[From Isle of Man, Cumming 1848]
The ancient Castle of Rushen-The ramparts, the moat, the glacis, the keep.-Well in the drift-gravel.-The Derby family.-Bishop Wilson.-View from the castle walls.-The town.-The old chapel and clock-room.-Legend of the Black Lady .-Hango Hill - Limestone blocks in the boulder clay.-William Dhone.-Skeletons.-King William's College.-Ancient foundation.-Advice of the Earl of Derby to his son.-Bishop Barrow.-The Isle of Man an ancient seat of learning.
THE ancient Castle of Rushen 1 occupies a commanding position on the southern side of the Silverburn, where it meets the salt-water on the Western margin of Castletown Bay. The best near view of it is perhaps from the stone bridge at the northern extremity of the harbour. Its resemblance to the Danish Castle of Elsinore has before been noted; and of its great antiquity there is no doubt, even should the date 2 fixed upon for its commencement be incorrect.
There is a solemn majesty about it, and a solidity in its masonry which betokens great strength. In the centre is the keep, whose ground-plan is an irregular rhombus, the longer sides running nearly north and south. It is flanked with towers on each side; the eastern, southern, and western standing out from it of a square form; the northern rising upon the building itself. At its northern extremity is a lofty portcullis, passing which is an open quadrangular court, with a well in the centre. The height of this keep at its entrance is seventy-four feet, and on the right-hand side of it at entering, a winding stone staircase leads us by ninety-nine steps to the summit of the northern or flag-tower, the total height of which from the ground is eighty feet. The southern tower rises seventy feet, and contains the clock which was presented by Queen Elizabeth in 1597, when she was holding the island in trust, whilst the rival claims between the heirs of Ferdinand and William were being litigated 3 . The east tower is seventy feet, and the west the same, if we allow one foot for the rise in the ground.
The thickness of the walls of the keep varies from seven to twelve feet. On the outside of it, at a short distance, is an embattled wall, in height twenty-five feet, and nine feet thick, with seven square towers at irregular intervals. Exterior to this wall was a fosse or moat, now filled up. On the exterior of this moat is a glacis, erected, it is said, by Cardinal Wolsey, when he was guardian to Edward, the sixth Lord of -Man. At three several points in this glacis were formerly three low round towers or redoubts, now in ruins. The best specimen of them is seen on the north-western side, near the harbour.
If the ditch were filled from the river, it is plain that there must have been some elevation of the land since its formation ; at the present time the highest tides seem hardly capable of surrounding the castle with water to any depth. But it is stated that a few years since some wooden pipes were discovered conducting water to the castle from a reservoir in the higher ground.
At the mouth of the harbour, and in its bed, the limestone is seen to rise from the bay on a saddle, whose axis runs S. 70° W. magnetic, and then to dip again inland 4 . The boulder clay and the drift-gravel have filled up the depression on the western side of this saddle, and the castle and town stand on the fine platform of gravel which we have before had occasion to notice. The wells of the castle and the town are sunk through the gravel generally to the clay. When carried too deep, they are sometimes rather brackish, in consequence of the sea-water, which finds access through the harbour at high water, the dip of the limestone inland preventing its easy return to the sea.
Let us re-enter the castle.
There is a winding road conducted between lofty ramparts from the ditch, where formerly was the drawbridge, to the castle-gate and the first portcellis 5
To the left-hand a flight of stone steps leads to the Rolls' Office 6 ; and on passing through the portcullis into the open space between the two keeps, we observe on the right-hand another flight of steps leading to the ramparts, and conducting also to the Court House and the Council Chamber. These buildings were formerly occupied by the Derby family, and by the governors and lieutenant-governors of the Isle to the time of the late Lieutenant Governor-General, John Ready, who resided there between two and three years 7 . A stone was lately thence removed in making some repairs, on which are inscribed the letters D. I. C. 8 , with the date 1644. I read them James and Charlotte Derby, who it is known resided here at that date, when they saw the commencement of the great rebellion, in which the former, like the blessed king whom he served, lost his head under the hands of cruel and unreasonable men 9 .
As we enter the inner keep we have here too the memorial of another holy man, who preferred a clear conscience and Christian consistency to wretched expediency and a time-serving surrender of a righteous cause. In this little dark cell, on the left-hand, was confined the apostolic Thomas Wilson, who, ere he died, was one of the two oldest, poorest, and most pious prelates in Christendom. 10 . He had suspended Archdeacon Horrobin, the governor's chaplain, for a serious breach of ecclesiastical discipline. Governor Horne in his rage and fury sent a band of soldiers to Bishop's Court, who conveyed the good man to Castle Rushen, where he was immured for two months. On the opposite side of the entrance, at the foot of the flag-tower stairs, is another cell, in which were confined at the same time the bishop's two vicars-general.
Let us now ascend by the spiral staircase to the summit of the tower, observing first. on the headstone of the doorway 11 of the cell at its foot the date 1103; here seventytwo steps bring us to the room at present used for the chapel, thence eighteen steps lead us on to the roof, and nine more to the upper platform of the flag-tower. Now let us look around.
In the far south-west lies the Calf of Man, with the rocks called the Borrough and the Eye,-the former projecting from the island, the other isolated, and both drilled tbrough by the action of the sea at a higher relative level 12 . Spanish Head rears its awful front towards Port St. Mary Bay, and the rocks in its neighbourhood are rent by a landslip into chasms 300 feet deep. The fine gravel platform on which Castle Rushen is built seems, as regarded from this point, to extend almost unbroken to Port St. Mary and Port Erin, the intersecting rivers not being distinguished; and the geologist will mark well the clear straight line which the drift platform presents against the western horizon, as contrasted with the broken and irregular outline of Brada Head and the Mull Hills, which tower upwards on either side to the height of 600 feet.
Directly over Port Erin, in the gap between the headlands just named, on a clear day, we can ruark far away over the Irish Sea the magnificent granitic mountains of Mourne, Slieve Donard, and Slieve Bingian.
Directing the telescope to the south, we may on a tolerably clear day discern the Paris Mountain in Anglesea, and still more to the eastward the Snowdownian range, with Carnedd-Llewellyn and Penmaenmawr. A great gap in the horizontal traverse then occurs-nihil nisi pontes et aer-till we reach at a north-eastern point Black Coombe in Cumberland, and the mountains beyond it round about Skawfell and Langdale Pikes. The more northern giants of Cumberland are intercepted by the nearer though very inferior elevations of this island, beginning with Santon Head and Douglas Head; whilst the "Land o' Cakes" is shut out altogether by Mona's Monarch and supporters; and of these the view from the castle-tower is highly interesting and imposing, from the manner in which they are grouped together.
And then trace out the nearer landscape, the deep indentations of Poolvash Bay, Castletown Bay, and Derbyhaven, crowded as they are in the summer months with the herring-fleet of from three to four hundred sail. And how beautiful the upland slope towards the dark heatherclad South Barrule, and the granitic boss above St. Mark's, whence the silver river comes flowing down, and meandering in the alluvial valley before us, till it mixes with the sea-water in the harbour at our feet!
We have also still nearer a bird's-eye view of the town itself, the spacious market-place and parade, with its Doric freestone column, an honorary memorial of the excellent Governor Smelt 13 . Thereto the right is the markethouse, and opposite to it the barracks; and hark ! that is the trumpet-call to parade. St. Mary's Church 14 occupies the south-eastern extremity of the market-place, and a little to the north of it is situated the Free School 15 , which was the more ancient church of St. Mary of Rushen, and has still about it more of the true character of church architecture than the modern erection.
That square building in the open space to the cast of the Castle is the House of Keys, the place of meeting of the Insular Parliament, consisting of twenty-four members, or Taxiaxi 16 , whose original institution dates back to the reign of Gorree or Orry, in the tenth century. And we must not overlook the old and new piers at the entrance to the harbour, altogether of insular materials and workmanship, and the guard-house just in front of the castle gates, with its lounging inmates and sentinel pacing to and fro.
But we have not quite clone with the castle itself,-we must visit the clock-tower, where the antiquarian will find objects for his study.
We may have observed that the windows looking in upon the central open square of the keep have relics of tracery worked in freestone, and evidently inserted at a date later than the building of the castle. In looking at the castle from the outside (say from the drawbridge over the river), we observe one of these more ornamented windows on the eastern side of the clock-tower. I had long a suspicion that this might have been the eastern window of the old chapel, and an examination of the interior of it converted the suspicion into a certainty.
On each side of the oriel window is a stone ledge on which rested the ancient altar, on the southern side of it a piscina, and on the north a small niche or cupboard (an equivalent of the credence table) for containing the sacred elements. In the northern angle of the little chapel, which is hardly fifteen feet square, is a small grated window communicating apparently with a cell, which has been since thrown into a passage; we may readily conjecture this to have been the Confessional. Here at any rate was the old chapel of the castle garrison, and we may feel thankful that it has been converted to no other use than that of containing the more recent though still venerable clock, which is itself not without interest. It was a present from Queen Elizabeth (as we have before noticed), and an improvement on the antique sundial upon the market-cross below; and the bell, upon which the hours are tolled, was by its inscription the gift of James, tenth Earl of the noble house of Derby, the last connected with the Isle of Man, in the year 1729, six years before his death.
How long this ancient chapel may be occupied by this solemn monitor of the lapse of time 't is hard to tell. An unsightly addition to the castle within the last two years has blocked up the clock-face, and public convenience may perhaps demand the removal of the machine to a more conspicuous locality. O tempora! O mores! We still have to go to school to the architects of the decried dark ages.
There are strange tales afloat respecting this castle and its inmates in days of yore. Tradition connects the castle with the Abbey of Rushen by means of a subterranean passage 17 , which the lover of romance at one time has rendered subservient to the rescue of a captive maiden by her affianced knight, at another has described as a kind of facilis descensus Averni, the dark road to the Home of the spell-bound Giants. There is little need of fiction to give interest to a building whose realities are all romantic, and must move to sadness the heart that can feel for others' woes; but Waldron's account of the Black Lady of Castle Rushen is given with such a zest for the marvellous, that it may perhaps relieve the tedium of what some will deem a dry matter-of-fact description of this relic of feudal pomp and power 18
"A mighty bustle they also make of an apparition which, they say, haunts Castle Rushen in the form of a woman, who was some years ago executed for the murder of her child. I have heard not only the debtors, but the soldiers of the garrison, affirm that they have seen it at various times; but what I took most notice of was the report of a gentleman, of whose good understanding as well as veracity I have a very high opinion. He told me, that happening to be abroad late one night, and caught in an excessive storm of wind and rain, he saw a woman stand before the castle gate; and as the place afforded not the smallest shelter, the circumstance surprized him, and he wondered that any one, particularly a female, should not rather run to some little porch or shed, of which there are several in Castletown, than choose to stand still, alone and exposed to such a dreadful tempest. Ills curiosity exciting him to draw nearer that be might discover who it was that seemed so little to regard the fury of the elements, he perceived she retreated on his approach, and at. last, be thought, went into the castle though the gates were shut. This obliging him to think that he bad seen a spirit, sent him home very much terrified: but the next day relating his adventure to soiree people who lived in the castle, and describing as near as he could the garb and stature of the apparition, they told him it was that of the woman abovementioned, who had frequently been observed by the soldiers on guard to pass in and out of the gates, as well as to walk through the rooms, though there were no visible means to enter. Though so familiar to the eye, no person has yet had the courage to speak to it; and as they say that a spirit has no power to reveal its mind unless conjured to do so in a proper manner, the reason of its being permitted to wander is unknown."
On leaving Castle Rushen, and the heroes both of romance and reality who make a figure on the page of its history, are two objects in the immediate neighbourhood closely associated with one of 'them, and serving to keep up our interest in the character of the great and unfortu- nate James Stanley, seventh Earl of Derby, and his most truly heroic Countess,-these are Mount Strange and King William's College.
At the head of Castletown Bay is a singular and characteristic patch of the boulder clay formation. It seems to have been originally one of those low, rounded, ellipsoidal hills of that formation, which we have had occasion already to notice in the neighbourhood of the Creggins, but of a still more diminutive character, hardly rising twenty-four feet above the present high-water level. The continued action of the sea, the rain and the wind, has in the lapse of time reduced this mound to at most only half its original size, and now it presents a low cliff to the south-westward, affording an excellent insight into its structure.
Let us imagine an inland lake, which in the extremity of a most severe winter has been frozen to a great thickness, bursting from the accession of waters on a sudden thaw; or rather let us call to mind the magnificent spectacle of the debacle of the Val de Bagnes 19 in the autumn of 1818, brought about by the extension of the Glacier de Getroz, and the consequent stoppage of the Dranse in the previous winter. The melting of the icy barrier, aided by the reflex action of the overpouring cascade, let loose in half an hour 500 million of cubic feet of water, to roar and rage and roll onwards through a narrow and tortuous gorge with unspeakable velocity and with awful grandeur; and thus ultimately a vast torrent of water, mud, gravel, boulders and blocks of ice poured forth upon the devoted district of Martigny, sweeping down in its passage trees, bridges, barns, cottages, and even large buildings.
Arrest such a torrent in its course, and, fixing it upon the spot, permit the waters quietly to drain off, and you have in character just such an accumulation as that presented at the head of Castletown Bay, only substituting in the latter place angular and scratched blocks of limestone for the angular and scratched blocks of ice.
We have a consolidated mass of black or dirty blue mud, such as we can easily imagine to be formed by the grinding down of the dark limestones and shales of this district, such a debris in fact as is formed in the yards of the stonemasons of this neighbourhood where this same limestone is cut and polished. In it we find mixed up confusedly gravel and sand, and pebbles (not large) of foreign rocks, granites, syenites and porphyries, fragments of the coalmeasures of Cumberland, and one or two chalk flints 20 . We have some boulders of the insular granite and larger masses of insular rock, such as greenstone and old red conglomerate, but above all masses of limestone in rhomboidal blocks, some weighing upwards of a ton and having the appearance of transport from Coshnahawin, a mile and a half to the north-eastward, where we find the limestone beds on the sea-shore cracked and broken up into similar masses by the intrusion and subsequent cooling down of trap. These limestone blocks seem pushed over one upon the other, and piled lip amongst the gravel, sand and clay in wondrous confusion.
Here is the study for the geologist; and he might, perhaps, imagine that one of the names of the spot, Mount Strange 21 , has something to do with the extraordinary history of its physical composition; but it is not so. The name is taken from one of the titles of the Derby family, and the locality is famous for an event which has been considered by some as casting a shade over the memory of that illustrious lady, whose defence of Lathom House 22 , and uncompromising fidelity to her sovereign and her liege lord, showed her worthy of being the wife of the great and good James, the seventh Earl of that noble family.
In the parish register of Kirk Malew is the following notice :-" Mr. William Christian of Ronaldsway, late Receiver, was shot to death at Hango Hill, 2nd January, 1662. IIe died most penitently and most courageously, made a good end, prayed earnestly, and next day was buried in the chancel of Kirk Malew."
The crime for which he suffered was alleged treason against the Countess of Derby, in that he had in the year 1651 headed an insurrection against her, and, taking the sovereign power into his own hands, had thereby deprived her and her heirs of their vested rights. He made no attempt in court to defend himself against the charge, alleging his Majesty Charles the Second's general pardon and indernnity as a sufficient bar against all legal proceedings. This plea was overruled by a majority of the court, as not availing in case of treason against a member of the reigning family, and he was sentenced forthwith to be "shot to death, that thereupon his life may depart from his body 23 ."
The memory ofWilliam Dhone is held sacred by Manxmen, and he has been regarded by them as a martyr to the cause of popular liberty. It is difficult at this distance of time, when the whole tone and character of society has so entirely changed, to pass a correct judgement upon acts which, if attempted now, would doubtless be reprobated as excessively harsh and unjustifiable.
That was not a period when those who had power felt themselves amenable to the judgement of their fellow-men as to the manner in which they should use it. The royalists had suffered too great injustice at the hands of the Roundheads in the period of the great rebellion, to be over scrupulous of the exact limits of justice towards the weaker party when the power was restored into their hands. They would doubtless endeavour to excuse any excess on the severer side, by the argument that " those should have judgement without mercy who had showed no mercy."
The husband of the noble Countess had, in defiance of all the laws of war, been condemned by a court-martial to lose his head, after quarter for life had absolutely been granted to him on his surrender; and he was put to death under aggravated circumstances of insult. William Christian was a protégé of the Earl, who reposed in han so much confidence as to leave him with the command of the insular troops, and as the protector of his wife and children. IIe enters into a conspiracy "to withstand the Lady of Derby in her designs;" and within eight days after the murder of her husband, at the head of a popular insurrection, forces the widowed and sorrowing Countess to consent to their demands.
It has been further stated, and never clearly disproved, that on the first appearance of the parliamentarytToops under Colonel Duckenfield off the island, William Christian at dead of night seized on the Countess and her favily in
Castle Rushen, and conveyed them as prisoners to the invading army. Into the true character of this man we may perhaps gain some further insight, from the circumstance that when James Chaloner was appointed commissioner by Lord Fairfax, he found it necessary to sequestrate the estate of the Receiver-General, to make compensation for the unaccounted for arrears of the exchequer, and imprisoned his brother John for assisting him in escaping off the island.
With a knowledge of these facts, let us place ourselves in the position of the Derby family at the period of the Restoration, and we shall perhaps own the temptation very great to hasten the downfall and death of such a character.
Since that event time and tide have done their work of devastation upon this spot. That old gray battlemented ruin crowning the mount was then standing in the midst of a circular area, and there was a drive all round it, and the cliff was removed some thirty or forty yards from the building. Already has one side of the large rectangular room which it contained become a prey to the waves, and the remainder totters on the brink of a precipice, which each equinoctial spring-tide bids fair wholly to pull down.
" No more the glance
Of blazing taper thro' its windows beams
And quivers o'er the undulating wave;
But naked stand the melancholy walls,
Lash'd by the wintry tempests cold and bleak,
Which piece-meal crumble down the whole to dust."
The ground was anciently used as a place of sepulture, and as the cliff tumbles down, the graves are exposed to view, and the skeletons one after another become the sport of the rolling surge. It has been presumed that these are the mortal remains of criminals who have been executed on the spot. If so, they must have suffered at a period anterior to the erection of the building now in ruins, for the destruction of the last winter has discovered skeletons directly under the very foundation of it 24 . I am somewhat inclined to the belief that we have here one of the many ancient tumuli which are scattered about the island; and that the use of the spot as a place of execution, and its consequent nomenclature, is of a more recent date.
But we have not yet entirely bid farewell to him with whom it has been well said, "the sun of the house of Stanley set in clouds and darkness."
There is good reason for tracing up the origin of King William's College to the great Earl of Derby who perished at Bolton. In that letter of advice 25 to his son Charles, which he wrote in 1613, during his sojourn at Castle Rushen, we meet with these two clauses : " Fear God, honour the King. Have this in your thoughts, first to choose a reverend and holy man to your bishop;" and " I had a design, and God may enable me to set up an university without much charge (as I have conceived it), which may much oblige the nations round about us. It may get friends unto the country and enrich this land. This certainly would please God and man." The troublous times in which he lived and died, prevented him from carrying out these pious designs. His son, when restored to his own, remembered one part of that advice, which has led, after the lapse of nearly two centuries, to an attempt at carrying out the wish of the father as above expressed. In 1661, good Mr. Rutter, who had been archdeacon for many years, was appointed to the bishopric, a man for whom (said the Earl to his son) you and I may both thank God. He was removed by death 26 in two years, and in his place was appointed Dr. Isaac Barrow 27 (afterwards translated to St. Asaph), who at the same time was made governor of the Isle. And in this joint office as sword-bishop, or governor both in civil and ecclesiastical state, he conferred in the short period of his stay most important and lasting benefits upon this church and people.
It has before been noticed 28 , that at the period of the Reformation the abbey third of the insular tithe fell into the hands of the Lord of the Isle, and that Bishop Barrow managed to purchase a long lease of those impropriations from Charles, the eighth Earl of Derby, and with these imhropriations he increased the salaries of the poorer clergy. After the purchase a small sum remained in his hands, which was afterwards increased to £600, which he directed should be applied towards furnishing a master for his proposed academic institution. He also by will granted the sum of £20 per annum, due and arising out of the profits of the estate of Ballagilley and Hango Hill, towards the maintenance of three boys at this academic school when it should be settled; or in case there should be no such school within twelve months after his decease, then towards the maintenance of two youths at some university abroad 29 . In the year 1728, the trustees of Bishop Barrow's fund came into full possession of the above estates; and after the year 1808, the Academic Masters' fund and the Academic Students' fund were merged into one trust.
The accumulations from this trust, aided by public subscriptions and a mortgage on the Ballagilley and Hango Hill estates, enabled the trustees to commence the erection of the present college, which was first opened for the reception of students on the 1st of August, 1833, and named in memory of his Majesty King William IV.
Writing in the year 1829, Lord Teignmouth says, "Bishop Ward does not despair of executing another project-tbe foundation of a college for the education of the Manx clergy. The success which has rewarded a similar plan of the Bishop of St. David's, affords him much encouragement; and it is hoped that such a place of education might, from its vicinity, and from the great cheapness of living, attract students from Ireland and the adjacent parts of England, who could not otherwise afford the expenses of a residence at College; and that l'Iona may become once more, as in ancient times, the fountain of honest learning and erudition 30 ."
And in a note written in 1836, he adds, "It affords me much gratification to state the successful result of the zealous efforts of Bishop Ward, and other trustees of Bishop Barrow's fund, to establish a college for the objects above specified. That worthy Prelate's pious intentions have been thus fulfilled, after an interval of nearly two centuries."
May we not believe that Bishop Barrow had before him the suggestions of the illustrious Earl of Derby in his famous letter to his son, and that to such suggestions King William's College is somewhat indebted for its present existence? 31
1 St. Russia, after whom the Castle, the Abbey, and the Sheading have taken their name, was one of the twelve missionary fathers who along with Columba settled in Iona, A.D. 563. [JGC is almost certainly mistaken here though the name Rushen is still argued about]
2 A.D. 947. See page 34 supra.
3 Rolt's Isle of Man, page 4:', edition 1773.
4 Between the old and new pier is a trap-dyke, which seems to have greatly altered the limestone with which it is in contact. See Plates 11. and III.
5 Anciently at the castle-gate were placed three stone sedilia, one for the governor, and the other two for the deemsters. In the year 1430, Henry Byrors, the lieutenant-governor, held a court of all the Commons between the gates on the Tuesday next after the 20th day of Christmas.
6 In which the public archives are kept.
7 Lorn House, to the northward of Castletown, has latterly been the Lieutenant-Governor's residence: it is the property of the Cunninghame family
8 Thus :-
9 For an account of James, seventh Earl of Derby, see Appendix, Note G.
10 Cardinal Fleury wanted much to see him, and sent over on purpose to inquire after his health, his age, and the date of his consecration, as they were the two oldest bishops, and he believed the poorest in Europe; at the same time inviting him to France. The bishop sent the cardinal an answer which gave him so high an opinion of him tirat he obtained an order tirat no French privateer should ravage the Isle of :Man."-Crutwoell's Life of Bishop Wilson, gvo edition, vol. i, page 326.
11 The style of this and most of the other doorways is the squareheaded trefoil arch, which prevailed in England in the twelfth century.
12 See Plate VII., section 6.
13 Erected in 1836.
14 In clearing away the foundation of the ancient cross which stood in the market-place, when the new portico of St. Mary's Chapel was erected in 1826, three Roman coins of Germanicus and Agricola were discovered. The first erection of St. Mary's Chapel was by Bishop Wilson in 1695. See Crutwell's Life of Bishop Wilson, vol. i. page 41, 8vo edition.
15 Of which the bishop and archdeacon are trustees : free-boys 10; master's salary 601. per annum.-Isle of -Man Charities, p.23.
16 Mr. Feltham states (page 139 of his Tour through the Isle of Man), on the authority of Mr. C. Vallancey, that " in the Gaedhlic taisce means a pledge or mortgage, and aisee a trespass;" and he infers that these Taxiaxi were originally hostages to the Lord of the Isle for their different clans. In the statute-book there is a document (drawn up in 1422, when the great meeting of the Commons was held at Rencurling in Kirk Michael) which states "that there were never twenty-four Keys in certainty since they were first called Taxiaxi : these were twenty-four freeholders, to wit, eight in the out isles and sixteen in your land of D1an, and that was in King Orry's days. And since they have not been in certainty, but if a strange point will come which the Lieutenant will have reserved to the Tyuwald twice in the year; and by the leave of the Lieutenant the deemsters there to call of the best to his Council in that point as he thinks fit to give judgment; and without the Lord's will none of the twenty-four Keys to be." At the Court held at Castle Rushen in 1430 by Henry Byron, as before stated, six men out of every Sheading being chosen by the people and presented to him, he selected four out of each six and so made up the number twentyfour. At the present time, lc hen one member dies or is discharged, the rest present two persons to the Governor, from whom he chooses one to fill up the vacancy. The name Keys is perhaps derived from the Manks "Keesh," a tax. Till 1706 the Keys met in a room in the Castle. The present building was occupied by them in 1815.
17 The fact of dark cells built in the solid foundations of the towers and strongly arched over was established in certain repairs of the building made in 1316.
18 Waldron's Description of the Isle of Man, folio edition, 1731, page 136.
19 For an account of this debâcle see Lyell's Geology, vol. i., or Edinburgh Phil. Journal, vol. i.
20 The nearest locality of the chall: is in the north of Ireland. It is just possible that the examples of chalk-flint which I have found in the boulder clay of Hango hill may have tumbled down out of the overlying drift-gravel.
21 It is generally known by the name Hango Hill, from its having been formerly- used as a place of execution.
22 See Peek's Desiderata Curiosa, vol. ii. p. 449.
23 Sir Walter Scott in his ` Peveril of the Peak,' has erroneously stated that his execution took place in the court-yard of Peel Castle. He has perhaps confounded this William Christian with Edward Christian, who died in Peel Castle in 1670, having been committed by the Earl of Derby in 1643, on his attempting a disturbance. He had been governor in 1628
24 In addition to the case of William Christian before mentioned; there is another memorandum in the parish register, stating that in the year 1654 Kewish and Callow of Kirk Maughold, who were executed at Mango Hill, were buried in Kirk Malew.
25 See Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, vol. ii. p. 429.
26 The following singular epitaph, written by himself, was placed on the tomb of Bishop Rutter in Peel Cathedral, inscribed on a brass-plate. The plate was removed from the tomb about fifty years ago, and was supposed to be lost or destroyed, but was discovered in 184-1 at the bottom of a well near the sally-port of Peel Castle.
In hac domo quam a vermiculis
Aceepi confratribus meis spe
Resurrectionis ad vitaet
Jaeeo Sam permissione divina
Episcopus la jus insults.
Siste, Leétor} = {Vide ac ride
Palatium Episcopi. Obiit XXX° die meusis Maii 1663.
27 Fellow of Eton, and uncle to the famous Dr. Isaac Barrow, Plaster of Trinity College, Cambridge.
28 Page 49, supra.
29 At the present, three youths at Cambridge are holding exhibitions from this estate of thirty pounds a-year each.
30 " Hector Boetius says that Man was the fountain of all honest learning and erudition. Others of the Scotch nation held it to be the Mansion of the Muses, and the Royal Academy for educating the heirs apparent of the crown of Scotland, as Eagcnius the Third himself, who likewise sent three of his sons into the Isle of 1Man to be educated under Conanns, whom they write Bishop of Sodor, two of which, Ferquard and Donald, were successively kings of Scotland, as both Hector Boetius and Hollinshead witness. So celebrated was the discipline of those ages, that it seems to have passed into a law that the princes of Scotland should be educated in this island."-Sacheverell's Account of the Isle of Man, the Introduction, P. 5.
31 For a further account of King William's College see note 11, Appendix,
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