[From Letters of Bishop Hildesley]

The Letters of Bishop Hildesley,

Edited by Mr. A. Moore, M.A., S.H.K.
(Reprinted from The Manx Sun )

INTRODUCTION.

That good and pious prelate, Bishop Hildesley, came to the Isle of Man in August, 1755, and died there in December, 1772. During that period he seems to have written at least once weekly to the Rev. Philip Moore, who was Rector of Bride, and Schoolmaster and Chaplain of Douglas. Of these letters, ninety-two* are in the possession of the writer, having come to him from his great- great-grandfather, Edward Moore, son of Vicar-General Moore, the Rev. Philip Moore's brother.

He now presents them to your readers in the hope that, forgiving their prolixity, they may find some, at least, of their contents of interest even at this distance of time. They are distinguished not only by their high literary quality, but by their occasional sparks of wit and humour, and they afford excellent evidence of the charming character of their writer and of the friendly and even affectionate terms he was on with his correspondent. They give us, moreover, vivid glimpses of a time curiously remote from and different to our own. Take, for instance, the difficulties and delays of travelling, either by sea or by land. On one occasion the Bishop was weather-bound at: Whitehaven for more than a fortnight, and his letters abound in complaints of the roads. He had a carriage and he was able to get to Ramsey and to the South of the Island in it; but the only road to Douglas, except via Peel, or Ramsey,+ was over the mountains, and that seems to have been impracticable for wheeled vehicles. Philip Moore's wife did the Bishop's shopping in Douglas, and we learn, incidentally, how meagre were the resources of the shops there, and how indifferent the tradespeople seemed about doing business. "Have shop-keepers in England," asks the Bishop, "to be so courted, or do they not rather court custom?"

He often complains, too, of the coldness of the people, which, as we know, is more apparent: than real. His earnestness in the good work of translating the Bible and other books into ne is clearly shown, also the reception these books received from the town and country people respectively. Regarding the distribution of one of these books, the "Manx Monitor," he says: "I do not send them to the towns, for fear of affronting them with a language they almost begin to be ashamed of while, at the same time, he declares that the country people "seem almost ready to eat" the book, they were so eager to get it. The well-to-do classes appear, generally speaking, to have been opposed: to the Manx translations, and we find the Bishop exclaiming, "This, I believe, is the only country in the world that is ashamed of, and even inclined to extirpate, if it could, its own native tongue", We shall also find reference to the scarcity of newspapers and the eagerness to get them. "But if the papers," says the Bishop, "are lent about to sundry other hands, when is poor Sodor to be supplied?"

Letters were letters in those days, and the postage a very serious item. We learn, too, something of the domestic industries of the time — beer and cider were brewed, and bacon and herrings cured, at Bishopscourt; ink was made, not, bought. Commenting on these letters and their authors, and others from Manxmen, chiefly the clergy contemporary with Philip Moore, the Rev. T. E. Brown says, in a letter to the writer :—

"What dear old fellows! How they pelt one another with classical quotations! The Latin apt enough and correct, the Greek a little shaky! P. Moore was the life and soul of the group. . . . Then Hildesley — a sweet old gossip, very prolix, but with plenty of good sense. . . . Then the colouring. Matters of postage and carriage of goods. The whole life of the time. Men going to and fro. The 'custom-houses.' The wines, &c., carried in creels across the back of some venerable Dobbin. The exquisite manner; warmth of friendship, combined with respect and deference. The snug Douglas parsonage; the rather ramshackle priest's lodgings at Bride ; the pleasant parlour at Bishop's Court. Then, fancy, Mrs Moore! The good Bishop's fondness for her, and his little sly girds at the careful matron. . . . I have lived in the 18th century with these letters, and have had a delightful time."

Footnotes

*Nineteen of these letters were published in Hildesley's Memoirs, issued in 1799, which were published by the Rev, Weeden Butler who had received them from Edward Moore. The remaining seventy-two have never been published.

+The road to Ballacraine was not then in existence.

They were first published as weekly instalments in the Manx Sun 12 Nov 1904 -24 June 1905. The collected set of newspaper columns was published in a very restricted edition of 12 copies in 1906 - the Manx Museum copy is however deficient in missing letters XVIII, XIX and LXV-LXXIV - the pages here are extracted from the newspapers.