watering places have seen the necessity, in their own 
 interest if not for higher reasons, of maintaining sufficient 
 police supervision, and that it would be commercially unwise 
 to allow in those who refuse the moral restraints of public 
 decency, what would offend the moral sense of their best 
 customers, and lower the reputation of the place. In a 
 similar course, the authorities, whether in the governor and 
 magistrates, or municipal powers, will not lack the support 
 of an enlightened public opinion in the Island. Such care 
 may drive away the worthless and the profits of their 
 habits of excess, but more than an equivalent will be realised
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 47 
 
 in the well ordered families with their young people, whose 
 moral surroundings will be thus guarded. 
 
 One great difference between the present and the past of 
 half a century may be mentioned as to public Sabbath 
 observance. The old times had their defects, but on the 
 Sabbath Douglas, for example, had no shops open, no boat- 
 ing in the bay as now, no excursions by sea, and few by 
 vehicle, no oyster and cigar shops doing business, nor 
 sacred concerts, as some term them, with which to while 
 away the evening hours.
 
 HANGO HILL (see page 83).
 
 flDans {people: characteristics, "Race, 
 ant) Xanauage.
 
 INJEBRECK RIVF.K. 
 
 5
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE MANX PEOPLE : CHARACTERISTICS, RACE, AND 
 LANGUAGE. 
 
 JHE character of a people will generally reflect 
 their ancient history and their physical sur- 
 roundings. Of none is this more true than of 
 the Manx people. By an ancient writer in 
 the fifth century they are termed " a tribe of 
 Scots." Until the ninth century " Scot " included the 
 Irish, i. The race is the Celtic. It came, in the distant 
 past, from its Aryan home in the East, and took possession 
 of the countries bounded by the Alps and the Rhine the 
 ancient Gaul and spread over Britain, Ireland, Man, and 
 the lesser islands of the west of Europe. The race had two 
 branches the Cymric, now represented by the Welsh, and 
 the Gallic, now represented by the Irish, the Gaelic of 
 Scotland, and the Manx. The three last have dialects 
 which closely resemble each other, and show the identity 
 of the language ; that spoken by the Cymric (the Welsh) is 
 more remote. The four belong to the Aryan group of 
 languages, where also Sanscrit, Zend (the ancient Persian 
 tongue), Greek, Latin, and German have their centre. It 
 has been calculated that only about two-thirds of the Manx 
 language are found in the Manx Scriptures and Prayer- 
 Book. There is something of the Scandinavian in the 
 Manx nature, as might be expected, and as appears in the 
 liking for a seafaring life in a degree not found in the Irish 
 or Welsh or Highland. The Norse rule for three centuries
 
 52 ELLAN VANNIN. 
 
 must have led to a mixture of the two races, which perhaps 
 was more in the south than in the north, where Godred 
 Crovan, after his conquest at Sky Hill, allowed the natives 
 to remain, choosing for himself and his followers the south- 
 ern section of the Island. In the schools of fifty years ago, 
 whatever may be the case now, the study of navigation was 
 a marked feature. The Manx sailor has proved himself to 
 be among the most skilful and daring, and has often risen 
 to the command of the ship on his own stormy coasts and 
 on foreign seas. The sailor into whose arms the wounded 
 Nelson fell at Trafalgar, it is related in an account which I 
 have seen, was a Manxman of the name of Cowle. Less 
 honourable, but true to this Norse feature, is the 
 fact that among the mutineers of the Bounty were 
 two Manx sailors, one Christian and a Heywood from 
 the Nunnery. Still, the Manx element in character 
 is supreme. The Anglo-Saxon intermarriages belong 
 mostly to modern days, and there never was an Anglo- 
 Saxon invasion. 
 
 The Manx population of the early ages must have been 
 much reduced by savage invasions and insular conflicts. 
 The number given in Bede's time was 300 families, say 
 1,500 persons. This was in the early years of the eighth 
 century. Eight hundred years after, in 1584, the Manx 
 numbered only about 4,800. In the first decade of this 
 century the numbers had risen to 34,316, in the second to 
 about 40,000, of whom about 20,000 spoke Manx ; now 
 the census amounts to 55,608. 
 
 The emigration to England, the Colonies, and the 
 United States of America during the last seventy years has 
 been considerable. In Liverpool and Manchester the Manx 
 have held annual gatherings. In South Africa and the 
 Australasian Colonies many of them have found a home ; 
 in the United States, yet more, especially in Ohio. In the
 
 CHARACTERISTICS, RACE, AND LANGUAGE. 53 
 
 wider competition which this implies success has not failed, 
 in comment, in science, in government, in the pro- 
 fessions, in literature; it would be easy to give names 
 typical in the several branches. The Manx and their 
 descendants abroad, added to those within the island 
 home, would raise the total number thousands above the 
 insular census. 
 
 The Celtic prefix " Mac " was once common in Manx 
 names, and told of the Celtic origin of the people. In 
 1408, nearly all the clergy of the island had this 
 prefix, and in 1417 sixteen of the twenty-four Keys. 
 The many names with the initial C and K show the 
 last letter of the original Mac which has been allowed 
 to lapse. 
 
 2. From race let us proceed to language, as to 
 which the writer admits that in half a century he has 
 colloquially forgotten much. In the region of Gaul, Spain 
 and Italy, the original Latin of the Roman empire has 
 been broken into the modern languages of the succeeding 
 kingdoms. The Celtic, however, retained its hold in western 
 and south-western Britain, and, of course, in Ireland and 
 Man, which were never a part of that empire. Dr. Blair 
 remarks that Celtic is one of the oldest among the languages 
 of the world. It was at one time the language of ancient 
 Gaul, northern Italy, the western parts of continental 
 Europe bounded by the Rhine, as well as that of the 
 British islands. Celtic history, which begins about the 
 sixth century, includes the two great sections of the race, 
 as already indicated, with the addition to the Welsh of 
 Cornish and Armoric, the last being the language of Brit- 
 tany in France. Manx is essentially what the Celtic was at 
 first when Ireland and Scotland were peopled by that 
 race. Irish, Gaelic and Manx can easily understand 
 each other. Strangely, on the contrary, modern English
 
 54 ELL AN V ANN IN. 
 
 has become what the sixth century could not under- 
 stand. Saxon and Norman-French invasion accounts 
 for the fact. The surrounding sea in part accounts 
 for the unchanged character of Manx. Some of its 
 terms are singularly suggestive : for " child " the word is 
 " Ihiannoo," half a saint ; " Ihiabbee," a bed, is half food or 
 life. " Balla " stands for a town or an estate : " Sheading " 
 includes the term for six, and denotes the six political divi- 
 sions of Man. " Treen " denotes a division of land with 
 tithes divided into three parts. In terms which express the 
 theological or what relates to the Church, it is indebted to 
 the original languages of Scripture almost entirely. In 
 things sacred, it has a peculiar dignity in expression, of which, 
 to the Manx ear, the last phrase in the Apostles' Creed is an 
 example in the resounding swell of "y vea dy bragh 
 farraghtin," the life everlasting. It has words to express 
 the sublime distinctions of the Athanasian Creed. It can 
 rise to the heights of the Te Deum and to the strains of 
 Paradise Lost in Milton. Its resources now are best 
 found in the Manx Bible. In specific terms, it is not 
 abundant ; the genus has to be united to the various species 
 often with a rather rough effect, instead of some more 
 elegant specific word, as generally in English. In a Manx 
 sonnet on the cuckoo, the word for its call is "gerrym," 
 which means also the crowing of the cock. In the proverb 
 on the divine approval of one poor man helping another 
 poor man, the word means " laughter " for joy. Verbs are 
 sometimes wanting as one Manx idiom may illustrate : 
 In the Manx Prayer-Book, the clergyman does not say 
 " let us pray " as it is in English, but " let us take prayer," 
 " Ihig diun padjer y gooiall." There is a term for a gift 
 over and above what was bargained for, " dooragh " : 
 " warp " and " tallee " express the three herrings followed 
 by one more, as the fisherman counts his herrings by the
 
 CHARACTERISTICS, RACE, AND LANGUAGE. 55 
 
 hundred. When a gang of workers is so arranged that one 
 of them is always resting, there is a word to describe the 
 man who rests. There is no term for slave; the nearest 
 approach to it is "stoudaystey," one required by govern- 
 ment to work for less than the usual wages. Besides words 
 from Hebrew and Greek, there are some from Latin, and, 
 as might be expected, from Scandinavian, or more definitely, 
 Norwegian and Danish, and many from English. " Qual- 
 tagh " denotes the first person you meet in the new year. In 
 the terminations ness, ick, ell, ay, ey, as in Langness, Ronalds- 
 way, Snaefell, Soderick, Laxey, Ramsey, we have the Norwe- 
 gian ; in those ending in ''by " as in Jurby and Colby, we have 
 Danish. Some of the personal names are common to both 
 Ireland and Man. It has been thought probable that the 
 old spelling of the language has been lost in the ages 
 when it was only spoken and not written. The present 
 spelling seems to have been formed from the sound in 
 speaking, and to date from the time of the Manx 
 translation of the Scriptures. The etymology, it is said, 
 is best understood by comparison with the kindred dialects. 
 While the writer notes the features of the language with 
 diffidence, from the long years that have passed since 
 he was fairly familiar with it, he has pleasure in referring 
 to Cregeen's Introduction to his Manx Dictionary, where 
 the Manx student will find a useful summary of knowledge 
 of the language. He remarks that the structure of the 
 language, viewed grammatically, conveys the idea of 
 elaborate culture in its " texture and beauty," and notes its 
 subtle changes in initial letters, " in moods and tenses, and 
 regards it as like a piece of exquisite network, interwoven 
 together in a masterly manner, equal to the composition of 
 the most learned, and not the production of chance. The 
 depth of meaning that abounds in many of the words must 
 be conspicuous to every person versed in the language."
 
 56 ELL AN VANN1N. 
 
 Manx is purest in the north. Unlike English, it generally 
 has the noun before the adjective. The " black horse " in 
 English is the " horse black," " cabbyl dhoo," in Manx. 
 There is a singular exception to this rule in the adjectiv 
 " drough," bad, or evil, which is before the noun in the 
 designation of Satan as the evil spirit, "drogh spirrid," and 
 of bad women as " drough varrane " in the famous old 
 " Carval." The differences between the dialects are less to 
 the ear than to the eye. A Manx friend of mine could 
 easily understand a sermon in Gaelic which he heard in 
 Scotland. The Manx Fencible, when on guard in Ireland 
 in the later years of the last century, easily understood the 
 whisper of one Irishman to another, as they stealthily- 
 approached to attack him "cur daa," "give it him," was 
 Manx as well as Irish, and put the soldier ready for defence. 
 It has been suggested by an article in the Encyclopedia 
 Britannica that the difference of the Manx dialect 
 from the other two has arisen from the isolation of the 
 Manx people under Norwegian rule. In the earlier 
 third of this century Manx was generally the language 
 of the labouring class and of the farmhouse, and it 
 had its separate and regular services at Church and 
 Chapel. Of the words in the language fifty-nine per 
 cent, are Manx, twenty-one per cent. Norwegian, and 
 twenty per cent. English in origin, with traces of 
 Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. 
 
 Manx literature is within narrow limits. Its first book, 
 printed and published in 1709, was the Catechism of Bishop 
 Wilson, the translation by Cowley from the Bishop's 
 English. The Manx Bible, the Manx Prayer-Book, the 
 Manx Hymn-Book, translated chiefly by Killey, the 
 Dictionaries of Dr. Kelly and Cregeen, a part of Paradise 
 Lost, translated by Christian, of Marown, some religious 
 tracts, are among the principal works in the native tongue.
 
 CHARACTERISTICS, RACE, AND LANGUAGE. 57 
 
 A list of works in Manx may be found in Vol. II. of the 
 issue of the Manx Society. 
 
 The Manx had close relations with Scotland and Ireland. 
 The language was but slightly different in dialect from what 
 was spoken at Bangor, Sabal, lona, and Whithorne, and all 
 were moved by the same religious life. The closest rela- 
 tion, perhaps, was with the Irish.
 
 Ube fl&anr. people : Characteristics (continues) 
 proverbs ano Superstitions.
 
 6o
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE MANX PEOPLE : CHARACTERISTICS (CONTINUED) 
 PROVERBS AND SUPERSTITIONS. 
 
 N the proverbs of a people will be found 
 much of their natural character ; they 
 suggest the maxims and ideal of their life ; 
 
 they are, in fact, the result of inductive 
 
 observations, general conclusions drawn from many in- 
 stances for future wisdom. In this case it is the proverbs 
 without surrounding literature. 
 
 Their general character is homely common-sense, often 
 expressed in metaphors drawn from the ancient quiet life, 
 and with a tone of depression and discouragement. In 
 some there is an excess of caution bordering on want of 
 energy, with little of the adventurous or speculative, and 
 perhaps undue emphasis on the wisdom of making haste 
 slowly. In some are great principles and noble thoughts, 
 the value of learning, the beauty of benevolence, the vanity 
 of shams ; the superiority of moral excellence to the merely 
 intellectual, and of the real to the plausible, are enshrined in 
 some ; in others, homage is paid to wisdom, to economy, to 
 industry, contentment, temperance, and responsibility in 
 life, and the government of the tongue. There is nothing of 
 the selfish, though a full share of the prudent. " Take care 
 of number one " has no place among them. They advise 
 against undue elation in prosperity, and urge the value of 
 humility and reality in character ; they don't omit kindness 
 to animals. A good selection of the Manx proverbs may be 
 
 61
 
 62 ELLAN V ANN IN. 
 
 gathered from the Manx Dictionary of Cregeen. It may 
 interest some to see the original Manx with the English in a 
 few examples : 
 
 Ta'n aghaue veg shuyr da'n aghaue vooar. 
 
 The little hemlock (evil or sin) is sister to the great hemlock. 
 
 Boght, boght dy bragh. 
 Poor, poor for ever. 
 
 Foddee yn moddey s jerree tayrtyn y mwagh. 
 Perhaps the last dog may catch the hare. 
 
 Ta ynsagh coamrey stoamy yn dooinney berchagh, ast'eh berchys 
 y dooinney boght. 
 
 Learning is the comely clothing of the rich man, and the riches of 
 the man who is poor. 
 
 Cha vel eh laccal gergagh ta goaill soylley jeh aigney boriagh. 
 He will not lack comfort who takes the enjoyment of a contented 
 mind. 
 
 Ta dooinney creeney mennick jannoo jeh e noid. 
 A wise man often makes a friend of an enemy. 
 Foddee fastyr grennagh ve ec moghrey bodjelagh. 
 Perhaps there may be a sunny afternoon after a cloudy morning. 
 I add a few in the English translation : 
 A green hill when far from me ; bare, bare, when near. 
 After spring tide comes a neap. 
 The smaller the company, the greater the share. 
 Change of work is rest. 
 The crooked bannock straightens the body. 
 Don't tell me what I was ; tell me what I am. 
 Give a piece to a raven, and he will come again. 
 To take is sweet ; but to pay is better. 
 
 There are many more proverbs, given in various pub- 
 lications ; and there are many sayings with much of the 
 proverb in them, though not quite so terse as the proverb is. 
 On the whole the Manx proverbs answer to much found in 
 the Manx character. 
 
 4. Manx superstition is not less interesting than the 
 Manx proverbs. It is not easy to define superstition ; the
 
 PROVERBS AND SUPERSTITIONS. 63 
 
 term is often used so indefinitely as to include much that 
 does not belong to the subject. Belief in the spiritual 
 world of Scripture is not superstition, nor is belief in the 
 relations of that world to this. Superstition is "a corrupt 
 rite," as some writer has said. It may be taken as a system 
 of corrupt rites. It has its primary sphere in false religions ; 
 it seeks to corrupt what is true. The former is seen in 
 heathenism, past and present ; the latter in the fallen 
 churches of Christianity. In its rites and ceremonies its 
 range extends from the ridiculous to the terrible. It is a 
 perverted belief in things supernatural. 
 
 Nations generally have their superstitions. Egypt had 
 its magicians ; Chaldea its astrologers and sorcerers ; the 
 Israelites were warned against using enchantments and 
 dealing with familiar spirits. There have been forms of 
 divination in Greece and Rome by serpents, by clouds, by 
 the flight of birds and other ways, and elaborate systems 
 associated full of folly and cruelty and corruption. So 
 among the nations at large. 
 
 Take England. In one of his papers in The Spectator, 
 Addison remarks that " there was not a village in England 
 that had not a ghost in it ; that the churchyards were 
 haunted ; that every large common had a circle for fairies 
 belonging to it ; that there was scarce a shepherd to be met 
 with who had not seen a spirit." Carleton, in his Traits and 
 Stories of the Irish Peasantry, does justice to the same 
 feature in that land of the Celt. Hugh Miller, in his 
 Schools and Schoolmasters, is equally rich in what relates to 
 the kindred superstitions of Scotland. 
 
 The Isle of Man shares the same features, and naturally 
 enough, for the people are of the same race and, because 
 isolated, more liable to the full force of the system. At the 
 same time, it seems only just to add that there has not been 
 the extreme superstition which Waldron represents in what
 
 64 ELLAN VANNIN. 
 
 he wrote about the Island, and who was apparently more 
 expert in his office in arresting smugglers than in gathering 
 from the natives the facts of Manx superstition. 
 
 In their source some of the superstitions are Celtic, 
 some Norwegian, some from the Romanism of the Middle 
 Ages. I will attempt a partial enumeration of the wild 
 ideas. To begin with, there is, according to some, the 
 removal of the Island from Lough Neagh, in the north of 
 Ireland, both still about the same size and form. Then 
 there are the mists by which Manninan Mac Lear hid the 
 Island from his enemies. In connection with the sea, the 
 floating island, the mermaid, and many a mysterious scene 
 under the ocean are mentioned. One, at least, is am- 
 phibious the Tarroo Ushtey (water bull), who emerges 
 occasionally from lough or river, and who used to make 
 some timid as they passed the Lhen Mooar. The most mis- 
 chievous are the Fairies, who ride on cushags at night, carry 
 off some people for a time, are angry if they find the farm- 
 house without bread on their nightly visits, and show it by 
 dashing the spoons and knives and forks from the box 
 hanging up in the kitchen on to the table ; and still, though 
 the noise was heard, the knives, etc., were found in their 
 old place in the morning. The Boganes are numerous, 
 causing some fear in certain fields and houses, but useful 
 in preventing people from being out too late at night. Only 
 one moddey dhoo (black dog) has been noted, that in the 
 Bishop's dungeon at Peel. It is difficult to describe two others 
 the Glashtin and the Lhiannan shee, the first a goblin, the 
 second a familiar spirit. The giant among them all is the 
 Phynnodderee, a hairy satyr of great strength, and of kind 
 temper if kindly treated: one who can thresh a stack of 
 corn (a " tooran ") in a night for the farmer. Of the unseen 
 crowd who have sometimes embarrassed a man's movement 
 in the dark in a lonely road on his way home, perhaps after
 
 PROVERBS AND SUPERSTITIONS. 65 
 
 he has had some "jough" refreshment, I am unable to 
 speak, but I have been told of great difficulty in getting 
 free. There are signs also the forerunners of the wedding, 
 the baptism, the funeral. 
 
 In a somewhat different line are the supernatural things 
 connected with individuals. St. Patrick, in his fight with 
 the giant at Peel, and in his service to the Island in driving 
 every venomous creature out of it as he did to Ireland, and 
 other wonders ; and St. Maughold, manacled in his coracle, 
 and floating from Ireland to Maughold Head, where the 
 key to unlock the manacles was found in the mouth of a 
 fish. There is also the roofless church of St. Trinion's, 
 the " Keil Brish " (broken church) near Crosby, and on 
 which somehow no roof would remain, the Phynnodderee 
 having to do with the difficulty. 
 
 Leaving these, we come to things yet more strange ; for 
 the creatures named have not been seen in later times ; but 
 there are spells, charms, herbal manipulations, remedies for 
 what has come from the evil eye, and from ill-will, witch- 
 craft defeated. Marvellous cures, too, are spoken of, after 
 consultation with the wise man, and stories are told not 
 easily explained. Worthy people will tell of things weird 
 and far from the natural course of affairs in life ; illness has 
 followed the invasion of some ancient ruin, and has passed 
 away after an approach to restitution, when the removed 
 stone has been returned, and the disturbed ruin, where the 
 plough has come too near, has been re-adjusted. For 
 untold generations, the mound in the " Garee " has re- 
 mained unopened and covered with gorse, an unexplained 
 mystery of the past ; the cows which had strangely failed 
 to give milk, have at length, after prescribed rites, been 
 restored to their usual course; the churning which had 
 failed to produce butter has succeeded after due use 
 has been made of the dust swept from the path of the 
 
 5
 
 66 ELLAN VANNIN. 
 
 evil wisher ; the disease fatal to the poultry has been 
 arrested by mysterious methods ; the bleeding which 
 defied all effort to stop it, has yielded to the will of 
 some one to whom the case has been stated. So some 
 of us have been told by some of ancient Manx intelligence 
 and belief in such affairs, and have been left almost unable 
 to solve or deny. 
 
 How Manx life has been touched by the Manx supersti- 
 tion is an interesting study to one who investigates the 
 condition of the Manx people, present and past. Within 
 the first third of this nineteenth century the fairies had not 
 ceased their alleged interferences ; the character of the 
 " Qualtagh," the first you meet in the new year, was of far- 
 reaching influence. On long winter evenings, in the semi- 
 circle fronting the kitchen fire, there has at times been a 
 kind of rehearsal among friends and neighbours, giving a 
 summary of the wonderful times long gone ; and as each 
 has moved nearer to the fire, with ears quick to hear any 
 unusual sound, and with a deepening interest in the super- 
 natural, the youngsters present have feared to go to bed in 
 the dark, while others have not been free from apprehension 
 as to what might happen on their lonely walk home after all 
 the " coosh " of the evening. 
 
 In this general survey of Manx superstition, it is 
 evidently a vanishing quantity : it resembles a decaying 
 empire losing province after province. If in the remote 
 times there was Druidic superstition, with its sanguinary 
 terrors, its occult meanings from the angle at which the 
 human victim fell at the stroke of the Druid's knife, its 
 omens and auguries from the entrails-^ this has left no vestige 
 behind it : if the superstitions of the Romish ages once 
 had sway, so as to demand the civil power for the suppres- 
 sion of some of them after the Reformation, these also are 
 gone, whether connected with Patrick, or Maughold, or holy
 
 PROVERBS AND SUPERSTITIONS. 67 
 
 wells, leaving the Manx people the most Protestant of the 
 Protestants of the British Empire, in doctrine as well as 
 superstition. It may be added that the part of the super 
 stition relating to the unreal hierarchy from fairy to phynnod- 
 deree has also vanished. The rest is passing, though here 
 and there belief lingers, perhaps, in the virtue of the charm 
 and in the midnight ritual of herbs. Of the extreme 
 veneration for the old ruins one cannot speak severely, for 
 it has much to do with their preservation. 
 
 The general effect of superstition does not make for 
 dignity of character ; it looks away from the divine ; it holds 
 the human as wielding a supernatural power; it glances 
 towards the infernal ; it touches life with imaginary terrors; 
 it leads to hope from occult powers when the refuge should 
 bs common-sense, science, and religion. The effect is the 
 loss of dignity to the individual and the community. 
 Other and higher influences, however, prevented the natural 
 results. 
 
 It will be seen that my definition of the superstitious 
 does not include belief in ghosts, though this is sometimes 
 superstition because imaginary. The scepticism of the ages 
 has ever been unwilling to admit the ghostly, because, 
 admitted, it is logically fatal to its argument. The super- 
 stitious stands apart from the spiritual world revealed in the 
 Scriptures, generally unseen, but with evidences of reality 
 sometimes in startling forms, as in the scene of Endor in 
 which Samuel appears, and as in that on the holy mount 
 where Moses and Elias were seen by the disciples. To 
 accept the reality of ghostly appearances, with the marks of 
 accustomed authenticity, is not superstition. Baxter, Wesley, 
 and other great writers of the Christian past have held to 
 that position. Hugh Miller was no enthusiast, and those 
 who have read his Schools and Schoolmasters, and his 
 work on the English people, will remember, among othei
 
 68 ELL AN V ANN IN. 
 
 admissions, his assent to the ghost story in the time of the 
 second Lord Littleton, in 1779, at Hagley. One of the 
 most gifted ministers I ever knew, and author of one of the 
 grandest theological works of the age, once told me of his 
 refusal to lodge in a certain room allotted to him in his first 
 Circuit, because of what he held to be a well authenticated 
 story from the lips of his friend who had been an eye 
 witness. On the other hand, there has been, no doubt, 
 undue belief in this sphere among the Manx people, and 
 with comic effects. I know a churchyard in the north of 
 the Island where occurred a scene like the following : A man 
 of the parish, when not quite sober, was apt to call at night 
 at the grave of a former debtor with the request that the 
 debt might be paid. A wag of the village adjacent, and 
 whose name I could give, hid himself one night in the 
 church porch, ready with his white sheet to make a ghostly 
 appearance if the creditor came ; on arrival, somewhat 
 " fresh," the being in white emerged, but the creditor would 
 not wait for his money, and escaping over the stile, sought 
 refuge in the village, where it was found that fright had 
 made him sober. 
 
 There are great abiding characteristics, amid the lesser 
 features mentioned, arising from the historic past. One of 
 these is a robust Protestantism with a broad toleration. 
 The idea of the Popish past and the strong position of 
 evangelical religion are the explanation. Anglican ten- 
 dencies have little Manx sympathy. High Church ideals 
 do not succeed. The same prevalence of evangelical light 
 will account for the absence of popular scepticism, whether 
 in the form of the old infidelity, or Darwinian evolution, or 
 the so-called Higher Criticism. Between the Evangelical 
 Churches and the Sunday-schools of the Island and the 
 sound principles generally held by the population, the truths 
 to which England owes its greatness and freedom prevail.
 
 PROVERBS AND SUPERSTITIONS. 69 
 
 The loyalty to the British throne of the Manx people is 
 equally conspicuous. There is something of local govern- 
 ment in the functions of Tynwald, but it exists under a 
 reserve of supreme power which fails to strike attention 
 because of the wise moderation of both the government and 
 the governed. It is nothing like the Home Rule proposed 
 for Ireland. In contrast to that country, the diffused 
 ownership of the land has much power. Few areas of 
 thirty miles by twelve in the United Kingdom can show so 
 many freeholds, and these, for the most part, continued by 
 inheritance. The kind of social distress which is often 
 revolutionary does not exist. There is no overcrowding of 
 the population as in the Scotch Highlands and the West of 
 Ireland. There has long been the emigration which comes 
 from enterprise to the United Kingdom and its colonies 
 and the United States of America. There is no undue 
 pressure of population upon resources. The loyalty is firm 
 in its basis in the Manx character which is not given to 
 change, and offers the fewest chances to the anarchist. 
 The spirit that does homage to just law has had its life in 
 the influence of Manx Christianity. Even under the old 
 system of tithes, I have seen parson and farmer on the best 
 terms in the harvest field, when each tenth " stock " of the 
 crop was marked off for the church, and the trying law 
 obeyed. The rebellion against the revival of tithes in the 
 potato and green crop in the time of Bishop Murray was 
 an exception in Manx temper ; the claim had been gener- 
 ously given up by Bishop Wilson, and ceased from his 
 time. Loyal submission to the law of the land has been, 
 and is, a chief feature.
 
 tfreefcom: ftbe Ifteefc.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 MANX FREEDOM : THE NEED. 
 
 |HE government of the early ages is but little 
 known. We can find no historic signs of free- 
 dom. If we assume a time of Druidic rule, 
 it would be oppressive to the last degree. 
 The interval sometimes allotted to the sway of 
 Edwin of Northumbria, and others, in the obscure ages, if 
 held to be authentic,' would not relieve the scene. The 
 government of the Norwegians, from Orry to Godred 
 Crovan, and from Godred to the last of his line, when the 
 Scots came into power, was that of invaders and con- 
 querors, who robbed the Manx people of their rights. 
 In all those ages the general condition was exposure to 
 violence. Under the Stanleys the spirit of the government 
 was feudal, and the reverse of free. The offering of a 
 brace of falcons at each coronation was, to Manxmen, a 
 sign of arbitrary power. In the Institution of Tynwald 
 liberty was possible rather than real. In theory, there was 
 the authority of the " Commons and Tenants of Man," but 
 in fact there was no power to control or modify the ruling 
 policy. Tynwald, with its fence and security, as the alleged 
 meaning of the word would suggest, left the people without 
 freedom. Under the title of " The Commons of Man " 
 had been united, with the House of Keys, at times, six 
 representatives from each sheading, and four from each 
 parish ; sometimes mention is made of a " Court of the 
 whole country." These met once at Reneurling in Kk.
 
 74 ELL AN VANNIN. 
 
 Michael, once at Castle Rushen, and once at St. John's 
 but the ruling power was really a tyranny, and liberty only 
 a name. The monks of Rushen speak of " The Sheriff 
 of Man " ; a similar official is named in The History of the 
 Hebrides, but his powers cannot be defined. It is said that 
 Reginald, son of Godred, " King of the Isles," was chosen 
 King of Man, in 1187, by the Manx people; but if so, the 
 historic circumstances show that the case was really invasion 
 and conquest. From the time of Orry, usually fixed at 
 about 912, to the time of the House of Athol, no sub- 
 stantial freedom can be found. There seem to be traces 
 of a dual government on each side of the mountain 
 range, with some difference in the laws. Tynwald 
 was held at Keill Abban, in Baldwin, in 1429, and in 
 other years at Cronk Urleigh and Castle Rushen. Since 
 1577, it has been held at St. John's, "Cronk y Keillown," 
 as termed in Manx, "the Hill of St. John's Church." 
 Until the time of the Stanleys, little is known of the House 
 of Keys, and then there was no due recognition of popular 
 rights. The people were treated as a mere appendage 
 to the land, not to leave the island without government 
 permission. Even after the sixteen members for Man had 
 been increased by the eight for "the Isles," the " Kair as 
 fead " had but little power. The same disregard for Manx 
 rights prevailed, more or less, on to 1662, when in defiance 
 of" law and right, the life of "Iliam Dhone" (brown William) 
 was taken at Hango Hill. Liberty could find no place 
 under the "breast laws" of the earlier centuries, under the 
 ecclesiastical Barons, under the Papal ascendency, under 
 the Canon law, under a self-elected House of Keys, with 
 a co-ordinate Lord of the Isle. 
 
 There were other dominating influences, also, unfavour- 
 able to freedom. Until the Revestment of the Island in 
 the British Crown, in 1765, there was no imperial refuge
 
 MANX FREEDOM : THE NEED. 75 
 
 from local oppression. Before the gift of the Island to 
 Stanley by Henry IV., England had long won its Magna 
 Charta, but Man was a stranger to the liberties then 
 asserted. Invasion, violence, usurpation, injustice, with no 
 relief from the Norwegian, and but little from the Scots, had 
 sent their accumulated evils into comparatively modern 
 times. The isolated position, limited population, the too 
 patient Manx submission, left the people to the often 
 unjust sway of the lords of Derby and Athol. 
 
 In the distant past, the frequent change in the lordship 
 of the Island had hindered freedom. In 1219, Reginald 
 had surrendered the island to the Pope, so giving him the 
 appointment of the Bishop, the control of ecclesiastical 
 affairs, and the power of Canon law in the Manx diocese 
 The separate jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical Barons, with 
 their independent courts, the Bishop with his prison at 
 Peel, as well, added to the bondage. In such an environ- 
 ment, true liberty could not exist. Then came the trans- 
 fers afterwards, when Norway retired ; to Scotland in 1252; 
 to the Earl of Salisbury in 1344 ; to the Earl of Wiltshire 
 in 1394 ; to the Earl of Northumberland in 1402. Norway 
 still coveted its former position as late as 1238 ; Edward I. 
 and his successors advanced claims, and Scotland disputed 
 about possession. The Island became an imperial prison 
 for the Earl of Warwick, in Peel Castle, in 1398, and 
 for the Duchess of Gloucester in 1446. The expert 
 seamanship and bravery had been enlisted by English 
 sovereigns against the pirates who infested the Irish 
 Sea ; but the service brought no amelioration to the 
 Manx people. 
 
 The peculiar position and character of the Derby rulers 
 was a barrier to Manx liberty. The family historian, Sea- 
 combe, unconsciously relates much of what was adverse in 
 their training and habits. The times of Henry IV. did not
 
 76 ELLAN VANNIN. 
 
 understand the rights of man. He had seized the English 
 throne from his cousin, Richard II., in 1399, and, to secure 
 Church support in his usurpation, had promised to crush 
 the Lollards, the followers of Wycliff. It was he who ful- 
 filled his promise to the Papacy by his sanction of the first 
 English law for the burning of heretics. The victory on the 
 field of Bosworth, in 1485, won chiefly by the strategy of 
 the Stanley, had dethroned Richard III. and taken his 
 life, had made the Earl of Richmond, with the fallen crown 
 placed on his brow by Stanley, Henry VII., and had given 
 the brave Stanley the rank of Earl of Derby. The marriage 
 of this new Earl to the widowed mother of Henry VII. 
 gave him relations to royalty, and a place in the centre of 
 arbitrary Tudor ideas. The Wars of the Roses, ended by 
 the marriage of Henry of Lancaster to Elizabeth of York, 
 left the Earl high in the despotism of the time. The spirit 
 of the Stanley policy in Man may be thus accounted for, 
 and a comment be found in the counsels of father to son 
 in 1643. I n addition, there were habits of government 
 under the English crown. In Ireland, one of the Earls, 
 under the Tudor rule, had been Lieutenant for many years. 
 The sympathy of " the great Earl " with the Stuart dynasty 
 is historic, and was repaid with characteristic ingratitude. 
 The long absences of the Earls in the great affairs of State, 
 left the little Island to the tyranny of subordinates, one of 
 whom, in 1588, the Earl had to reprimand for oppression 
 which could no longer be endured. The strength of the 
 Stanley position with royalty, even at a much earlier period 
 than the era now named, was seen in the summary dis- 
 missal of the five ecclesiastical Barons who refused homage. 
 Without the intention, the act made the transition from 
 Popery much easier ages after. 
 
 At the same time, with this strong rule, it must be 
 admitted that in the Stanley character there was a liberal
 
 MA NX FREED OM .- THE NEED. 7 7 
 
 churchmanship. An illustration occurs in the ordination 
 of the great John Howe, in the church at Winwick, not far 
 from Knowsley, and one of the rich Derby livings. The 
 ordainers were the Rector and his curates, all Presbyters, 
 and no Bishop. The event would hardly have taken place, 
 almost under the eye of the patron, had he been a High 
 Churchman. It was an anticipation of the action of Wesley 
 in his ordinations to the ministry for the United Kingdom 
 and the United States, holding, as the New Testament 
 shows, that Bishop and Presbyter are of the same order in 
 the Christian ministry. But to return. 
 
 As honour and as property, the Island would have but 
 a secondary place amid the distinctions and possessions of 
 the House of Derby. The earl refused the ancient title of 
 king, preferring, as he said, to be a great peer rather than a 
 petty king, and the Island was not likely to command much 
 attention from him and his. They had their place, as has 
 been already noted, amid the great affairs of English his- 
 tory, some in the first rank of statesmanship, of govern- 
 ment, and of war. Immense English wealth came with 
 honour, in the marriage of Sir John Stanley with the heiress 
 of Lathom ; with multiplied gifts of land from royalty ; with 
 the Barony of Strange ; from Henry VIII., and Edward 
 VI., and Mary ; previously, from Henry VI., for services in 
 Wales ; from Elizabeth, for six years' government as Lord 
 Deputy in Ireland; from Edward IV., for warlike services 
 against the Scots ; and from Richard HI. Much wealth in 
 Lancashire and Cheshire thus came to the Stanleys. In 
 the whole there was great personal distinction. In addition 
 to the fame of Bosworth and of other scenes of war, the 
 Stanley history records the conspicuous part taken by Sir 
 John Stanley in the Battle of Poictiers in 1357, and in the 
 Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, against the Earl of Northum- 
 berland, with Henry IV. The Stanleys lived in the first
 
 73 ELL AN V ANN IN. 
 
 style of the English peerage. The burial of the Earl in 1572 
 was with almost royal state. 
 
 The position and wealth of the Stanley House will thus 
 in part explain neglect of Manx interests. The Hurrays of 
 Athol formed a contrast. The Island was guarded as a 
 source of wealth, and hard bargains with the British 
 Government brought them some hundreds of thousands of 
 pounds. 
 
 It may be allowed to add that the favour of royalty 
 seems to have left the seventh Earl, who, notwithstanding 
 his great services to the Stuarts, was treated by them with 
 cold suspicion and ingratitude, the Earl at last losing life and 
 estates in the tragic execution at Bolton in 1651. It is 
 curious to note, collaterally, that another Stanley, not in the 
 direct line of heirship, Sir Edward Stanley, was made Lord 
 Monteagle by Henry VIII. for his services in the battle of 
 Flodden P'ield, in 1573. Through his grandson came 
 the letter that saved James I. and his Parliament from the 
 Gunpowder Plot ; the same was great grandson of the 
 Thomas Stanley, who was once Bishop and Governor of 
 Man. 
 
 Among the hindrances to Manx freedom must be ranked 
 the influence of Romanism on the Government. Its power 
 was great in the earlier ages. The priestly jurisdiction was 
 independent of the civil. The lord of the Isle might not 
 intrude within the barriers in affairs civil or criminal, and of 
 course not in affairs ecclesiastical. The Bishop had his 
 court, his officials, and his prison, and also his place in the 
 legislature. In the canon law, the ecclesiastical courts, the 
 penal power; from the Norwegian Archbishop of Urontheim, 
 from Furness Abbey, and the Priories external to the Island, 
 and from the Pope of Rome, and yet later from Canterbury 
 and York, came thus the restraint on Manx liberty. The 
 Canon law, at three separate Synods from 1239 to 1350, and
 
 MANX FREEDOM : THE NEED. 79 
 
 numbering fifty-three Canons, was supreme in the Diocese, 
 and controlled Manx life personal and social. The octopus 
 had completely enwrapped its prey. The position of 
 Manx freedom may be imagined from what we know of 
 modern Popish countries, Ireland included. The character 
 of the priesthood is seen in some of the episcopal prohibi- 
 tions as to frequenting or keeping public-houses. There 
 are no traditions of religious zeal such as have come from 
 lona, Lindisfarne, and Whithorne ; no evidences of the use 
 of the Manx language, rather than the Latin of the Romish 
 service, for worship and instruction. The Latin service was 
 the rule in England until 1517. The monks of Rushen 
 wrote their history in Latin. Nothing sacred is left in early 
 Manx. The result in popular ignorance and in morals, as 
 well as in the true freedom of man, all increased by isolation, 
 may be inferred. 
 
 Celtic Christianity had been of a purer type in the ages of 
 Ninian, St. Patrick, and Columba, and on to 560 and beyond. 
 The intimate relations of Man to the outer ecclesiastical 
 bodies, may have at first sprung frorr the purer ages of faith. 
 Organised Romanism, as we have seen, had no place in these 
 kingdoms before 597, when Augustine came from Rome. 
 The resistance of the British Churches to his mission is 
 historic. Not until 664 did England yield to the Papal claims, 
 nor Ireland, which had closer relations to Man, until 1164. 
 The first Romish Bishop in Man must have been long after 
 the time of Augustine, and centuries after the age of St. 
 Patrick. It was about .595 that the Priory of Bangor sent 
 Columbanus on his great European mission, just before the 
 attack of Rome on British Christianity. The ages of cor- 
 ruption came quickly on, as seen around the great monas- 
 teries of Wearmouth, Ripon, and Furness, to mention no 
 others; relics, the added Sacraments, the assertion of 
 superhuman power in the priesthood, all the essential
 
 8o ELL AN V ANN IN. 
 
 elements of the Papal system gained ascendency. The 
 Isle of Man would share in this tendency, with its loss of 
 truth and liberty. The midnight of the darkness was 1219, 
 when the Island became a fief of Rome. The Manx 
 Monastery became an organic part of the Romish system, 
 so that in 1044, at the Synod of London, one of the monks 
 of Rushen became Abbot of Evesham. The restraint on 
 Manx freedom remained long after 1537, when Henry VIII. 
 claimed the resources of Rushen Abbey. 
 
 The course of legislation did not much help the 
 interests of the people. It was more to the advantage and 
 power of the Lord of the Isle. For many ages, there had 
 been no trial by jury ; sheep stealing, and even petty dishon- 
 esty were made liable to capital punishment. It was felony 
 to leave the Island without permission from the government. 
 The authorities claimed labour at reduced wages, arbitrarily 
 fixed. At last came the crowning injustice in the change of 
 the tenure of the land, turning freehold into leasehold, 
 with three lives, and, in effect, making men tenants of what 
 had been their own. It was a revival, in 1643, by the Earl 
 of Derby, of the injustice of Godred Crovan in the eleventh 
 century, after the battle of Sky Hill; the result was a 
 feeling of rebellion which compelled the Earl to hasten to 
 the Island, and which was suppressed by measures of crafty 
 policy mingled with secret arrangements for defence. After 
 holding two courts of Tynwald, he found a basis for peace 
 with the people, and thus ended the threatening com- 
 motion. 
 
 With unjust laws, there was an administration uncertain 
 in its justice. From 1533 to 1569, eight of the Governors 
 were of the Stanley family, and several after that time. A 
 self-elect House of Keys was subordinate to the ruling 
 power, which had no liking for popular rights. The 
 administration seems to have disposed the people to accept
 
 MANX FREEDOM -. THE NEED. Si 
 
 the rule of the Commonwealth, and to refuse hopeless 
 resistance in the interest of the Earl. Just as the action of 
 1643 was the consummation and evidence of unjust legis- 
 lation, the treatment of William Christian, the "Iliam 
 Dhone " of Manx history, who was executed at Hango Hill 
 in 1662, under the charge of treason to the Earl, was the 
 supreme evidence of unjust administration long continued. 
 The history is a long one, and has been much debated, but 
 we may give a summary of the ruling facts : The alleged 
 treason was the surrender of the Island, in 1651,10 the 
 Parliamentary forces in Ramsey Bay. Christian was 
 Receiver-General, and had the insular forces under his 
 command. In judging of the final sentence, it is not 
 necessary to assume that Christian was faultless. It may 
 be admitted that in 1658 his administration of insular funds 
 had not been honest, and that two opinions might be held 
 of the surrender, that of the Countess of Derby at Castle- 
 town, negotiating for the life of the Earl, then a prisoner of 
 war in Chester Castle, and urging resistance to the utmost by 
 force ; and that of Christian, with leading men of the Island, 
 who were left alone to contend with the ten ships of war 
 with a fleet of forty-four other vessels, having on board 
 military forces to compel surrender. There was no treason ; 
 the Earl was not king ; the submission was to the power 
 supreme in the United Kingdom at the time. The case 
 between the imprisoned Earl and the Parliamentary power 
 was entirely independent of the action of Christian at 
 Ramsey. The execution of the Earl at Bolton, was for 
 having fought against Parliament at Wigan and at Worcester 
 in the interest of the Stuarts. At Ramsey, resistance meant 
 useless bloodshed, and the Governor, Musgrave, choosing 
 to remain away at Castletown, a responsibility fell upon. 
 Christian which did not entirely belong to his position. The 
 Earl, by his action eight years previously as to the land, 
 
 6
 
 82 ELLAN VANNIN. 
 
 seems to have lost the affection of the Manx people, who 
 now, indeed, were helpless before the Parliamentary forces. 
 The surrender was not by Christian alone ; with him were 
 members of the legislature and chief persons of the Island. 
 Perhaps they feared the sacrifice by the Derby family at 
 Castletown of Manx rights in the peculiar circumstances of 
 the Earl as a prisoner of war. Christian, after the Island 
 hab deen handed to Lord Fairfax, and placed under 
 Chaloner as Governor, was treated by the House of Stanley 
 as if the past was blameless as to treason or any thing of 
 the kind. Nine years after the submission to the Parlia- 
 mentary forces, the name of Christian appears as a witness 
 in the Commission issued by Earl Charles to settle some 
 ecclesiastical affairs in the Island. By the Commonwealth 
 Christian was made Receiver-General. In the Journal of 
 the House of Commons under date of December, 1651, 
 two months after the execution of the Earl at Bolton, and, 
 of course, subsequent to the decisive scene at Ramsey, 
 Christian is named as "an able and honest man " worthy of 
 being consulted in the crisis. After an interval of eleven 
 years or so the new Earl and his mother take action against 
 Christian for his yielding to the forces of the Commonwealth 
 in 1651. In 1660, that is, two years before these proceed- 
 ings of vengeance for the past, there had been a general 
 Act of Indemnity by Charles II. on his restoration to the 
 throne, and when the Island was given back to the Stanleys, 
 covering all political offences from 1637 to 1660. This, of 
 course, included 1651. The insular judicial proceedings 
 on the case, dictated by the Earl, were illegal, and in defiance 
 of the King in Council, by which Court the case had been 
 adjudged in 1662. Imperial orders had been sent to the 
 insular authorities that the case brought by the Earl against 
 Christian did not belong to insular jurisdiction, and that 
 Christian must be given up to the English power. Trusting
 
 MANX FREEDOM: THE NEED. 83 
 
 to the King's Act of Indemnity, he had ventured to return 
 to the Island in 1662, and was then seized and imprisoned. 
 Seven members of the House of Keys, on their refusal to 
 take part in the trial, were arbitrarily dismissed by the Earl 
 from their places in the legislature and replaced by seven 
 others more pliable. For refusing the concurrence in 
 the sentence of death, one of the Deemsters was also 
 deposed and another substituted. Meanwhile, the action 
 taken in the Island was disallowed by the King in Council, 
 the appeal of Christian for protection under the Act of 
 Indemnity allowed, and Earl Charles ordered to send 
 Christian to London to be heard by the supreme authority. 
 The royal order from the English Government was concealed 
 by the Governor, and the proceedings hurried on, with the 
 result of the immediate execution of Christian at Hango 
 Hill. The judicial sentence from England immediately 
 followed, holding that the blood of Christian had been shed 
 unjustly, commanding the Governor and Deemsters to 
 appear before the King in Council, requiring them to pay 
 the costs of the prosecution, the two Deemsters to be 
 imprisoned for further proceedings, the Governor repri- 
 manded for keeping secret the royal order to suspend the 
 sentence of death to give time for further consideration, the 
 deposed Deemster to be restored to his office, and the 
 estates and other property of Christian to be given back to 
 his widow and family. The action of the Earl Charles was 
 in the old spirit of the Stanley administration, but in this 
 instance stained by blood shed unjustly. In that seven- 
 teenth century, Manx rights were but slightly regarded. 
 
 Thus far for civil freedom. Let us turn to religious 
 liberty. The appointment of Bishops as Governors "sword 
 bishops " as they were termed was a hindrance to religious 
 liberty. The powers of the Bishop had around them the pres- 
 tige and terrors of the civil authority. The Ecclesiastical
 
 84 ELLAN VANNIN. 
 
 Constitutions of Bishop Wilson, enacted at the time 
 of the Act of Settlement in 1703, though without the 
 " sword," were a sufficient terror to the Nonconformist con- 
 science. It placed the Manx people under the Canon law 
 with its searching powers over religious convictions, and 
 family and social life. For conduct implying no violation 
 of civil law not attending church, not observing church 
 forms, it had its penance and its prison enforced by the 
 civil power, under the orders of the Bishop's Court, and 
 without appeal to the law of the land. Persons could thus 
 be fined, sent from parish to parish in the white sheet of 
 penance, and in the public market, thrown into prison, 
 dragged through the sea at the tail of a boat manned by the 
 Governor's authority, outlawed to~a great degree, and "left 
 severely alone." None neglecting confirmation could be 
 married. In the absence of other evidence on 
 religious matters, the individual could be questioned on oath 
 for self-accusation. Poor Kate Kinrade was dragged 
 through the sea in Peel Bay ; the Clerk of the Rolls 
 was sentenced to prison by the Bishop, who refused even 
 the right of self-defence under the charge. At last the 
 case of Mary Henricks made the cup overflow so as to 
 call forth the Earl of Derby himself to interfere, and reverse 
 the Bishop's sentence. In the final issue came the conflict 
 between the Church Courts and the civil government, the 
 closing scenes being Bishop and his two Vicars-General 
 being thrown into the prison at Castle Rushen, by the 
 authority of the Governor ; though, on appeal to the 
 English Government, the action of the Governor was not 
 sustained. It is not surprising that, amid modern en- 
 lightenment, these " Constitutions " should have become 
 obsolete ; though one wonders that they should still have a 
 place in the laws of the Manx people. The boast that there 
 were no Manx Nonconformists in those days as the case
 
 MANX FREE-DOM : THE NEED. 85 
 
 of the persecuted Manx Quakers proves was explained 
 by the rigour by which Canon law denied the rights of con- 
 science. On the whole, then, during the 330 years of 
 Stanley ascendency, from 1406 to 1736, when the Murrays 
 of Athol succeeded, with no advantage, to freedom, the 
 advance in liberty was but slight. During the interval the 
 House of Keys had been seldom convened.
 
 jfreefcom: TTbe progress.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 MANX FREEDOM : THE PROGRESS. 
 
 'ROM the descent of the ages, towards the loss 
 ofjreedom, let us turn to consider the sources 
 of the. liberties now enjoyed. 
 
 From and after the earlier years of the 
 sixteenth century the spirit of the time 
 favoured progress in freedom. The nations of Europe had 
 become weary of oppression, and the energies of the 
 Lutheran age were aroused. The tendency was strong 
 towards political change, for the advantage of the people. 
 The influences of the great movement could not but reach 
 Man. 
 
 The early abolition of Popish Institutions in the Island 
 (1422) had been of unlooked-for advantage to the later 
 reformation. Papal supremacy and popular liberty cannot 
 exist together. The suppression of the ecclesiastical 
 Baronies, with their separate jurisdictions, had been a 
 large contribution towards Manx freedom. Only the Bishop 
 remained, with the semblance of a Baron, but bound to 
 hold the stirrup of the Stanley as he mounted into the saddle 
 at the close of the annual meeting of Tynwald. The question 
 of priestly supremacy was finally settled in relation to the 
 civil power. It was part of the Derby policy, and had much 
 to do with Manx liberty. At times, indeed, it seemed un- 
 certain. In 1505, the earl consolidated and confirmed to 
 the Papacy various gifts and grants, following the course of 
 his predecessor. There were close Romanist relations,
 
 90 ELLAN VANNIN. 
 
 for to the Earl's father, Cardinal Wolsey had been guardian 
 and trustee. The Abbot of Rushen had been made 
 Governor. The early Stanleys were Papists. The first Earl, 
 he of Bosworth field, left 20 yearly to the convent near 
 Lathom, for masses for his soul and for the souls of his 
 relatives. One of the Stanleys became Bishop of Ely in 
 Papal times, and died in 1525. He left directions that his 
 tomb must bear the request for prayers for his soul. Still, 
 the Stanley rulers would allow no priestly dictation in civil 
 affairs : they were kings in Man. On August 22nd, 1422, 
 when Sir John Stanley ended the independent jurisdiction 
 of the Church Barons, and the right of asylum from the 
 general law, he held his Court within the Bishop's ground, 
 at Kk. Michael, thus visibly setting aside the ancient 
 episcopal jurisdiction in civil affairs. There was rebellion 
 ending in a riot in the churchyard, in resistance to the 
 action of the lord of the Isle, but the riot was put down 
 with a strong hand, and the rioters adjudged liable to death. 
 In the time of Wycliff, there were signs of sympathy with 
 the Reformer, of political restraint on the system of Manx 
 Popery, and Canon law was suppressed. The Barony of St. 
 Trinion's which had belonged to the Prior of Whithorne, 
 was forfeited to the lord of the Isle ; the church of St. 
 Trinion's, begun when Scotland ruled, was never finished ; 
 and the Derby power was the real " phynnodderee " which 
 prevented the completion of the roof of the " Keill brish," 
 now the interesting ruin which has a Sergeant appointed to 
 its Barony from year to year. 
 
 In addition to the direct policy of the house of Derby, 
 Canon law also lost its power, though in the energetic 
 hands of Bishop Wilson, at a much later date than that 
 just implied : it failed as a moral restraint, or social help to 
 goodness, and in the end left him in disappointment and 
 depression after an episcopate of fifty-eight years, extending
 
 MANX FREEDOM : THE PROGRESS. 91 
 
 from 1692 to 1750. Its failure as an obsolete weapon of 
 the Papacy was the removal of another hindrance to the 
 march of freedom. 
 
 There were, at the same time, special causes which 
 made for freedom. 
 
 One was the general ownership of the land by the Manx 
 people under the Act of 1703. The Island was a region of 
 freehodls. There was no Squire of overshadowing owner- 
 ship to control the popular liberties. There were forces in 
 high places, when Manx Nonconformity, under the name of 
 Methodism, began its course in 1775, which sought to 
 destroy the new movement ; but a site for a Methodist 
 Chapel could always be secured from friends living on their 
 own acres, and who were ready with cart and horses and 
 money to help in building the house which bigotry hated. 
 Among these freeholders were the Manx Methodists and 
 Nonconformists, sheltered by their freeholds from oppres- 
 sion. Largely, these formed the constituencies of the 
 Sheadings, to whom in 1866 came the rights of election, 
 but who, in the time now referred to, had considerable 
 social influence. The Institution of Tynwald was full of 
 great possibilities, only needing development for freedom. 
 The civil constitution had its House of Keys, Coroners for 
 each Sheading, and their Deputies the Lockmen, the Moar 
 to collect the lord's rent, the Sumner General with his sub- 
 ordinates ; and only the spirit of freedom was needed to 
 transform the whole into what was worthy of Christian 
 civilisation over a free people. Yet more complete were 
 the methods adopted when, in 1777, high bailiffs were 
 appointed to the towns, and who are now supplemented by 
 Justices of the Peace. Measures of improved law were 
 gradually adopted, long before modern developments. In 
 1429 was enacted a law for the better protection of life and 
 property, and for the prevention of trial by combat ; and, in
 
 92 ELL AN VANNIN. 
 
 the year following, for the restoration of the House of Keys. 
 Measures were taken for relief from ecclesiastical exactions, 
 and the strange law excluding Scotchmen from the Island 
 was repealed. These steps led up to the. Act of Settlement 
 in 1703. An Act in 1736 abolished the powers of the 
 spiritual Courts, which had been so full of terror. A better 
 administration followed ; public officials were dismissed for 
 misconduct in the affairs committed to them, and even 
 a Bishop reprimanded for misappropriation of funds. One 
 of the greatest benefits was the Revestment of 1765, 
 which transferred the sovereignty of the Island to the British 
 Crown. It ended a personal, and sometimes unjust rule : 
 smuggling could now be dealt with, and the Imperial 
 Exchequer protected. Laws of Bankruptcy, which the 
 administration of the House of Athol was somehow slow to 
 repeal, were now easily dealt with on their merits. With 
 the change came also the fuller shelter of British power, 
 as by Elliot and his ships of war in the sea fight off Jurby, 
 seen, it is said, at once from the roof of Bishop's Court and 
 the opposite shores of Galloway, when the French Thurot 
 attempted invasion. It allowed the better influences of 
 the Commonwealth to pervade the island, for Fairfax 
 naturally favoured freedom, was tolerant of the English 
 Church, though the Bishopric was suppressed, and gave the 
 funds thus available partly to the poorer clergy, and partly 
 to the free education of the four towns. 
 
 I am indebted to the recent volume of Governor Wai- 
 pole for the summary I now record of the constitutional 
 present in Man, as given in The Land of Home Rule. 
 There is, indeed, nothing in the Manx Constitution that 
 would meet the wishes of the Home Rulers of Ireland, as 
 will be seen from the facts : the Imperial power limits the 
 insular power of legislation, has supreme authority without 
 local concurrence, imposes the customs duties, controls the
 
 MANX FREEDOM : THE PROGRESS. 93 
 
 normal expenditure, leaving to Tymvald only the disposal 
 of any surplus revenue. There is no insular power to withhold 
 supplies for the redress of grievances ; the expenditure of 
 the government can be increased without local consent ; 
 the Governor has a veto on all expenditure. The Governor 
 has no Cabinet and no Premier ; he is Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, Home Secretary, President of the Local 
 Government Board, has command of the Police, and has 
 the sole executive authority. The relations to the British 
 Government are through the Home Secretary. Since 1866, 
 the House of Keys has been on the basis of popular 
 election. The system of Manx government generally 
 works without friction, and with a loyalty to the throne 
 unsurpassed. The Council, which is the second legislative 
 chamber, and co-ordinate in legislation, is composed of 
 eight members, chiefly legal functionaries and paid 
 officials, all ex offitio in their place in the Council, 
 three of the eight the Bishop, the Archdeacon, and 
 the Vicar-General representing the interests of the 
 Established Church. In the review of the course of 
 freedom, we see the Island released from the violence 
 of the early ages, invested with the privileges of civil 
 and religious freedom, and under a government worthily 
 administered. There is a healthy public opinion, pervaded 
 by sound moral and religious principles, and sustained by 
 the influence of prosperous Christian churches, with their 
 Sunday-schools and other organisations, and, beyond this, 
 influential temperance societies. The moral attitude of the 
 Manx people is true to good order socially, and worthily 
 guards the highest interests of Christian civilisation, from 
 Port Erin to the Point of Ayre. 
 
 On each July 5th, the annual day of Tynwald, at St. 
 John's Hill, there is an instructive summary of Manx rule. 
 There are forms more ancient than those of the British
 
 94 ELLAN VANNIN. 
 
 House of Commons, in the proceedings of the day. The 
 Scandinavian feature, found in Shetland also, remains the 
 open air parliament and the Court of Justice. On the 
 historic Hill, seated in state, is the Governor, as represen- 
 tative of the British monarch, with the sword of State before 
 him, as tradition speaks of King Orry in the days of old ; on 
 the rising circular steps of earth are scattered the traditional 
 rushes. The procession of the insular authorities has come to 
 that central mound from the adjacent Church of St. John's 
 the Keys, the Council, the officials of the seventeen parishes, 
 the Coroners, the Bishop, significantly alone, and, in the 
 position of supremacy, the Governor. In attendance, gracing 
 the procession, are the clergy of the Established Church ; in 
 the outer circle are the police, and beyond are the crowd, 
 residents and visitors. Within a short distance is the rail- 
 way for north and south, and near rises Slieu Whallyn, 
 opposite the main mountain range. All being in order, 
 there is next the formal promulgation of the laws of the past 
 year, by the Coroner of Glenfaba, in both Manx and English, 
 after which the procession re forms and returns to the church, 
 where the Tynwald Court completes the legal business of the 
 day ; and soon the Governor takes his departure, and the 
 crowds disperse to their homes. The whole scene is half 
 judicial, half poetic ; but it shows the relations in Elian 
 Vannin of governor and governed. However designated, by 
 the title of Home Rule or any other phrase, and however 
 ample the space for further adaptations, it is a system in 
 which Manx energy and moderation are at the oars, and 
 English skill and tact at the helm, with a fair promise for 
 the future course.
 
 Mealtb; UMnbrances.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 MANX WEALTH : HINDRANCES. 
 
 |fj;N the discussion of Manx wealth, the term 
 must be taken with moderation. There is 
 no scope, either in the heirship of land, or 
 the opportunities of business, for the accu- 
 mulations of the millionaire. Conspicuous 
 wealth is an exception ; general competency and safe 
 advance a characteristic feature. 
 
 In the history of the general subject may be noted some 
 chief hindrances, in the early violence of invaders, in natural 
 disadvantages, in the exactions of Romanism, and in the 
 demands of the lords of the Isle. 
 
 i. The invasions and plunder of the early ages might 
 well find expression in the Manx proverb, " Boght, boght dy 
 bragh," " Poor, poor for ever." They came with irresistible 
 force. They were part of the movement of the northern 
 nations which affected other countries besides Man The 
 Danes had found their way to the eastern coast of England, 
 about 868, from Northumbria down to East Anglia. In the 
 issue they conquered England, and for twenty-seven years, 
 from 1017, held its sceptre, and extended their ravages to 
 Normandy also. On the western side of England, the Nor- 
 wegians came into the Irish sea, plundering the island and 
 other places on their way from the north. From 91-2 to 
 1065 seems to have been an interval of savage spoil. It is 
 stated in some of the records extant, that Man was nearly 
 depopulated by Harold of Norway, in 888, and that it was 
 afterwards laid \vaste\by Sweyn, his son. In 1077 came the 
 
 97 7
 
 98 ELLAN VANNIN. 
 
 successful invasion of Godred Crovan, after two previous 
 attempts, with his command of the island and seizure of its 
 resources. He had escaped, as stated, from the Norwegian 
 defeat at Stamford Bridge, near York, in 1066, by the 
 English king, who himself the same year fell at the battle 
 of Hastings before the Norman Conqueror. There were 
 other conflicts added to those from without ; a battle 
 between north and south at Jurby, in 1098, the north vic- 
 torious : another at Ramsey, in 1142, between Godred, son 
 of Olave, and his nephew Reginald, the former slain, but 
 avenged with terrible reprisals Beween 1158 and 1164, 
 arose the war which separated " Man " from " the Isles," 
 Somerled taking the latter, but also plundering the Manx 
 people. After an invasion with great slaughter, in 1182, 
 came another in 1204, when John of England, in his 
 invasion of Ireland, would not spare the little island. A 
 little before this Reginald, dethroned, had laid waste the 
 south. At other dates came marauders from Scotland, 
 calling at Derbyhaven and Ronaldsway, and from Ireland. 
 In 1228 occurred the battle between Olave and Reginald, 
 at Tynwald Hill, when the latter lost his life. In the con- 
 flict at Ronaldsway was defeated Ivar, who had seized the 
 throne on the death of Magnus, the last of the Norwegian 
 line. Norway had sold " Man and the Isles " to Scotland 
 for a capital sum and a yearly rent. Then occurred a suc- 
 cession of transfers which could have tended only to 
 poverty ; claimed by Edward I., given to Alfrica, sister of 
 Magnus, and who had married Montacute, by whom the 
 island was mortgaged to Beck, the opulent Bishop of 
 Durham ; after this given to other royal favourites. Still 
 there were invasions : by the Scots, at Ramsey, in 1313, and 
 at Castle Rushen : by the Irish, and by the French, all in 
 quick succession. It would, under these circumstances, be 
 with the Manx people, as previously with their Celtic kin-
 
 MANX WEALTH : HINDRANCES. 99 
 
 dred in Wales, Cornwall, and Cumberland, under the Saxon 
 invaders poverty and distress. 
 
 2. There were also natural hindrances to escape from 
 poverty. In the isolation of the early times there could 
 be but little commerce. Add to this the barren soil, the 
 absence of manufactures, and the unskilled farming of those 
 ages. There was no commerce to carry off the abundant 
 fisheries of herring, cod, turbot, and shell fish. The cattle 
 and produce of the farmer must remain without export ; the 
 mineral wealth was but slightly opened, though the resources 
 of Laxey and Foxdale, as well as the quarries of lime and 
 poolvash marble, could not be entirely unknown. There 
 were no visitors as now. The time was far in the future 
 when Elian Vannin would become one of thejchief watering 
 places of the United Kingdom. The local demand for 
 produce would, therefore, be small from farmer, shop- 
 keeper, or merchant. There was no impulse to new houses 
 in the building trade, nothing to give increased value to 
 land. The smuggling which prevailed until the Revest- 
 ment in 1765, would really bring no relief in its profits, and 
 only demoralisation to the social condition. The lord of 
 the Isle was supposed to derive some advantages when so 
 slow to take legal steps in resistance, though the Imperial 
 Exchequer had immense losses yearly by the want of 
 restraint. The impulse also which came from the dishonest 
 law of bankruptcy brought profit to a class, but was no 
 source of real prosperity to the island. 
 
 3. The earnings of the working classes were low. As 
 late as 1609, the year's wage of a ploughman, with beard 
 and lodging, was only 133. 4d. ; under the same conditions 
 the mason and the tailor had but 4d. per day. The labourers 
 were badly housed ; coals, being imported, were too costly 
 for their fires, and, in the towns, turf was not always within 
 reach. The farmer had only low prices for his produce in
 
 KIO ELL AN V ANN IN. 
 
 the market. In 1798, the prices were: for pork, 2|d. per 
 pound ; for ham, 51! ; for a couple of chickens, 6d. ; for 
 fowls, i2d. each (the shilling was i4d.) ; for geese, is. 
 each. Crops, cattle, poultry, the dairy, the orchard, had 
 no outlet beyond the Manx shores. The style of home 
 life was humble : breakfast, porridge and milk ; dinner, 
 mainly potatoes and herring ; supper, cowry or broash ; 
 meat seldom, except on Sunday, when the savoury broth, 
 thick with vegetables and enriched with the meat and 
 pudding boiled in it, with barley bread, was a chief luxury ; 
 tea was deemed an extravagance leading to bankruptcy ; 
 occasionally there was a substantial meal of " Solaghan." In 
 clothing, much was home-spun and home-woven ; the chil- 
 dren, often barefoot, the men behind plough and harrows, or 
 in the field of green crops, wearing "carranes" for shoes. On 
 the social level next above, of course, life had more luxury, 
 though drapers' shops were few, even in the early years of the 
 nineteenth century, the demands on the butcher limited, 
 and no need of the poulterer's shop in Douglas itself. 
 
 The working classes were held down by the want of 
 opportunity for education. 
 
 In the old time schools were few, and, with a few 
 exceptions, feeble ; the parish school especially. In those 
 of the parish many of the children went barefoot. Each 
 would daily take to the school a turf for the school fire, in 
 the cold of winter. The masters and mistresses were often 
 personally infirm, and humble in teaching ability ; in my 
 own list of schools, two were lame, one humpbacked, with a 
 squint, another with a wooden leg. It is only just to add 
 that in the succession were some of no ordinary qualifi- 
 cations. It must be admitted that in those days parental 
 feeling was not awake to the value of an education more 
 than commercial. This was no less true of the respectable 
 farmer than of other classes. The results were what should
 
 MANX WEALTH : HINDRANCES. 101 
 
 have been foreseen. The prizes of civil life fell to strangers 
 of better education. In some cases Manxmen held their 
 own, particularly the Deemster's office, which required 
 knowledge of the Manx tongue in Court, and others also did 
 honour to their country by superior powers. Yet often, at 
 the Bar and elsewhere, the Manxman had the disadvantage. 
 The experience of English life and training won the forensic 
 honours of years gone by for men like Roper, Dumbell, 
 Bluett, and others who might be named. At other times, it 
 is true, the promotion of strangers came from the patronage 
 of the Stanleys and the Murrays, the last above all. The 
 lesson of the whole, however, was the importance of the 
 highest education, and of experience in cultured life. 
 Where the opportunities were given, the gifts were found in 
 science and philosophy, in the region of law, or in the 
 greater affairs of imperial administration. It would be only 
 just to apply to the Island the policy carried out in Ireland, 
 Scotland, and Wales, and to award the best positions in 
 public appointments other things being equal to men of 
 the native race. This wise policy has been adopted in the 
 recent appointment of Archdeacon, as in some past in- 
 stances in other spheres. 
 
 4. Conspicuous among the hindrances to wealth must 
 be named the exactions of Popery which drained the 
 resources of the Manx people. The property and revenue 
 of insular Popery, apart from the Establishments abroad, 
 whose heads were at one time Barons of the Isle, were very 
 considerable. The current demands for tithes and fees for 
 the priesthood were only a part. Extensive lands were 
 given to Bishop's Court, to Peel Cathedral, to Rushen 
 Abbey, to the Nunnery, and to St. Trinion's. In 1219 the 
 Island had been surrendered to the Pope, and placed under 
 the obligation of a yearly payment. To the Bishop had been 
 given, in addition to the lands just named, the Islet and
 
 i()2 ELL AN V ANN IN. 
 
 harbour of Peel, the revenue of the fishery there and in the 
 Lake of Mirescoge, in Lezayre, with a margin of valuable 
 property adjacent, and the tithes of the lead and iron 
 mines, one penny for every house with a fireplace, an 
 extensive turbary in the mountains, the Earl of Derby 
 adding, in 1505, one-third of the manor of Kirby. The 
 stretch of land between the Laxey River and the Dhoon 
 Glen, and reaching from the sea to the mountains, was 
 Church property. Rushen Abbey had, immediately around 
 the Abbey, 4-22 acres of land, with cottages and mills, with 
 2,000 acres elsewhere, and with the right of fishing at 
 Lezayre. The Nunnery had the tithes of many hundreds 
 of quarterlands. As a survival, there are still " Sergeants " 
 of lands in Geiman, Lezayre, Lonan, Braddan, Malew, and 
 Rushen. The Seneschal, Ecclesiastical Judge, the Sumner, 
 the Vicars-General, were officials in Church affairs. The 
 names of the Abbey lands in Lonan and Onchan, and of 
 Ballamenagh " the monks' farm " still remain. The 
 tithes and fees to the priests were enforced by the ecclesias- 
 tical Courts with the terrors of Canon law, extending from 
 the money fine to excommunication and purgatory. On 
 the list of priestly claims were the cattle of the farm, the 
 pigs and poultry of the farmyard, the fish of stream and 
 Like, every catch of herrings ; and, on land, the crops at 
 harvest, the grain at the mill, the beer at the brewing, and 
 a tax on each public-house and the products of the dairy. 
 Three times a year there were oblations, and also fees for 
 every stage of birth, marriage, death, for examinations in 
 the faith, for acts of Church discipline, for masses for the 
 dead. Intestate property came under priestly administra- 
 tion ; wills must be written by the priests. 
 
 The baronies external to the island had much in landed 
 possession and in tithes. Rushen Abbey had been given to 
 Furness Abbey, by Olave, in the twelfth century, and there-
 
 MANX WEALTH: HINDRANCES. 103 
 
 with the control of the Bishopric, one hundred quarter- 
 lands, and one-third of the insular tithes. Extensive 
 properties with names not now understood, but sounding 
 like Norwegian, were confirmed to Furness, by Pope 
 Eugenius III., to which, in 1245, Haiold made additions, 
 including the mines of the Island, the " rectories " (so 
 termed) of Michael and Maughold, three acres of land at 
 " Bakewaldswath," and a meadow near St. Trinion's, named 
 in Manx the " Lheannee runt," " the round meadow." To 
 the Priory of Whithorne belonged five quarterlands and the 
 Barony of St. Trinion's. "Bangor" was a general term in 
 Welsh usage, meaning a college or monastery of distinction, 
 and has been given to places in Flintshire, in Anglesey, and 
 St. Asaph, as well as in Ireland (Bright). To the Bangor in 
 Ireland, near Belfast, belonged eighty-six quarterlands in 
 various parishes, and six which it held jointly with 
 Sabal; to the Priory of Sabal clearly distinct from Bangor, 
 though in the same neighbourhood was allotted a position 
 showing that it had a share in Manx endowment, though 
 with the exception of the six quarterlands mentioned, 
 there does not seem to be any other property given in its 
 list of endowments. The meaning of the term Sabal is 
 somewhat difficult of definition, and suggests what is curious 
 in Irish history. It is said that St. Patrick, in his last years, 
 spent much of his time in Armagh, where, at a place named 
 " Sabhal Pheric," understood to mean " Patrick's Barn," he 
 established the Metropolitan See, where, it is alleged, he 
 preached his first sermon in Ireland, and where he died in 
 465. A writer in The Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, of 
 March, 1891, relates that the royal chieftain, Dicha, who 
 dwelt on the south of the Strangford Lough, and had been 
 converted under St. Patrick's ministry, made one of his 
 barns into a place of worship, and that, on the same site, 
 was afterwards built the famous church called, "Sabhal-
 
 104 ELL AN V ANN IN. 
 
 Padhiig," rendered "Patrick's Barn." I am unable to say 
 whether the term in Irish has the meaning supposed. To 
 St. Bees belonged property in Groudle, in Maughold, and 
 other places, the gift of Guthred, or Godred, and Reginald, 
 lands extending from the Dhoon to Corna. 
 
 All these gifts and payments to the Papacy were, col- 
 lectively, a large deduction from the temporal resources of 
 the Island. 
 
 Largely, or entirely, the forfeited properties of the Barons 
 were divided, it is said, between the Bishop and the poorer 
 clergy. 
 
 5. The demands of the lords of the Isle in their admini 
 stration were too heavy to be omitted from this category 
 of hindrances to wealth. The lord of the Isle Stanley or 
 Murray demanded yearly for his household, and his gar- 
 risons at Castletown and Peel, 500 beeves and a fixed supply 
 of corn, and also a supply of turf and ling, without cost. 
 Articles for his own use, otherwise subject to duty, were 
 free to him, as also to the Bishop and Archdeacon. He 
 claimed taxation on imports, and a part of all imported 
 timber. Every season each fishing-boat had to pay him a 
 contribution. By his authority were fixed the duties on 
 imports and exports. The lord's rent was his, and one-fifth 
 of the herring fishery. The officials of the Government, 
 Clerk of the Rolls, and others, were not paid generally from 
 revenue, but from their official fees, of which the lord, never- 
 theless, claimed a share. Out of the revenue the Deemster 
 received only ^13 6s. 8d. yearly. Under the oppressive 
 exactions of the Government the net amount of the annual 
 revenue fell to about ^r,ooo, and the revenue was farmed for 
 that sum to a Liverpool merchant. The Bishopric was some- 
 times vacant for an interval of years once for seventeen 
 years and the moneys thus accruing did not appear to the 
 credit of any public department. At last the lord claimed
 
 MANX WEALTH: HINDRANCES. 105 
 
 the land as his own, and the people as his tenants. This 
 was the Stanley of 1643, but the Murray who followed, in 
 1736, was equally grasping of insular resources. The 
 clergy narrowly escaped the loss of Bishop Barrow's bene- 
 faction, who, at the cost of ;i,ooo, had bought for the 
 poorer clergy a portion of the tithes belonging to the Earl 
 of Derby. For a time the Deed could not be found ; the 
 Duke of Athol claimed the tithes, and was hindered from 
 the appropriation only by the son of Bishop Wilson acci- 
 dentally finding the Deed, after anxious search. 
 
 During the Athol rule, from 1 736 to 1830, some laws were 
 passed which, with whatever advantage to the Duke, brought 
 demoralisation to the people. Such was the law of bank- 
 ruptcy which held its sway from 1737 to 1814; such was 
 the lax administration towards smuggling which at last led 
 the Imperial Government to seek the Act of Revestment as 
 a defence of the Exchequer, the loss to which was valued at 
 ,350,000 each year. Against the will of the Keys and the 
 people, negotiations were urged on with the English Govern- 
 ment, for the sale of the Duke's rights and privileges which 
 brought him ,70,000, an annuity of ,2,000, then ,3,000 
 more for insular revenue, and, as lord of the manor, 
 ,416,114. For his interest in the Abbey lands, and in 
 the forfeited properties of Bangor, Sabal, St. Trinion's, and 
 Bishop's Court, he obtained a further sum. To give the 
 Duke's nephew time to reach the canonical age the 
 Bishopric was left vacant for several years after the decease 
 of Bishop Cregan, in 1814. The tithes of the green crops 
 which had ceased from the episcopate of Bishop Wilson, the 
 new Bishop attempted to revive, but the attempt was 
 abandoned from fear of the popular indignation. In com- 
 pensation for payments to the Duke for his rights, the 
 English Government now claims out of the Manx revenue 
 the yearly sum of ,10,000.
 
 TKHealtb: t)elps ano Sources.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 MANX WEALTH : HELPS AND SOURCES. 
 
 JHERE are many helps to material prosperity, 
 notwithstanding the early adversity of the 
 Manx people. 
 
 i. At the foundation of this statement are 
 the industrial qualities of the Manx character. 
 To begin with, there is superiority to the spirit of pauperism. 
 There is often an unwillingness to accept of charity. I have 
 known the labourer of lowly position provide for old age 
 out of his savings. The principle appears on the broader 
 scale of the community. There is no appeal to Govern- 
 ment for help to build the railway, or to provide fishing 
 boats and tackling. For such there is local capital. The 
 noble fleet of fishing boats connected with Peel, and 
 engaged chiefly on the coast of Ireland, the large fleet 
 belonging to the herring fishery around the island, the 
 smaller efforts of the humbler craft, are all of unaided 
 ownership. There is a correlative kindness to the poor, 
 which is another Manx feature. For many ages the poor 
 were supported by voluntary provision ; the beggar was 
 helped by relief in kind, if not in cash, and in the country 
 sometimes found the farmhouse with the bed specially 
 arranged for such as he, and with supper and breakfast 
 besides. In other cases, poverty was relieved by relatives. 
 Subscriptions and public collections were readily given, and 
 the kind legacy was frequent. Of this free tendency the 
 House of Industry, in Douglas, and almshouses there and
 
 no ELLAN V ANN IN. 
 
 in other parts of the Island stand in evidence. The gift of 
 the hospital by Mr. Noble, though not a native, is of the 
 same character. The modern refusal of voluntary subscrip- 
 tions for the poor by many in Douglas and Ramsey has led, 
 in those towns, to a levying of a poor rate, a costly alterna- 
 tive which the other sections of the island have avoided by 
 the old method which provided as well or better for the 
 poor. The mentally afflicted were cared for on the volun- 
 tary method, mostly by the charity of kindred or others ; 
 while now the asylum rate is required. The following are 
 the statistics of pauperism and of the asylum near Douglas. 
 
 1. Statistics of Pauperism : The Government Return 
 for 1893 reports an outlay of ^2,606 for Douglas, and for 
 Ramsey 622. In many of the parishes the rate-in-aid 
 is not in operation ; they are not bound to give any returns, 
 and do so very reluctantly. The Island, for the most part, 
 adheres to the old system of voluntary relief. 
 
 2. Statistics of the Lunatic Asylum : The number of 
 patients is not given in the Returns : it is probably about 
 200 in the Douglas Asylum ; the cost for 1893 was ,5, 261. 
 For the Ramsey Poor Asylum, the outlay was ,319. The 
 numbers and cost seem exceptionally large in proportion to 
 population. 
 
 A great Manx feature is industry. It has prevailed not- 
 withstanding the Manx proverb, " Boght, boght dy bragh," 
 " poor, poor for ever." There is much to interest in the 
 study of the old industrial life, before the age of machinery, 
 and of wholesale establishments. Home wants were met 
 chiefly by home manufacture. In agriculture, machinery 
 had not lessened the demand for rural labour. The skilled 
 labour of the man with a trade was often under the home 
 roof : the weaver, the shoemaker, the tailor, except when he 
 and his apprentices went to board at the farmhouse to give 
 the men a new outfit for the year. The hatter's workshop
 
 MANX WEALTH -. HELPS AND SOURCES. ill 
 
 was not distant from the house, nor the joiner's ; the black- 
 smith not usually far away, but at the meeting place o*f three 
 or four roads central to a neighbourhood ; the millwright 
 would perhaps be the joiner, under a new form of his genius, 
 for the threshing and winnowing machines needed by the 
 farmer. Beyond these homely spheres would be the 
 shipyard, with its occasional launch for home or 
 foreign trade, or for the fisheries. The work of the 
 farmhouse was mostly by wife and daughters, and* 
 included house, dairy, poultry, and the calves and pigs in 
 their younger days. The kitchen " sided" for the evening, 
 the wife would sit down to her spinning wheel, the hum 
 mingling with the conversation which discussed the 
 parish news. The quiet chair in the corner, near the fire 
 with an open chimney for the turf smoke, would be occupied 
 by the silent listener of the elder generation. In the 
 season the female members of the household would take 
 their place in the haymaking and the corn shearing, and 
 would not be absent from the " Mheillea " at the end. In 
 the summer, perhaps the sons would be off to the herring 
 fishing ; in winter, they would handle the flail and prepare 
 for the corn merchant. With no butcher in the parish, the 
 time would come for the killing of the fdtted pig, taken as 
 a scene emblematic of social commotion, in English, 
 "the murdering of the pig and the cry of the geese." 
 Once a year there was the family brewing, with sacks of 
 barley in the " clay dub," the malting in the barn, with the 
 stages following, not always to be commended. In the fine 
 days of summer the annual turf digging would call away to 
 the mountains. The licence monopoly, ending its year on 
 each 3oth June, and yielding to a limited class of merchants 
 an " unearned increment " of much commercial value, had 
 its great stir, then, of final imports in the harbours. 
 Smuggling, too, was not forgotten. For a short interval the
 
 U2 ELL AN V ANN IN. 
 
 Ball, ajj Kirby and elsewhere, would give an impulse to 
 business. But industry was still the great feature of Manx 
 life. Its style truly was primitive ; in Douglas, for example, 
 no police, only one constable, with an assistant in emer- 
 gencies ; no waterworks, only two water-carts, to help those 
 who could not help themselves ; no gas-works, but the lamp- 
 lighter, with his torch and ladder ; no regular steamboat 
 service but the smack, with possibly two days at sea, as I 
 have known, between Whitehaven or Liverpool ; the carrier, 
 three or four hours to Ramsey ; no post delivery but at the 
 window. So life was isolated, business free from the modern 
 worry, and general society leisurely; but things sanitary 
 often neglected, and cholera left to reap its harvest. 
 
 The industrious life, though often busy, had its relaxa- 
 tions, as well as freedom from worry such as is common 
 now. In the country, the farmers rose early, but the even- 
 ings of leisure were long. There was buoyancy in the merry 
 hayfield, in the days of harvest, in the turf digging in the 
 mountains. The Christmas " Oie'l verry," " the night of 
 Mary," had in its " carval " singing more of the musical than 
 of the religious. Often superstition relaxed into the 
 humorous, in the transparent imposture of being carried off 
 by the fairies, when people did not wish to be within reach 
 at home, as I have known in the case of a bride who, having 
 secured a husband, and the united passage being taken for 
 America, followed her wish and was missing until the ship 
 had sailed ; when she reappeared, saying she had 
 been with "the fairits"; or the long moonlight evenings 
 would be utilised by young men for the humorous, by start- 
 ling an eccentric farmer, known to have his gun ready, the 
 scarecrow placed within sight from the door, and, on the 
 gun being fired, falling, pulled by one of the company behind 
 the hedge, by means of a " sogaan," or straw-rope. Some- 
 times the relaxation, if less playful, was more rational, as in
 
 MANX WEALTH: HELPS AND SOURCES. 113 
 
 the practice of the singing class, or the experiments of the 
 electrical machine. Simplicity and moderation in style of 
 living, another Manx feature, are efficient aids to the tem- 
 poral. Families living on their own acres, or other 
 resources, are not ashamed to do the house work where 
 servants might 'be employed. The " eirey " would follow 
 the plough ; the daughters would make a servant unneces- 
 sary ; living plain, while substantial ; dress in comely home- 
 liness ; the house of past generations sufficient ; the family 
 self-contained in its comfort ; and, in past days especially, 
 the yearly visit to somewhere unnecessary. Enterprise is 
 not absent from these several business virtues. This 
 appears in the home life, and yet more in the movements of 
 emigration to other lands, though the Manxman is credited 
 with caution excessive in its restraint. Caution is not a 
 universal disadvantage ; it holds back enterprise at times, 
 but it also prevents rash speculation. Perhaps there is 
 some excess of the quality in the Manx character. If so, it 
 would not be unnatural ; the Manx history is one of evil 
 treatment for ages by foreign oppressors. Not seldom 
 the stranger has come with an unknown history, 
 taken advantage, and after being trusted has decamped 
 into the unknown whence he had come. There was 
 once an exclusive Manx law, giving a creditor the power 
 of summary arrest, on seeing the stranger preparing for 
 a passage over the sea. The same caution was sug- 
 gested by frequent change in the ownership of the 
 Island, and which, though not easily traced in their times 
 and conditions, must have disturbed substantial interests 
 treated thus with arbitrary disregard. With means generally 
 limited, they could not afford to lose. The absence of 
 provision in law for poverty, tended to prevent the specu- 
 lative and adventurous. A modern feature is the formation 
 of syndicates for the erection of large hotels and other
 
 U4 ELL AN V ANN IN. 
 
 structures, requiring a large capital with some uncertainty 
 in the issue. The decisive money power in these does not 
 come from Manxland, but from purses beyond the sea. 
 Much of the house property for the accommodation of 
 visitors and the resulting business belongs to English 
 management and enterprise. It is all fair in trade and 
 business. If caution withholds Manx people from such 
 schemes, or want of capital, they must be content with the 
 result, whether gain or loss. And one great advantage of 
 the feature in its Manx measure, is the slowness in adopting 
 untried measures which has refused rash innovations and 
 left Elian Vannin with a civil constitution whose roots go 
 far deeper into the past than those of the British Constitu- 
 tion, and whose development has been without violent 
 revolution. A policy is thus natural which makes legal 
 changes reliable, if sometimes too slow, while it admits im- 
 provement and enterprise in all departments of the State. 
 Emigration has been named as one form of enterprise. 
 There are thousands of Manx people in the United King- 
 dom and the Colonies, and in the United States of America. 
 Such congestion of the population as prevails in the 
 Scotch Highlands and in Ireland has been thus 
 prevented. 
 
 2. With the industrial qualities of the Manx character 
 may be noted the commercial opportunities. 
 
 The restitut'on of 1703 for the injustice of 1643, the 
 Act of Settlement, began an era of prosperity in the Island. 
 The land had fallen out of cultivation, and it proved of as 
 much advantage to the Earl of Derby as to the former 
 tenants to restore to the people their rights. The 
 value of the land has greatly increased under modern 
 methods of cultivation. Rents were first enforced in 
 1505. Early ownership often appears in the name 
 ol the farm, as Ballagawne, Ballaquayle, Ballarad-
 
 MANX WEALTH: HELPS AND SOURCES. 115 
 
 cliffe : the name in Manx may be taken to imply 
 antiquity, as : 
 
 Lough ny yie the lake of the goose. 
 
 Rhenbwee the yellow division. 
 
 Rhenscault the burnt division. 
 
 It is an exception to have English names. Some 
 changes in the law had brought amelioration. The law of 
 tithes was mitigated by commutation in 1839. ^ ne monopoly 
 of a limited class of merchants and grocers and groups of 
 private individuals, by a licence to import spirits, wine, tea 
 and sugar, and other articles subject to duty the quantity 
 allowed to the Island each year being limited and fixed had 
 brought a considerable income to some, and to others 
 reduced expenditure, but has been abolished. Land and 
 commerce are on the same level. There are, also, some 
 exemptions in taxation : there is no income tax or legacy 
 duty ; no excise duty, except a small duty on beer ; and no 
 poor rate, except, as already stated, at Douglas and Ramsey. 
 The landed interest shares largely in the advantages acciuing 
 from the position of the Island as a resort for visitors ; the 
 tenant farmer, or owner, has large receipts for poultry and 
 garden produce in the season, and the value of land near 
 the towns is greatly increased, while, indirectly, he shares 
 in the general impulse to business. 
 
 The opportunities of trade and commerce are con- 
 siderable. In addition to the business establishments, are 
 the public companies, the mines, the fisheries, the shipping 
 and commerce, and, above all, the visiting seasons yearly. 
 The sphere of ambition, it will be admitted, is limited, com- 
 pared to the broad English opportunities, for the professions 
 or for commerce ; the man of genius, like Forbes in philo- 
 sophy ; or of power in administration, like Cubbon in India, 
 must not stay at home. Yet there are prizes within reach, 
 and a good average of facilities for fortune. The old isola-
 
 n6 ELL AN V ANN IN. 
 
 tion is gone. The Island has become full of business 
 energy, and a meeting place for the three kingdoms, with 
 their hundreds of thousands seeking health and recreation. 
 The towns, once fixed in outline, are extending ; Douglas, 
 at once towards Onchan along the coast, and inland towards 
 the west ; Ramsey, from its mountain background, enlarging 
 north and west ; Peel, Port Erin, Port St. Mary, and Laxey 
 share the impulse. In the towns, Boards of Commissioners, 
 with their municipal powers ; in tne House of Keys, self 
 election at an end ; in the administration, response to 
 popular convictions ; in the education of the people, the 
 compulsory and the universal ; everywhere, the energy of 
 business ; beyond, the flow of inrushing English life ; the 
 Manx language retiring before the Anglo-Saxon ; the foreign 
 element gaining social power. The social foundations are 
 in course of being relaid. Freedom has new opportunities. 
 The increase of substantial means has brought new powers 
 of progress. Improved legislation has moved in the way to 
 order and liberty. The stagnation of the eighteenth century 
 has been followed by movements full of promise ; it had its 
 single lighthouse on the red pier in Douglas, but with no 
 jetty to save from the rock opposite ; no tower of refuge on 
 Conister ; no breakwater in the bay ; no lighthouse on the 
 Head, and no drive around it ; no promenade along the 
 shore ; no electric tramway to Laxey. Now, all is the 
 reverse, energy and commercial stir. In the country, 
 agriculture has followed English improvements : for 
 "carranes" there are shoes, and for the turf fire on the 
 hearth, the " chiollagh," the "slowrie," and the open 
 chimney, there is the better modern style. Habits, too, and 
 social ideals, take a higher moral tone. Less litigation 
 would still be an improvement, but movement is in 
 the right direction ; temperance has changed the 
 character of the club anniversary, and of the Saturday at
 
 MANX WEALTH: HELPS AND SOURCES. 117 
 
 market. It would not now be necessary, as the late Mr. 
 Bluett deemed it in his day, to defend the refusal of a 
 challenge under the duel code by publishing a volume on 
 the subject. The sacred ministries of truth have done much 
 to transform the life of the Island. Smuggling has died 
 out. Men of money power, hardly of a number to form a 
 class, used to give cause to complaints of usury and 
 oppression ; but that day seems also to have passed. 
 Among the Manx people now are the usual elements of 
 English life : the culture, the School of Art, the Free 
 Library, and such institutions, in aid of modern 
 development. 
 
 The great foe to the success of industrial life, here, as 
 elsewhere, is " the drink." The Temperance movement 
 has done much to lessen the evil. Most of the Churches 
 have their Temperance Societies and Bands of Hope, 
 with others not so connected. The effect is seen 
 in social reformation, as well as in public opinion 
 and legislation. The " drunk ajid disorderly " show 
 reduced figures. Yet the alcoholic position is strong : 
 the duty on malt in 1893 was ,2,221, and on imported 
 liquor ^39,067. Customs and license duties amount to 
 above ,44,000. The estimated outlay by visitors is 
 ,40,725 ; by the resident population, ^"121,151. Two- 
 thirds of the crime come from " the drink." Unfortunately 
 the law allows the visitors in their Sunday excursions to be 
 bonafide travellers at the public-house. 
 
 Meanwhile, the insular wealth may be approximately 
 seen in such facts as the following, for which I am in part 
 indebted to Governor Walpole's recent volume, The Land 
 of Home Rule, 1893. 
 
 The Insular revenue, ^76,738 ; the Bank deposits . ^1,670,684 
 
 The Insular expenditure 60,000 
 
 The gross annual value, including towns and parishes . 406,045
 
 n8 ELL AN VANNIN. 
 
 Government Grant towards popular education . . ^8,844 
 
 Expenditure under Local Commissioners . . . 62,389 
 
 Receiving poor relief (out of a population of 55>6o8) . 938 
 
 Rates for local expenditure ZZ-7 2 
 
 Estimated value of metal from the mines : various ores. c 7,727 
 
 The customs revenue (1892) . . . . . 65,L'i2 
 
 Agricultural rental value ...... 100,000 
 
 The lord's rent (yearly) ...... l ,5 o 
 
 The national debt 300,000 
 
 Taxation is lighter than in other parts of the kingdom. 
 When given to Sir John Stanley in 1406, the annual 
 value of the ^Island was ^400 ; at the Revestment, it was 
 about ^7> 2 3-
 
 Social CbmtQes: transition from tRomanism,
 
 RUSHEN ABBEY.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 SOCIAL CHANGES : TRANSITION FROM ROMANISM. 
 
 I HE expression "Manx Reformation" does not 
 often occur in Manx history ; it is once used 
 by Bishop Wilson where he states that it came 
 later than the English Reformation. The full 
 transition meant by the words has, however, 
 taken place, for there was once a period of mediaeval Papal 
 darkness, and there is now an era of evangelical light. 
 
 The primary blow to Manx Popery was in 1422, when 
 the ecclesiastical barons were disestablished and disendowed 
 who refused their homage at Tynwald to the lord of the 
 Isle, the rest submitting, and the civil authority made 
 supreme over the ecclesiastical. Between 1521 and 1594, 
 as the course of legislation shows, it is evident that the 
 Derby rule was not unwilling to see changes both in doc- 
 trine and ritual. The annexation of the diocese to the 
 province of York in 1542 favoured right tendencies; though 
 it seems premature in Bishop Merrick, in 1577, to state that 
 there was universal conformity to the formularies of the 
 Church of England, while in 1594 it was still necessary to 
 forbid prayers for the dead and other Popish practices. In 
 1660 mention is made of the Book of Common Prayer as 
 part of the Church service and as enforced by a Commis- 
 sion appointed by the ruling Earl. An official letter from 
 the Archbishop of York to Bishop Hildesley urged greater 
 freedom from Popish observances, and public feeling began 
 to demand further reformation. Yet the silent flow of
 
 122 ELL AN V ANN IN. 
 
 events had been favourable. There was substantial release 
 from Papal supremacy, and Romish practices were for- 
 bidden. The Prioress of the Nunnery had, in 1538, ven- 
 tured on marriage. In 1569 a married clergyman (Salisbury) 
 became Bishop. The restrictions on the marriage of the 
 clergy were removed in 1610. In 1688 it was reported by 
 the Bishop that the people were " nothing inclined to 
 Popery," though the view was too sanguine, for several of 
 the old Popish customs had been retained. Not until 1736 
 was the Spiritual Court abolished, with its fines, imprison- 
 ment, and excommunication. Religious liberty and the 
 rights of conscience were denied until late in the Reforma- 
 tion movement ; and the shadows of the old system lingered 
 over clerical ministration. The great doctrine of the 
 Lutheran Reformation justification by faith in Christ 
 had not risen upon the island. But the movement gradu- 
 ally increased in power ; steps were initiated for a Manx 
 translation of the Scriptures; and in 1775 the Methodist 
 revival gave to the Reformation its full development in the 
 preaching of the Gospel. In the progress of things, a 
 lectureship against Popery was endowed at St. George's 
 Church, in Douglas. 
 
 There were reasons for this slowness in the Reforma- 
 tion. Manx Romanism does not seem to have been of an 
 earnest type. There was no leader in the Reformation 
 as in the method of Reformers elsewhere. There was 
 not the conviction to produce martyrs, nor the hostility 
 which the martyr spirit awakens. The tide slowly rose, 
 without the storm, from 1422 to 1775. * ^ e Government 
 policy caused delay. The Stanleys themselves had been 
 Papists. To a great extent their collision with Roman- 
 ism had been on political grounds. In the earlier days, in 
 the days of Wyclirf, there were signs of Stanley sympathy 
 with the Reformer ; and, later, as the third volume of the
 
 TRANSITION FROM ROMANISM. 123 
 
 Manx Society shows, there was continued antipapal legisla- 
 tion ; yet policy sometimes restrained. In the interval of 
 the Commonwealth, new impulses were given toward 
 Reformation. Under Chaloner as Governor, from 1651 to 
 1660, it is true the Bishopric was suppressed ; but there was 
 much religious enthusiasm in the age, and the clergy were 
 allowed to retain their livings, though the island had been 
 transferred from the Earl of Derby to Lord Fairfax. And 
 yet the onward movement fell short of completeness. 
 
 The transition from the old superstition had at first 
 been but limited. For a time it was chiefly a protest 
 against Papal supremacy and ownership, a withdrawal from 
 the former ecclesiastical relations, a transfer of the headship 
 of the Church from the Pope to the monarch, a change 
 without the theology and spirit of the great Reformation ; 
 it was also a continuance of some essential errors, and of 
 the denial of religious liberty to those who might not 
 conform ; it was largely the Anglican ideal, admired 
 by Keble in his Uiography of Bishop Wi/son, which 
 is substantially Popery under Canterbury instead of 
 Rome. As initiated, it was not even doctrinal, still 
 less evangelical. When two centuries had passed since 
 the great Reformation, the Manx people were still 
 without the Scriptures in the native tongue. There 
 was no formal change in doctrine, after the manner of the 
 English movement. The canons adopted at Braddan and 
 elsewhere in the dark centuries remained and were, in sub- 
 stance, re-enacted in 1703. We note no adoption inform 
 of the Thirty-nine Articles, and no revision of the terms of 
 union with the State. It was the same Bishop, Thomas 
 Stanley, one of the Derby family, at once Governor and 
 Bishop, both before and after the English Reformation. He 
 held the position from 1542 to 1545, under Henry VIII., 
 again in the reign of Mary, and then from 1562 to 1569 in
 
 124 ELL AN V ANN IN. 
 
 the reign of Elizabeth. The difference could not then be 
 great between the past and the present. Happily, the great 
 Earl did not resist the reforming tendency, nor his Countess, 
 who, as the family historian relates, disliked the ways of 
 Rome, as indeed was likely in a descendant from the noble 
 race of the Huguenots. 
 
 In its aspects and mode, the Manx Reformation was a 
 striking contrast to what obtained elsewhere. It was with- 
 out violent commotion. Possibly the old superstitions had 
 not gained a strong hold. There is no evidence, I believe, 
 that the priests ministered in the language of the people. 
 The ordinary Romish service was in Latin ; was thus in 
 Ireland until 1551, and, therefore, probably in Man. The 
 monks of Rushen wrote in the Latin of their age, and even 
 in giving the boundaries of their Manx properties used terms 
 more like Norwegian than Manx. A church not using the 
 native language of a people will never win their enthusiasm. 
 A preacher who thinks in one language and, mentally trans- 
 lating, speaks in another, can never mightily move what to 
 him are a foreign community. The principle explains the 
 failure of the Established Church in Ireland ; the peculiar 
 position of Methodism in the island where at first, when 
 Manx was essential, the preaching was largely by native 
 local preachers, to "the manner born," and accounts, 
 perhaps, for the popular indifference when Man left its old 
 profession. 
 
 The contrast between the quiet course of the Manx Refor- 
 mation and the reformation in other lands where martyrs 
 died is singular. The Lollards, under the rule of Henry 
 IV., who gave the island to Sir John Stanley, were the 
 victims of violent persecution. In the time of his successor, 
 Henry V., Huss was martyred, and the bones of Wycliff 
 burnt to ashes. In Ireland, in 1540, under Henry VIII., 
 when Monarch displaced Pope, society was deeply stirred,
 
 TRANSITION FROM ROMANISM. 125 
 
 though the change was remote and almost theoretical. In 
 Mary's time the fires of Smithfield were kindled. A few 
 years after came the massacre of the Huguenots, and then 
 the Spanish Armada. In its reformation, Man was only 
 slightly moved. Strange that in times when the principles 
 implied moved Europe the Waldenses, Flanders, Spain, 
 Italy, and, near at hand, the Covenanters of Scotland the 
 Manx people did not share the commotion affecting religious 
 life and freedom. That about the same time there should 
 be much excitement because of the appropriation of tithes 
 by the English Government, and, by the Lord of the Isle, 
 of the one-third of the tithes which had belonged to Rushen 
 Abbey, only shows how, under the Romish sway, the 
 material eclipsed the moral in the Manx mind. It was a 
 state of popular ignorance and insensibility which might 
 partly come from the isolation of ages, but also from the 
 moral prostration which the history explains. At last, 
 however, the reforming movement, notwithstanding the 
 peculiarities noted, reached its meridian, and the Manxman 
 like the labourer who looks at noon with shaded eyes to 
 note the hour, and says "Te vunlaa" could say in a higher 
 sense, " It is noon," and desire that the sun may no more 
 go down.
 
 Social Cbanoes: Ube Establisbefc Cbuvcb.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 SOCIAL CHANGES : THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 HE Manx Established Church is part of the 
 Church of England, with the peculiarity of a 
 petition in the Litany for "the blessings of the 
 sea," as well as " the kindly fruits of the earth," 
 with the sanction of the Legislature for its 
 Canon law in Bishop Wilson's Ecclesiastical Constitutions, 
 and the further fact, I believe, that it is not included in the 
 Act of Uniformity. By Bishop Wilson it is termed a 
 Protestant Church. In this chapter it is viewed from its 
 beginning as a Church of the Reformation, though its 
 previous conditions of origin will be within sight, and 
 guidance must come chiefly from the volumes of the Manx 
 Society. 
 
 Of the Manx Diocese no mention can be traced before 
 1098. It is said that there was a Bishopric of "Sodor," in 838, 
 which included the Southern Hebrides, with lona as centre ; 
 that the " Sodor Diocese " included the Islands of Bute 
 and Islay, as well as lona ; that Man was anciently termed 
 " one of the Sodor Islands " ; that the twelve Franciscan 
 Brethren at the Friary, in Arbory, are officially noted as 
 within the Sodor Diocese ; and that Man and the Sodor 
 Diocese were thus united from 1098 to 1380, when the union 
 ceased, the Manx no longer including the Hebrides, though 
 retaining the " Sodor " as part of its title. A royal charter 
 of the thirteenth or fourteenth century terms the Manx 
 Bishop " the Bishop of Sodor." In the legal appointment 
 
 9
 
 130 ELL AN V ANN IN. 
 
 of Bishop, care is taken to use the three phrases, " Bishop 
 of the Isle of Man," " Bishop of Sodor," " Bishop of Sodor 
 and Man." In the transfer of the Island from Norway to 
 Scotland, in 1266, "Man" is distinguished from "the 
 Sodors." The western islands of Scotland, north of 
 Ardnamurchan, seem to have been termed " Nordereys " ; 
 those south of that point, "Sudereys." From 1098, for 
 some time, the title was " Man and the Isles." The union 
 with the State is from Norwegian arrangement. 
 
 The Manx Episcopate has been somewhat confused 
 in its order from an attempt to claim great antiquity. 
 The published list, which did not appear until the 
 seventeenth century, is, in its earlier part, mere inven- 
 tion. It begins with Amphibalus, in 360. One of that 
 name appears in the early history of the Church in 
 Britain, and in his Early English Church History, Dr. 
 Bright states that after the Dioclesian persecutions, a 
 church in memory of him was built in Winchester, 
 afterwards made into a cathedral, but no evidence exists 
 of his being in Man ; the list gives him eighty-four years 
 as Bishop. St. Patrick follows in 444, of whose pre- 
 sence we have seen the lack of proof. To St. German 
 some years are. given, though it is historic that his sphere 
 was Britain and Gaul, and that he died in Ravenna in 448. 
 St. Maughold has given to him from 498 to 648, an epis- 
 copate of 150 years. To St. Conan and his three successors 
 are given 241 years, 648 to 889, an average of sixty years. 
 Yet the monks of Rushen had stated long before that 
 nothing was known of Bishops in Man before the time of 
 Godred Crovan (say 1077), and they insert the name of 
 Roolwer as the first Bishop known to them, the last on their 
 record being Duncan, in 1374. In the course of the history 
 of the Bishopric there are intervals when there were no 
 Bishops. In an early case the interval is foity years; under
 
 THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 131 
 
 Elizabeth, three years ; Charles I., .seven years; the Com- 
 monwealth, nine years ; from 1693, four years; from 1814, 
 fourteen years. It is singular that with these facts Ward 
 should assert in his Ancient Records that in the list of Manx 
 Bishops the regular succession was never lost. In the 
 Annals of Ulster for 798, published by Dr. Todd, mention 
 is made of a " Dachonna, a Bishop of Man," but it gives no 
 light to Manx history. With the exception of the nine 
 years of the Commonwealth, there does not seem to be any 
 account of the appropriation of the episcopal revenue during 
 the vacancies. It appears that, until 1348, the Manx 
 Bishops were generally consecrated at Drontheim, in Nor- 
 way, whose Archbishop was Metropolitan. In that year 
 Bishop Russell was consecrated by the Pope at Rome. 
 Some of the Bishops were consecrated at Canterbury, some at 
 York ; some were appointed by Furness. Abbey, others by 
 Henry VIII., Mary, Elizabeth, and Charles II., and the 
 lord of the Isle. One of the Bishops was Dean of Chester, 
 as well as Bishop of Man, by the favour of Henry VIII., 
 but without the concurrence of the Earl of Derby. 
 
 Until the last quarter of the eighteenth century (1775), 
 the ministrations of the Manx Church included the whole 
 population of the Island. It was said that there were no 
 Nonconformists, but there were Manx Quakers in 1664, 
 who were fined, imprisoned, and banished under the 
 administration of Bishop Barrow, at once Governor and 
 Bishop, while many were cast into prison also, as stated in 
 Volume XI. of the Books of the Manx Society. 
 
 But little is known of the religious ministrations of the 
 Manx clergy in the earlier days of the reformed Church. 
 Among the clergy, the vicars had the prefix " Sir " to their 
 name ; the rectors were termed " Parsons." The livings 
 generally were poor, often without a parsonage, or the par- 
 sonage in ruins. Some relief came in 1666 by the pur-
 
 i 3 2 ELL AN V ANN IN. 
 
 chase of the impropriate tithes from the Earl of Derby by 
 Bishop Barrow for ^1,200, for the benefit of the poorer 
 clergy. In the temporary loss of the Deed the endowment 
 was nearly lost, being claimed by the Duke of Athol, but 
 which was at last found by the son of Bishop Wilson 
 among the documents of the Clerk of the Rolls. 
 
 As to the doctrines of the Manx Church from the time 
 of the Reformation, the general position was that of Pro- 
 testantism. It has been noted that Bishop Wilson termed 
 it a Protestant Church. Whether there was a formal adop. 
 tion of the Thirty-nine Articles of the English Church 
 does not appear, so far as I have been able to ascertain ; 
 they are not included in the Manx Book of Common 
 Prayer, issued the year after its translation under the hand 
 of the Bishop in 1761. Until 1772, a f ter six years of 
 learned toil, the Scriptures were given to the people in 
 Manx. Prior to that date, only a few portions had been 
 translated, and still fewer circulated, while of the 20,000 in 
 the population more than two-thirds knew no language 
 but their own. The Manx version is one of the great things 
 achieved by the Manx Established Church. The work was 
 committed to twenty-five Manx clergymen, who did their 
 duty with adequate scholarship, translating from the original 
 languages of Scripture, often in mutual consultation, and 
 with the critical help, in special cases, of the two most 
 eminent biblical scholars of the age, Bishop Lowth and 
 Dr. Kennicott. Though the Manx translation has now 
 passed out of popular use, it will long be a monument of 
 learning which no educated Manxman will despise ; nor will 
 Bishop Hildesley, under whom the scheme was carried out, 
 be forgotten as the Bishop whose administration has not 
 been surpassed in sacred usefulness. 
 
 The style of doctrine in those days may be inferred from 
 the sermons of Bishop Wilson, usually taken as the ideal
 
 THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 133 
 
 and representative minister of the Manx Church. His posi- 
 tion was Protestant towards Romanism. In his teaching, 
 there was a strict enforcement of the morals of Christianity, 
 and the obligation of religious ordinances. To the question, 
 " What must I do to be saved ? " his substantial answer 
 was repentance and amendment of life, with the observance 
 of the ordinances of the Church. The doctrine of faith in 
 the atoning sacrifice of Christ as the condition of salvation 
 was absent, and, as suggested by the Rev. Hugh Stowell, 
 his first biographer, the system of evangelical truth was but 
 imperfectly unfolded. He held Apostolical succession, 
 priestly absolution, sacramental efficacy by virtue of adminis- 
 tration by men episcopally ordained. He was an ideal 
 Bishop with Keble, who remarked with approval that he had 
 not in any of his writings recognised the necessity of sensible 
 conversion and an assurance of present personal salvation. 
 For denying the power of priestly absolution, he subjected 
 one of his cltrgy to discipline. His peculiar views had their 
 influence, probably in leaving his diocese during his long 
 episcopate without the Scriptures in their own tongue. The 
 congregations were left to the off-hand renderings into 
 Manx of the English version in their sermons. Bishop 
 Hildesley took a different view in securing the Manx Bible; 
 he urged his clergy to the study and use of the language, 
 and severely criticised those who deemed it a loss of respect- 
 ability to know their native tongue. No doubt the preva- 
 lent native sentiment was that expressed by a woman in 
 Lezayre, when her son read to her tl e Manx Scriptures for 
 the first time, "We have sit in darkness until now." 
 
 The discipline of the Manx Established Church in 
 its earlier days of reformation was severely oppressive. 
 Its most marked example is' found in Bishop Wilson's 
 administration. He had obtained the sanction of the 
 Legislature for his Ecclesiastical Constitutions, which
 
 134 ELL AN VANNIN. 
 
 were, in fact, a summary of Canon law, and by him they 
 were strictly enforced by penance, by fine, by imprisonment, 
 by dragging through the sea at the tail of a boat, officially 
 provided by the Governor, by the threat of what would 
 make eternity hopeless. There was penance for parents 
 who did not teach their children the Church Catechism, 
 for non-attendance at the Church services, for moral failure 
 where civil law could not interfere. Marriage was denied 
 those who were not confirmed. There was the white sheet 
 of penance at Church or at the market place, varied by the 
 fine, the dungeon, or the sea. More than once poor Kate 
 Kinrade was doomed to the last. For refusal to carry out 
 the Bishop's sentence on a Communicant, the Archdeacon 
 was suspended from office and Benefice. For refusing the 
 sum demanded for tithes the Clerk of the Rolls was sent to 
 prison without permission of self-defence. The " Bridle " 
 was in the care of ihe Sumner for those who failed to govern 
 their tongue. The civil administration of law among the 
 people seemed largely absorbed in the spiritual. At last 
 the Governor refused to execute the sentences of the 
 Bishop, the Earl of Derby accused him of invading his 
 province, the Legislature repealed certain laws on which the 
 Bishop had taken action, and, in the issue, the Bibhop and 
 his two Vicars-General were imprisoned in Castle Rushen, 
 though this was disallowed on appeal to the English 
 Government. The moral effect on the people gave the 
 Bishop no satisfaction. 
 
 It causes wonder to see so noble a nature perverted by 
 a mistaken system, as in the Bishop, and to seethe approval 
 of such methods by the poet of the Christian Year in his 
 two volumes of biography. Relief must be sought in a 
 more general view of his character. For, notwithstanding 
 what has thus far come within view, he was a man of Christian 
 humility, sincerity, and zeal. His faults were those of his
 
 THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 135 
 
 age and of his creed and system. He refused promotion, 
 and held to the humbler position, though royalty honoured 
 him, and a leading statesman pronounced him an example 
 of Apostolic times. But his fine, imperial nature was 
 turned from the lines of Apostolic procedure by his wrong 
 idea of duty. Apart from this, there is much to admire. 
 He found Bishop's Court greatly tending to ruin, and 
 changed it into a comely residence, planted its grounds with 
 trees, and gave the farmers a model for imitation in farming 
 their land. He was generous to the poor, the helper of 
 education, restored churches by repairs, and added to their 
 number, and laboured much in preaching and otherwise for 
 the welfare of his diocese and for the Manx people. Had 
 he, with all his other exce.lences, been in full possession of 
 the evangelical system, how different would have been his 
 power and success. 
 
 At first, the services of the Manx Church of the Refor- 
 mation were chiefly, if not entirely, in Manx ; in later times, 
 partly ; in the present, entirely English. The names of 
 some who have held a place in its pulpit are still household 
 words, not to name any yet living : Sto .veil, Howard, Brown, 
 Cain, Drury. Few Sabbath scenes have been so finely 
 suggestive, as in Braddan churchyard in the open-air service 
 during "the season," with "Parson Drury " as the preacher, 
 belonging to the age when there were giants in the earth, 
 and certainly in excellence as well as in stature, commencing 
 with Cowper's hymn, "There is a fountain filled with 
 blood," etc. ; the old church on the left ; the wealth of 
 memories from the graves ; the rich frame of trees which 
 have required ages for their growth ; the listening crowd 
 around, come from Douglas mostly, and drawn by a twofold 
 beauty, that of the scene and of the service. He was also 
 one of the few surviving masters of Manx. During the first 
 thirty years of this century, the church service was often in
 
 136 ELLAN VANN1N. 
 
 Manx, and Drury was to the manner born. I remember 
 the difficulty of an Englishman with a Manx living, to whom 
 a Manx curate was essential. An old Manx friend, who was 
 present at the morning Manx service in Andreas, once told 
 me of an attempt by the English clergyman, who had been 
 studying Manx, to read the second lesson, Luke xv., but he 
 failed in pronunciation. The Manx word for "fatted" is much 
 like the word for "drowned" in pronunciation; "height" 
 (fatted), "baiht" (drowned). He failed in the shade of 
 difference, and the result to the Manx ear of my friend was 
 " bring hither the drowned calf," etc. 
 
 Compared to the last century, when the Established 
 Church stood alone without any Nonconformists, the sur- 
 roundings are materially different. The growth of a strong 
 Nonconformity, the reduction of the rural population in 
 the parishes, the new political and municipal life, the 
 changes in popular opinions, have largely influenced the 
 relative position of the Manx Church. Siill, its social 
 power is considerable, and its prestige peculiar as the State 
 Church. Small and feeble as it is among the great dioceses 
 of England, there has been an idea in higher quarters of 
 blending it with one of them, but sentiments of nationality 
 and antiquity have been too strong to allow the proposal to 
 take effect. 
 
 The identity of a Church of the Reformation with the 
 purer Church of the early ages, by the abandonment of the 
 intermediate papal corruptions, is a curious question. The 
 corruption, however, was absorption by the papal system, a 
 change of essence doctrine, ritual, spirit, government 
 another gospel, and the moral identity is lost. Succession 
 is not identity. A race intermarrying with another is not 
 the same in the after generations. A Socinian church in 
 the lineal descent from the old Presbyterian is not the 
 Church of the earlier age. If the river be pure from the
 
 THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 13? 
 
 temple to the Dead Sea, as in Ezekiel, the identity remains ; 
 but where other streams of a foul nature enter into the 
 original stream, the identity is lost. There must be a 
 return to the source. There must be a renewal. The 
 true test of a Church is not found in agreement with any 
 age, but in agreement with Scripture ; not even external 
 descent, if the theological and moral be corrupted. "I had 
 planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed ; how then 
 art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine 
 unto me ? " 
 
 The clergy number about fifty-eight, of whom some 
 twenty are Manx. In addition to the Bishop and Arch- 
 deacon there are four Canons.
 
 Social Cbanaes:
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 SOCIAL CHANGES : MANX METHODISM. 
 
 HE general view appropriate to these chapters 
 as part of Manx history compels the omission 
 of much valuable detail, and which may 
 possibly be given in a small supplementary 
 volume. 
 
 The Isle of Man is first named in Methodist history in 
 Wesley's account of his first Conference in 1744, when the 
 Rev. John Meriton, a clergyman from the Isle of Man, was 
 present by invitation. Mr. Meriton had offered his services 
 to Bishop Wilson for special evangelistic efforts on Sabbath 
 evening*, but his offer had been declined on the ground 
 that the earlier church services of the day were sufficient. 
 
 The moral condition of the Manx people towards the 
 closing quarter of the eighteenth century was deeply 
 degraded. The Rev. John Murlin, a Wesleyan minister 
 resident in Whitehaven, then visited the Island, but found 
 moral conditions so discouraging that he despaired of doing 
 good and returned home, saying that the place was " a nest 
 of smugglers." The lawlessness, which led in 1765 to the 
 revestment of the Island in the Crown to secure better 
 social order, was then triumphant. Bishop Wilson had 
 recently passed away, with much disappointment in the 
 results of his long episcopate. Moral teaching, without the 
 great evangelical truths, though enforced by the penances 
 of the Canon law, had failed to secure social regeneration ; 
 some popish habits still lingered ; little could be said of the
 
 142 ELIAN VANNIN. 
 
 ministrations in the parish churches; there were no Sabbath 
 schools. A letter from the Archbishop of York to Bishop 
 Hildesley urged more attention to some prevalent evils 
 among the clergy and in other forms. The moral state of 
 the community was a new edition of " Jesus I know, and 
 Paul I know, but who are ye ? " It was an illustration of 
 the moral disadvantage of a people largely without the 
 Scriptures ; for, in a population of 28,000, more than two- 
 thirds knew only their own language, and there was no 
 Manx Bible until 1772. The facilities for smuggling had 
 led multitudes astray from all goodness ; the loose laws of 
 bankruptcy had helped other evils by attracting a consider- 
 able class of unprincipled debtors from England, with a 
 dissolute expenditure. Still, it must be admitted that Mr. 
 Murlin's despondency was excessive, for events soon proved 
 that there was really a great opportunity of doing good. 
 
 The work of Manx Methodism began in 1775, when 
 Mr. John Crook, a local preacher, was sent by the 
 Methodists of Liverpool to preach and engage in Christian 
 work. In the same year, under Wesley's sanction, he 
 became the third Minister in the Whitehaven Circuit, to 
 which the Island was allotted. His preaching soon attracted 
 multitudes, and with much success. At Castletown the 
 Governor and his lady and family, with some of the clergy, 
 came to hear him preach, and received him with great kind- 
 ness. Many were gathered into Christian fellowship, con- 
 verts of gifts were trained for Christian work, and among 
 them native local preachers of no common ability. 
 
 Until 1775 the Established Church stood alone, with its 
 seventeen parish churches and three or four chapels-of-ease. 
 It was said that there were no Nonconformists in the Island. 
 But a change was quickly apparent. What might be termed 
 a new reformation began with the labours of Crook. A 
 religious revival swept over the land, and in a few years some
 
 MANX METHODISM. 143 
 
 thousands of the Manx people were formed into Methodist 
 Societies. On his first visit to the Island, in 1781, Wesley 
 deemed the work to be one of the greatest Gospel successes 
 known to him " in the three kingdoms." His visit moved 
 the country. Landing at Douglas, after two days at sea 
 from Whitehaven, he preached on the day of his arrival in 
 the Douglas Market Place ; on successive days he preached 
 to multitudes at Cas-tletown, on the mountain of South 
 Baroole, at Peel, Barregarrow, and Ballaugh, closing his week 
 at Andreas and Ramsey. In his tour the Rector of 
 Ballaugh, with his family, came to the service, and treated 
 him with great cordiality. Wesley notes with satisfaction 
 that he found no opposition from Governor or Bishop, or 
 the bulk of the clergy. Already the Island had appointed 
 to it two " travelling preachers." It was only nine years 
 since the Manx people had come into possession of the 
 Manx Scriptures. 
 
 The Christian motive of the Mission thus so successful 
 was cons'picuous. The distant sight of the Island from his 
 Whitehaven Circuit had moved the sympathy of Mr. Murlin 
 to cross and reconnoitre the fortress of darkness ; the zeal 
 and ability of Liverpool Methodism provided for the effort ; 
 the aim was simply scriptural holiness through the land, 
 without a sectarian bias, and with the desire to help those 
 who most needed the Gospel. The noble spirit was clearly 
 recognised by the Governor, and by some of the clergy, 
 who welcomed the evangelical effort. 
 
 The rapidity which marked the spread of Manx 
 MethodisTi was striking. The island soon became an 
 important " Circuit " ; chapels were built, Sabbath schools 
 opened, local preachers, with rich command of Manx, raised 
 in great force ; within the first ten years from 1775 the 
 membership rose to 2,121; in 1798 to 4,840 in a popu- 
 lation of 31.500. In later years, under stricter methods,
 
 144 ELLAN VANNIN. 
 
 the numerical returns have been reduced. The last returns 
 show a membership, including probationers and juniors, 
 of 3,163; ten ministers; 164 local preachers; 214 class 
 leaders ; the religious services each year, on the Sabbath, 
 6,932 ; on week nights, 2,248. The four Methodist 
 Circuits include every town and village and parish and 
 many scattered hamlets and districts, so as to cover the 
 Island more or less with accommodation for worship, with 
 Sunday Schools in proportion, and with Day Schools in 
 the larger populations. The exact statistics are not within 
 reach. Of late years some noble additions have been 
 made by the erection of new churches. At first many 
 of the religious services were in farmhouses and barns ; 
 now the island can bear comparison with England in its 
 provision for worship in all that constitutes adaptation and 
 architectural beauty. Leaving statistics for the results 
 among the people, Methodism has become historic in 
 many families in many generations ; its beneficial influence 
 may be traced in various branches in the old country, and 
 in other lands ; from solitary converts in early days may be 
 noted sometimes, three or four generations back, groups 
 of descended families of marked distinction in character 
 and prosperity. Methodist traditions have a wide 
 range among the population, whose ancestors were in 
 Methodism, but who are themselves in other communions. 
 The strength of Methodism is among the middle classes ; 
 farmers, merchants, shop-keepers, prosperous men of 
 business in almost every line ; not a few who, by good 
 moral habits and industry, are on the verge of wealth ; men 
 who give their leisure to municipal affairs, or legislative in 
 the House of Keys. It has done much to give reality to 
 the Manx Reformation, and supremacy in the public mind 
 to the doctrines of Christianity. The ritualistic and the 
 rationalistic have but little influence. To multitudes, now
 
 MANX METHODISM. 145 
 
 for some generations, it has brought morality and godli- 
 ness ; to the community, a social order that can dispense 
 with military control ; to public opinion, health and what 
 makes for righteousness. The results to a people and country 
 must be valuable where a church widely extended, and for 
 generations, has maintained some thousands in membership, 
 and where evangelical pulpit-teaching, the culture of gifts 
 for religious service, schools for Sabbath and week-day, and 
 other forms of usefulness, have long helped to give " social 
 evolution," in the highest sense of the expression. Its 
 range of ministration includes the Island. It knows how to 
 give as well as how to labour, and is generous in religious 
 outlay ; within the last few years, in Douglas alone, from 
 ^"15,000 to a much higher figure has heen spent 
 in church and school extension, while in other towns 
 and in some of the villages kindred efforts have been 
 made. 
 
 The means of this extension has been the simple 
 ministration of the. Gospel. Under the divine blessing, the 
 Manx mind was early possessed by Manx preaching ; the 
 English ministry, in successive appointments, has nobly led 
 on the work ; the lay preaching has been above what is 
 often found, the type of doctrinal truth has been that of the 
 early days, without modern fashion ; the whole machinery 
 of the Church has been in action, with readiness for service 
 in many workers ; steady loyalty has been maintained to 
 constitutional standards ; and the result is a Manx Metho- 
 dism of true stability and power in the best interests of the 
 people. 
 
 Such results, however, have not been arrived at without 
 severe persecution in the earlier stages, and social anta- 
 gonism, sometimes from the populace, sometimes from the 
 clergy led on by the Bishop. As elsewhere, the early 
 Methodists were driven from the Lord's table in the parish
 
 146 ELLAN VANNIN. 
 
 churches. The parson of the parish sometimes headed the 
 popular rage. In Douglas, the clergyman of the old 
 Chapel, Master of the Grammar School, and Rector of 
 Bride as well, became prominent with his boys in riotous 
 disturbance. Bishop Richmond, in the year after Metho- 
 dism began*its Manx mission, issued a letter to be read in 
 all the parish churches, denouncing the Methodists in their 
 meetings, and their teachers as profane and blasphemous 
 pretenders to religion. Conscious of his power under the 
 " Ecclesiastical Constitutions," he demanded the names of 
 all who attended the Methodist services, so taking the first 
 step towards the infliction of penance, with its fines and 
 imprisonments in the dungeon of the " moddey dhoo," and 
 beyond, excommunication and perdition, as the priesthood 
 might adjudge. The Methodists of Douglas, in attending 
 their religious services, were hooted and stoned by the 
 mob ; the pupils of the Grammar School, encouraged by 
 their master, assailed Mr. Crook with stones and filth as he 
 passed along the street. It is pleasant to add in contrast 
 that a later Bishop (Mason) was of a different type, and 
 showed a tolerant and friendly spirit. 
 
 But, notwithstanding opposition, Methodism continued 
 to prosper. In Douglas, in 1801, was begun the first 
 Sunday School in the Island, in connection with the 
 chapel ; new chapels were erected in various parts, while 
 persecution still raged generally, but especially in Baldwin, 
 Marown, Peel, and Ramsey. It was a continuance of the 
 spirit of Bishop Barrow, in the time of Charles II., who 
 made him both Bishop and Governer, when, with historic 
 severity, he oppressed the Nonconformists of his time and 
 claimed all the Manx people as belonging exclusively to the 
 Established Church. 
 
 The stability of Manx Methodism, without resources 
 external to itself except the divine, is a useful study. The
 
 MANX METHODISM. 147 
 
 great feature has been evangelical preaching and evange- 
 lical Church life. Venerated names, now historic for such 
 a ministry, will arise in the Manx memory Mercer, and 
 many since who have passed from earth. Theirs was 
 preaching which did not hesitate to speak of eternal sanc- 
 tions, and which, with no reading from the complete pulpit 
 manuscript, freely declared the whole counsel of God, and 
 unencumbered by critical reserve. This was true of the 
 labourers in the vineyard then, and is true still of the local 
 preachers as well as the ministers. The strong body of lay 
 workers is a chief reason of the stability now in view. 
 Wesley was filled with admiration of the local preachers ; 
 he had not seen " so many stout, well-looking " men of that 
 order together. But six years after the beginning of the 
 work there were twenty-two local preachers. For the first 
 thirty years the number averaged 100 ; the number in 1893 
 was 153. A Church membership yielding so large a pro- 
 portion of preachers must hold a good level of culture and 
 Christian zeal. In the present volume space will not allow 
 detail ; but there was a group of these men who will not soon 
 be forgotten : Faragher of Cooilcam, Cowley, known as " Iliam 
 e Close," Ellison, Stephen, Lace, Sayle, Kneale, among others, 
 men of original gifts, and of much usefulness in the early 
 age. Between the ministers and the local preachers there 
 was, for an interval including 1835, one who was neither 
 Circuit minister nor local preacher in the usual sense, and 
 whose name on the " plan " was between the two the late 
 Rev. Robert Aitken, whose ministry gave an interval of 
 peculiar interest and power. Secondary events must here 
 be omitted, but his wonderful ministry may be recorded. 
 For moving eloquence, for preaching effectiveness, his 
 equal has been seldom seen in the pulpit ; tall, commanding, 
 earnest, the voice ranging from the tender to the terrific ; 
 the reading of the hymn equal to many a sermon in con-
 
 148 ELLAN VANNIN. 
 
 gregational effect ; the text, perhaps, peculiar ; the sermon 
 showing the man of the University and the true evangelist 
 the usefulness corresponding. 
 
 There were also visits of eminent ministers from 
 England, who added much to the intellectual life and 
 stability of Manx Methodism. The insular feeling was 
 thus saved from narrowness, and raised into a higher sphere. 
 When Samuel Leigh came from New Zealand to a meeting 
 in Douglas, the man of missionary heroism ; when the 
 eloquence of Robert Wood then young awoke from the 
 free seats the exclamation, " Dear me, what a man that is ! " ; 
 when Gideon Ouseley related his Irish experiences ; when 
 J. B. Gillman, Irishman at once in oratory and physique, 
 rose to the height of his argument ; when Newton, Beau- 
 mont, Lessay, Macafee, and others of those days, dealt 
 grandly with their theme, it was an education to the Manx 
 Methodist, it broke in on Manx isolation, and was some- 
 thing like the call to come out from the seclusion of the tent 
 to gaze at the stars of heaven. 
 
 Among the reasons of stability was the style of the early 
 preaching. In such style each age has its peculiarity. In 
 this case the preaching would not now be considered " up 
 to the times," but it proved itself to be .up to the Gospel 
 and to the great interests of humanity. Its success made 
 evident the order of its excellence. In its best type it 
 resembled the island in which it had its sphere, but with 
 none of the mists of " manninan MacLear " ; fixed in the 
 gulf stream of redemption, clear in outline, with fields rich 
 in beauty, with something to remind of Snaefell in its 
 grandeur ; here a rocky headland, there a receding bay, 
 with a light on the great points of danger, with a final 
 shelter within defences never to be shaken ; while beyond 
 was the unfathomed ocean from the equator to the poles. 
 At all events the preaching was mighty, and led to great
 
 MANX METHODISM. 149 
 
 religious revivals, which were another sign of the stability 
 mentioned. 
 
 Another consideration entered largely into this matter : 
 Manx Methodism has maintained its specific peculiarities 
 in their fulness. It has not abandoned, not lowered, 
 the class meeting, the lovefeast, the prayer meeting. It 
 has been too old-fashioned to eliminate its peculiarities 
 on the plea of catholicity. The reason for the exis- 
 tence of a church or system of any other kind is to 
 be found in its peculiarities, as also the secret of 
 its power. It is in them you find the reason for being a 
 Methodist rather than a member of some other Church. 
 Organic unity obtained by the surrender of specific dif- 
 ferences is a loss. Abandon what is peculiar to the British 
 constitution, and what remains worthy of England ? The 
 great excellence, of which all else is the basis, is in the 
 specific difference rather than the genus, as the logician 
 would contend. It is in the secluded regions, often, that 
 things longest retain the grand old type ; and the sea that 
 rolls around Manxland is one reason why it is so con- 
 servative of the initial and early forms of life in the Church 
 and in other ways. 
 
 It should be added that the relations of Methodism to the 
 Established Church have been friendly and catholic, though 
 nonconformist. In the early times, as elsewhere, the two 
 were not so distinct and separate. The services were not 
 so often held in church hours ; the Methodists went to 
 church, the churchmen attended the chapel. At the same 
 time, there was a separate organisation. But, on both sides, 
 things have tended to change. Methodists were sometimes 
 driven from the sacramental table in the parish churches. 
 The doctrines preached were not always evangelical. 
 The Methodists have realised their economy as of 
 providential origin, and as a Scriptural Church in all
 
 150 ELL AN V ANN IN. 
 
 essentials of doctrine, order, discipline, and economy. In 
 so doing, they own to no schism ; the membership has not 
 been drawn from religious fellowship in some other Church, 
 but from the world. It does not allow the State the 
 function of deciding to what Church a man must belong. 
 It does not admit the exclusive claims ot any other com- 
 munion. The notions of " Apostolic Succession," of 
 priestly power of absolution, of sacramental effi iency apart 
 from personal penitence and faith, are no part of their 
 creed. They hold the maxim at the same time that they 
 are the friends of all, the enemies of none, and, meanwhile, 
 look to their own ministers for religious ordinances and 
 services, and not elsewhere. In all this question, their 
 general position rests on the principles of Wesley himself- 
 His final aim was Scriptural holiness through the land. 
 His view was that, church or no church, souls must be saved, 
 the order of his Church must give way to usefulness in the 
 course of Providence. He held the Anglican idea of 
 Apostolic Succession to be unproved, and denied it ; 
 further, that Presbyters and Bishops were the same order in 
 the New Testament ; that as a presbyter he had the power 
 of ministerial ordination equally with any bishop. He 
 ordained men to the Christian ministry for the United 
 Kingdom, and for the United States of America. He 
 refused the jurisdiction of the Bishops of the Established 
 Church. He disregarded parochial boundaries, saying that 
 the world was his parish. His lines of procedure extended 
 have led to the greater distance from the Church of England 
 line, but the angle of departure has been under the guidance 
 of Wesley's example. As a Christian, he was consistent ; 
 as a Churchman, he refused to give absolute submission. 
 
 Wesleyan Methodism does not now stand alone as the 
 only Nonconformist Church in Man. About 1810, was 
 built the church of " Parson Haining," now succeeded by
 
 MANX METHODISM. 151 
 
 the Congregational Church in Prospect Hill ; on the Castle- 
 town Road was the Romanist Chapel, with its successor 
 also in Prospect Hill; since, about 1823, has risen the 
 large membership of the Primitive Methodists ; later still, 
 the Methodist New Connexion has taken its place in the 
 island. Presbyterian Churches have also been formed 
 in Douglas and Ramsey ; the Salvation Army also has 
 done good service. These form the group of evangelical 
 Nonconformist Churches in the Island, so far as I know. I 
 will only add that the tendency to closer fellowship and 
 brotherly feeling among the ministers and people of these 
 Churches is to be hailed as one of the happiest signs of the 
 times.
 
 Summary an& TReview.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 SUMMARY AND REVIEW. 
 
 O place me in some Heaven-protected Isle, 
 
 Where Peace and Equity and Freedom smile, 
 
 Where no volcano pours its fiery flood, 
 
 No crested warrior dips his plume in blood ; 
 
 Where Power secures what Industry has won, 
 
 Where to succeed is not to be undone ; 
 
 A land with sea and mountain, rock and plain, 
 
 In Mona's Isle beneath Victoria's reign. 
 
 {Adapted frcm Couper.*) 
 
 BRIEF summary and review may be a 
 useful close of the foregoing chapters 
 in relation to Manx progress, past and 
 future. 
 
 Until 1703, Manx civilisation had made 
 but little progress in all the centuries. The transition from 
 Popery threw off Papal supremacy, and made the Manx 
 Church a separate organisation. But it did not bring 
 material social advance ; the same Bishop remained, the 
 same priesthood, the same intolerance in religion, the same 
 political despotism. The term Protestant, as descriptive, 
 meant only a protest against Papal supremacy. The imme- 
 diate doctrinal change was slight ; canon law was still 
 supreme. The essential elements of civilised progress were 
 wanting ; no general education worthy of the name, no 
 moral life to mark Manx history, no advance in agriculture 
 and commerce. On the question of agriculture, the land 
 had been falling out of cultivation ever since the usurpation
 
 156 ELL AN VANNIN. 
 
 of the ownership by the Earl of Derby in 1643. As to 
 insular revenue, ft was trifling. As to freedom, there was 
 no political enfranchisement. The Act of Settlement itself, 
 for a time, bore but little fruit beyone public contentment 
 with the restitution. In the Revestment of the Island in 
 the British Crown, in 1765, there was much provisional power 
 of progress. The two acts were the chief points around 
 which a true policy might be successful ; but the civilisa- 
 tion thus far was only humble in its order, both as to the 
 people and as to their outward condition. Of Christian 
 civilisation at the time little can be said. The distinctive 
 doctrine of the English and European Reformation was in 
 abeyance ; socially, there was the blight of smuggling on a 
 scale which visibly injured the Imperial Exchequer ; the 
 dishonest resources of English bankrupts, sheltered from 
 their creditors by Manx law, brought a temporary but 
 demoralising prosperity until the repeal of the law in 
 1814. Throughout the Island mobs were ready to assail 
 serious people on their way to worship. There was no 
 adequate guarantee against social violence. It was thus 
 towards the end of last century. 
 
 The seeds of a better condition had been sown in the 
 religious revival of the last quarter of that century, amid the 
 mini>trations of Protestant truth, and a great moral im- 
 provement among multitudes, of whom many were gathered 
 into Christian fellowship. In this great movement lay the 
 promise of the future in social elevation. 
 
 The great opportunity for commercial development has 
 been the rank of the Island as a chief watering-place in the 
 United Kingdom, with the disadvantages and the advan- 
 tages of the sea around it for storm as well as calm. From 
 this comes the material progress of this century ; hence 
 the noble fleet of steamships belonging to the Isle of Man 
 Steam Packet Company, the steamer between Peel and
 
 SUMMARY AND REVIEW. 157 
 
 Ireland (the whole yielding a passenger tax yearly of 
 ,2,695; arrivals and departures, 581,294), the piers and 
 promenades, the hotels and lodging-houses, the market for 
 the farm produce in garden and farmyard, the increased 
 value of land, the new impulse given to water and gas 
 companies, the opening for new and prosperous banks, and 
 much more that adds to the enterprise of business life. 
 Its special feature and success will be found in this supreme 
 characteristic. The social state was thus created from 
 which the political and municipal franchise could no longer 
 be withheld. The Island could not be a place for great 
 manufactures or great commerce ; its mine of wealth is the 
 modern passion for a yearly visit to the seaside, with its rest 
 and recreation. 
 
 It is obvious that the conditions of successful competi- 
 tion with other great watering-places must be observed. In 
 all such places moral respectability and good public order 
 are essential ; of such conditions the authorities of the 
 Island are carefully observant, and Manx public opinion will 
 not fail to sustain them in action. The "rowdy" element 
 is fatal to the highest order of prosperity in such spheres. 
 The respectable middle class, with their young people, are 
 repelled by any approach to public disorder on week nights, 
 and yet more on the Sabbath, by the open oyster and tobacco 
 shops, by boating on the sea and such practices, and by the 
 so-called sacred concert. The people of these tastes are 
 not the class to be a source of wealth in the " season." It 
 would not be commercial wisdom to adapt public arrange- 
 ments to these, rather than to a standard which will do 
 justice to all, whatever their individual preferences. The 
 great watering places show a sagacious vigilance on these 
 lines. From the first, the Isle of Man Steam Packet 
 Company has been an example in refusing to sail its 
 steamers on the Sabbath. The principles of good moral
 
 158 ELL AN V ANN IN. 
 
 order are worth money in these public interests, to say no- 
 thing of what is higher : attractions to the best customers are 
 increased. 
 
 The local improvements increase this successful com- 
 petition. In this view, much has been done, and the 
 same enterprise continues. Provision is in course for 
 easy access to the beauties of Manx scenery not so 
 near at hand. The electric tram gives ready access to 
 the grand scenes and summit of Snaefell, while it has 
 also opened out the beauties of Groudle and other 
 recesses. The marine drive does similar service round 
 Douglas Head. There are similar improvements elsewhere. 
 Were it possible to attract, as in some places, visitors to 
 spend their winter in the Island, a great addition would be 
 made to Manx prosperity. One thing helpful to insular 
 advantage is much needed, namely, a Nonconformist 
 College with its provision of the higher education of Manx 
 youth and others who are of non-established churches, 
 just as King William's College meets the wants of the Estab- 
 lished Church. Such a provision would possibly draw many 
 to reside in Man. 
 
 In the spirited local improvements projected, there may 
 be some fear of too high a charge for rates, and such 
 increase would of course, by increasing the cost of living, 
 be a disadvantage, especially if the result were to make 
 Manx residences as costly as English. The principle 
 includes much more, and successful competition will require 
 all care in giving it practical effect. To such considerations, 
 the people of the Island will not be insensible, from common 
 business prudence, while reputation for kindness of manner 
 and firmness in dealing stands deservedly high. 
 
 This review of the whole subject of the preceding 
 chapters would be incomplete, if the religious history of 
 the Island within the last century were not duly combined
 
 SUMMARY AND REVIEW. 159 
 
 with the other parts of the subject. The commercial 
 considerations named have their place, but what gives to 
 the Island its special and distinctive social character arises 
 from the prevalence of religious and moral principles among 
 the population. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 HAY.MAN, CHRISTY & LILLY, LTD., HATTON WORKS, 113, FARRINGDON ROAD, E.G.
 
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