[From Land of Home Rule, 1893]

CHAPTER XI.

CHURCH DISCIPLINE.

THE Restoration in Man was followed by the same consequences as the Restoration in England. Episcopacy, which had been abolished in 1643, was almost immediately restored, and Lord Derby selected for the bishopric Samuel Rutter ¹ who had been his father's chaplain and his own tutor, who for many years had held the Archdeaconry of the Island, who had been present at the memorable siege of Lathom House in 1644, and who had advised the surrender of Castle Rushen in 1651. Rutter died in the first year of his episcopacy, and was succeeded by Isaac Barrow, who must not be confounded with his more celebrated namesake and kinsman, the Master of Trinity. Barrow, who was not only Bishop but Governor, or, as the Manx say, the last of the Sword-Bishops,² was translated to St. Asaph in 1669. After his translation three men of inferior reputation successively held the bishopric. On the death of the last of these three, the See was left vacant for four years, when Lord Derby succeeded in prevailing upon Wilson to accept it. For the next fifty-eight years Wilson retained the See, refusing translation in the well-known words, "I will not leave my wife in my old age because she is poor."'

On one side of Wilson's character it is needless to say much. Some of his more familiar writings are the common property of Christendom; and his "Sacra Privata" is numbered among the most popular of devotional books. His private life was as beautiful as his written word. At the commencement of his career he set aside one-fifth of all his income for pious uses ² he largely increased the amounts of these benefactions as he advanced in years ; ³ and, when famine approached the Island, with its helpmate pestilence in its train, his large-hearted generosity did much to alleviate distress and to mitigate disease.

Religion derived a distinct benefit from the excellence of his example and the energy of his administration. Many of the parish churches in the Island were built or restored in his episcopate. He repaired and improved his own palace and promoted the erection of houses for his clergy. In an age, when the advantages of education had obtained no public and little private recognition, he strenuously endeavoured to establish schools in every parish; and he laboured to increase, both from his own resources and from other contributions, the in adequate endowments of his parochial clergy. In all these matters Wilson was a model bishop. If he were to be judged by them alone, the verdict of posterity would be unanimous in his favour. Unhappily his proceedings in other respects have estranged from him the sympathy which would otherwse have clung to his memory.

One act of vandalism indeed which the Bishop committed may perhaps be ascribed to the tendencies of the age in which he lived. He stripped the lead off the chancel of the venerable cathedral at Peel in order to provide for roofing a new church in a neighbouring parish, accelerating by this conduct the ruin of a building which was already falling into decay. One act of authority, moreover, the historian may leave to the ecclesiastic to criticise; for the Bishop sanctioned the marriage of a man whose wife was alive, but who had been convicted of a capital offence, though her sentence had been commuted for one of transportation on her undertaking never to return to the Island without the Lord's permission.⁴ In judging the Bishop's career, it is safer to confine the reader's attention to his views on church discipline, which it is impossible to defend, and his political achievements, which it is happily as impossible not to admire.

Very early in his episcopate the Bishop showed a commendable determination to enforce morality among a clergy whose conduct was in some instances lax. In 1699 he suspended the vicar of the parish in which he lived for unchaste conduct, and in 1704 he revoked the orders both of priest and deacon of another vicar for similar irregularity.⁵ In 1711 he sentenced a layman, who was a very grievous offender, to do penance in seven parish churches, while in the same year he excommunicated another similar offender, only granting absolution after he had done penance in nine churches.' Women guilty of unchastity were even more severely dealt with, being ordered "to stand at the church door, Sundays and holidays, at matins and evensong, till the minister and congregation be convinced of their true penitence." One woman was not only excommunicated, but imprisoned in the Bishop's prison.' In 1714 the Bishop ordered a bridle to be made, "as a terror to people of ill-tongue." And a poor wretch, "who had taken upon himself falsely to be father of an illegitimate child," was ordered "to stand for one hour, during the height of the market, with a paper upon his breast expressing his crime, in each of the four towns." And if he should refuse, "the court will order hin, to wear the bridle also." A woman found guiity of four distinct slanders was about the same time sentenced to "a fortnight's imprisonment, and to wear the bridle three market days at the cross at Castletown." A wretched, half-witted woman, the mother of three illegitimate children, was dragged, by the Bishop's orders, after a boat in the sea at Peel Town at the height of the market; and this form of ecclesiastical punishment appeals to have been adopted almost as a mere matter of course.'

How prevalent discipline was, and how injurious, may be inferred from the remarks of an independent observer. George Waldron was residing in the island when the discipline was at its height. He was no one-sided critic, for he distinctly states that he wished to restore the discipline of the primitive Church, and he has placed on record the many amiable qualities which, he says, adorned Wilson's character. He declares, indeed, that Wilson rather complied with than approved the discipline which he enforced, "being in his own nature what our blessed Saviour recommends, mild, humble, tender, compassionate, and forgiving." Yet this is what Waldron has to say of the ecclesiastical system

"Over the elder people of the island, these men [the clergy] reign with the joined power of spiritual pastors and masters; their injunctions, for they cannot properly be called instruc tions, are delivered from the pulpit in harangues, which go by the denomination of sermons, in which are never heard the divine attributes asserted, or any article of faith proved from Scripture; sometimes, indeed, they preach up a moral duty, but the chief and most frequent subject of their discourses ss the power of the priesthood and the discipline of the Church. These doctrines they thunder out, as the Pope does his Bulls, with an anathema tacked to them, and enforce them by a strong argument called Kirk Jarmyns [the ecclesiastical prison in the crypt of German cathedral] on all who are disobedient or unbelieving.

"The discipline of the Church being perpetually dinned into the ears of the laity, and the indispensable obligation of submitting to it, the abject creatures are drove to prison like sheep to a fold, and from thence to public penance, as quietly as those beasts are to the slaughter; deterred, on the one hand, from murmuring by the threatenings of severer punishment, and persuaded on the other that patient sub mission to the inflictors is the supremest merit in the eyes of Heaven.

"How little the methods taken by this court to prevent [unchastity] have succeeded, may be known by the great number of offenders, which are every Sunday doing penance for it in their churches; and in my opinion draw on a more pernicious evil than that which they design to avoid. If the least familiarity is observed between persons of a different sex, they are immediately summoned to the communion table, and then obliged to swear themselves innocent, or endure the shame and punishment ordained for the crime. This they call purging, but it is so far from being worthy of that name, that many, to avoid public disgrace, add the sin of perjury to the other, and take the most solemn oath that can be invented to a falsehood. Innumerable are the instances I could give of this truth.

"As the Earl of Derby, though styled Lord of Man, might justly enough be called king, –all causes, except in the spiritual court, being tried in his name, and all warrants for life and death signed by his hand,– his utmost endeavours have not been wanting to curb the assuming power of the ecclesiastics. As, for example, when the sumner comes to apprehend any person for an offence committed, or said to be committed, in that court, had the person so seized courage enough to refuse going to prison under his conduct, he cannot be compelled, because the soldiers of the garrison have orders from their commanders never to be aiding or assisting to any such commitments. Hence it follows that the spiritual and temporal powers are at the extremest odds with each other; and were it hot for the blind obedience the laity pay to their ghostly fathers, the former would soon be subjected."

As a means of checking immorality the discipline thus carried out proved a signal failure. The wretched woman, for instance, who was drawn through the sea behind a boat at Peel Town, was presented, a few years later, for the same offence, sentenced a second time to the same dreadful punishment, and required to perform penance in every parish church in the island. Discipline, in fact, failed to secure purity even among the clergy and in the Bishop's own household, and the profane in the diocese had ample cause for scoffing in the notorious irregularities of the Bishop's servants.

The Bishop's ideas of church discipline, moreover, brought him into conflict with the civil power. The Clerk of the Rolls, one of the chief officers of the island, was thrown into prison, and, when he prayed to be heard in his own defence, the Bishop endorsed the petition with his own hand, "That such petition was not customary and would not be allowed."' But the Bishop's quarrel with the Clerk of the Rolls was as nothing compared with his conflict with the Governor. If it be permissible to compare small things with great, the struggle between Henry II. and Becket was renewed on a minute stage, and the contests of the twelfth century were renewed in the eighteenth in the little Island of Man.

During the earlier years of the Bishop's rule, indeed, the Church did not come into collision with the civil power, and the civil power did not interfere with the Church. Successive Governors aided the Bishop in carrying out his sentences, placing soldiers at his disposal to arrest his prisoners and to enforce the orders for dragging incorrigible women behind boats. In 1714, however, a new Governor, Captain Alexander Horne, was sent to the Island. Very little is known of the career and character of this gentleman, who was destined to play the part of Henry II. in a little island. He seems to have been a person of only moderate ability and still more moderate attainments, but he seems also to have been jealous of his own authority, and to have been a firm supporter of the Hanoverian succession. He reached the island at a moment when the position of the House of Hanover was not secure. The Pretender was making the attempt on the throne which was practically suppressed at Sheriffmuir. High Churchmen in England were notoriously sympathising with the claims of the House of Stuart, and Horne seems to have imagined that so distinguished a Churchman as Wilson must necessarily have been animated by the same sentiments.¹ Political questions, with which the Island had no immediate concern, raised differences between Governor and Bishop at the very outset; and differences, when they once arise, have a natural tendency to become intense. The Bishop probably thought the Governor's suspicions unjust; the Governor was led to distrust the Bishop; and the ground was accordingly prepared for a very pretty quarrel.

The quarrel first broke out upon an unworthy subject. Mary Henricks, the wife of a Douglas publican, misbehaved herself; was prosecuted for misconduct, censured, and ordered to do penance. She proved stubborn and rebellious, and, refusing to comply with the orders of the Church, was formally excommunicated.² But this "tremendous censure," as the Bishop himself called it, only affected poor Mary's eternal state. In addition, she was committed to St. German's prison. Tens of thousands of persons are familiar with the damp subterranean crypt below the ruined cathedral which served as a gaol; and Wilson's biographer, in noticing the transaction, declares that "the delivery of the criminal in body as well as goods seems to have implied a kind of penal servitude either for life or for a term of years."

Poor Mary Henricks, however, with this dreadful punishment before her, appealed from the Church to Caesar, and the Governor forwarded her appeal to Lord Derby. Lord Derby ordered the appeal to be heard before him in London; and, as the Bishop did not choose to appear either by himself or his proctor,' he directed that no person should "anywise insult, molest, or disturb the said Mary Henricks," and that his order should be published at the market cross at Douglas and at Kirk Braddan Church. And, on the Bishop's making an elaborate reply that the appeal in spiritual matters lay to the Archbishop of York and not to the Lord, the Governor, sitting with his Deemster, controller, and water bailiff fined the Bishop £10 for contempt. ²

The issue between State and Church was now plainly stated. The State, like Henry II. six centuries before, was maintaining its own supremacy. The Church, relying on an English statute passed in the reign of Henry VIII., was contending that the ultimate appeal in spiritual matters was to York, and not to Knowsley. 'The State, in its contention, rested on the advice of the Deemsters; the Bishop had at his back the vicars-general; and, believing that the people were with him and not with the Governor, he asked that the Deemsters and twenty-four Keys might be called together, he and the vicars general, who are the Lord's sworn judges for ecclesiastical affairs, being present, "to deem the law truly in this great and high point."' And Governor Horne, in refusing this request, put the position of the State on still firmer ground than it had previously occupied.

"Your Lordship knows very well that a complaint of this nature is not cognisable before the twenty-four Keys, but properly before the Right Honourable the Lord of this Isle, who is also Metropolitan and Chief of the Holy Church of this Island."

And, though the Bishop carried his complaint to Knowsley, and, after procuring a copy of the 3rd Henry VIII., ultimately obtained a remission of his fine, the claim of the Governor that the Lord was the head not only of the State but of the Church was not withdrawn.²

This unseemly controversy, which has been related in a few sentences, was protracted over many years. Mary Henricks was presented for her offence in 1716, and the fine on the Bishop was only remitted in August 1719. And the lengthened struggle did no good to any one; it ended in something like a stalemate: the delinquent was not imprisoned, and the fine on the Bishop was not levied. Even poor Mary, the humble unfortunate round whose body the hot contest had raged, did not derive much advantage from the issue; she was saved the terrible hardships of confinement in the damp crypt of St. German's, but she was exposed to the greater tortures which the Church reserved for those whom it placed out of communion: wandering "from place to place in a miserable destitute condition, being yt every person, tho' of nevr soe great acquaintance, are in noe mannr willing to give yr poor petitioner reliefe or lodging soe long as she remains excluded out of the Church." No Irish landlord, suffering from the tyranny of the Land League, ever suffered such misery as was the lot of this poor woman, who, after enduring her hardships for half a dozen years, prayed for reconciliation. And the Bishop at the time, as well as his biographer in our own time, persuaded themselves that submission due to distress was evidence of repentance, and proof of the salutary effects of ecclesiastical discipline; and so poor Mary, after doing penance in six churches, was absolved and received into the peace of the Church, and the curtain drops on her unhappy story.'

But, before the curtain fell on this melancholy drama, the contest was renewed round more prominent personages. In 1719, Mr. Robert Horrobin, the curate of Warrington, was appointed by Lord Derby to the Archdeaconry of the Island. At or about the same time he became chaplain to the Governor. Soon after his arrival, he preached a sermon at Castletown on the text, "He shall reward every man according to his works ;" when, according to the sworn testimony of Mr. Ross, a clergyman — who, however, had been himself suspected of Romish tendencies — he said some "very shocking things," arguing that "great and good actions, wherever found, were sufficient to obtain the rewards of another life."² In 1720 the Archdeacon went a step further. Preaching on the text that "God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, he taught, or was generally thought to teach, that the heathen are in a state of salvation if they live according to the light of nature." A gentleman living in Castletown expressed with freedom his opinion on the sermon, and the Archdeacon was irritated into denouncing him as "an injurious person and a calumniator." ¹ A miserable little storm in a miserable little teacup should have been disregarded by every one in authority. Wilson, unhappily, took the contrary course of summoning the Archdeacon and his accusers before him. The proceedings, which were thus commenced at the beginning of 1721, made little progress; and in the following October the charge against the Archdeacon was renewed by a young widow, Mrs. Puller. This young lady, who seems to have known very little about doctrine, was made uneasy by a sermon of the Archdeacon's on absolution, which contained views contrary to those she had heard expressed by Mr. Ross. She accordingly borrowed a work "writ by a worthy member of the Church," which gave her great satisfaction, for it showed that Mr. Ross was right and the Archdeacon wrong. Mrs. Puller, like most ladies who reside in small places, had a wagging tongue. She expressed herself with freedom about the Archdeacon's sermons; she declared the Archdeacon to be a man "past grace" or "past all reformation;" and she added she wished he would refuse her the Sacrament, as he would get the worst of it, and she would cause his gown to be stripped off his shoulders.

The Archdeacon had hitherto acted without temper, but he probably regarded Mrs. Puller as the mouthpiece of other and more influential persons; and accordingly, accepting the challenge which she had given, repelled her from the Communion. He communicated his decision to the Bishop, adding that, "if she thought me worth conversing with, I would explain to her more particularly the reasons why I could not in conscience admit her." But Mrs. Puller had no intention of holding any communication with Horrobin. She declined, notwithstanding the Bishop's advice to the contrary, to wait on the Archdeacon; and accordingly the Bishop summoned both parties to a formal hearing at Bishopscourt. Mrs. Puller arrived on the appointed day, armed with testimonials of her character and piety. The Archdeacon, on the same day, appeared at Bishopscourt; and, on the authority of Mrs. Horne, the wife of the Governor, charged Mrs. Puller with undue familiarity with Sir James Poole, a gentleman residing in Castletown. The matter was adjourned for Mrs. Horne's attendance; and as Mrs. Horne's testimony was not corroborated, and Sir James Poole and Mrs. Puller denied their guilt, swearing "on the Holy Evangelists, on their knees," the matter was so far settled. But ecclesiastical discipline was not satisfied with this solution of the dilemma. Mrs. Horne had been the Archdeacon's witness, and Mrs. Horne's testimony had not been corroborated. In any society Mrs. Puller would have had a right to seek her remedy against Mrs. Horne: but this simple process did not satisfy Wilson and his advisers. They proceeded, without trial, to condemn the complainant's witness. Mrs. Horne, they declared, by her "gross slander," had rendered herself liable to public penance; but they were mercifully pleased to declare that, if she would acknowledge her offence publicly in St. Mary's Chapel, or before the vicar of the parish, asking forgiveness 'for the great injury done, she should be relieved from the sentence of penance and imprisonment to which she was liable. In the meanwhile she was expressly excluded from participating in the Communion.

Horne, it has already been stated, was not a strong man. Like many weak men, he was himself frequently guilty of arbitrary conduct, and the little that is known of him does not entitle him to be regarded as a hero. The Keys, who through out the controversy took the side of the Church, drew up a long series of grievances which they experienced under his administration¹ On the other hand, it is fair to recollect that throughout the struggle Horne acted on the advice and with the concurrence of his council, and that Lord Derby was able to testify that the persons complained of are honest and very well-meaning men.² Whether, however, Home was worthy of praise or of censure, the ill-judged controversy had reached a stage which he could not but resent. The quarrel had been carried into his own household. The Bishop was striking at his Lord's chaplain and his own wife. The Governor struck back, like a man, at the Bishop.

Yet the Governor, annoyed as he undoubtedly was, continued to act upon the advice of his council. In all that he did, he apparently followed the counsel of his judicial officers and his attorney-general. By their advice he drew up what Wilson's biographer calls "Articles of Impeachment," in which he charged the Bishop with holding convocations without authority, and in which he claimed that the Lord's household was exempt from spiritual discipline. "The Lord's claim," writes Keble with much point,^' "corresponds with Henry II.'s quarrel against Becket for presuming to excommunicate the king's tenants; and the Bishop's summoning his synod at will was the prerogative of which the other Henry, in the sixteenth century, showed himself so jealous, and which he so effectually extinguished. Thus, as in so many other points, the annals of this small Island of Man prove to be a sort of miniature reflection of far more important histories."

The articles thus prepared by Governor and council were forwarded to the Bishop, who was invited to attend at a Tynwald held at Castle Rushen and reply to them. The Bishop with his vicars-general appeared, but, instead of pleading to the charges, asked that the Deemsters and Keys might be called "to deem' the law truly in this great and high point, viz., whether by the law and practice of the Isle the attorney-general can exhibit accusations against the magistrates, either spiritual or temporal, no appeal being brought in due form against their proceedings by the person pretending to be injured? And whether by a procedure of the kind, in matters purely spiritual, as the particulars charged upon us certainly are, the metro- political right of the See of York be not manifestly impugned and endeavoured to be set aside?" The Governor and his advisers, however, paid no attention to the request. After hearing the attorney-general, the court proceeded to declare the proceedings of the Bishop and his vicars-general to be irregular and illegal, and required them to retract and cancel their said proceedings upon the registry.

The matter was not suffered to remain in this state. Four months later, as the Bishop and vicars-general declined to comply with this order, the Bishop was fined £50, the vicars general £20 each for contempt; and, as they refused to pay their fines, they were imprisoned in Castle Rushen.

The cell is still shown at the entrance of the old castle in which the Bishop is said to have undergone the sentence of imprisonment. Damp and miserable, it affected his health, and crippled him thenceforward in the use of one of his hands. But from the moment of his imprisonment he made up his mind to carry the controversy to London. He appealed to the King in Council; and the Council, on the advice of the law officers, gave the appellants the opportunity of paying their fines, without prejudice to the appeal, and of consequently escaping from the rigour of their imprisonment. Two years afterwards it decided that the judgment and orders of the Governor were illegal, and ordered that the fines imposed and paid should be returned.

Technically the victory was the Bishop's. The judgments and orders of which he had complained had been reversed, the fines had been remitted, his prison door had been opened, and Home himself either retired or was removed from the government. Popular support too was with the Bishop. The Keys throughout the struggle had been in his favour, the people had cheered him in prison with their sympathy, they cheered him on his release with their applause. But, though the judgment of the Privy Council and the voice of the people were with the Bishop, many circumstances must have tended to diminish the victory. His crippled hand may have thence-forward helped to remind him of the physical consequences which might result to his victims from imprisonment in a far more cruel dungeon than that in which he had been confined; the heavy costs which the appeal had involved may have taught him that victory was hardly less ruinous than defeat while his own good sense must have shown him that, after all his sufferings, the points which had been decided in his favour were precisely those which were of no significance. All that the Privy Council had done was to declare that the Governor had exceeded his functions in setting aside the decisions of an ecclesiastical court, and that the Tynwald at which the fine was imposed was not duly constituted.¹ The question whether the appeal from the Bishop was to York or to Knowsley was not decided ; the claim of the civil power that its own officers were exempt from the discipline of the Church was not touched; the right of the ecclesiastical courts to obtain the aid of the civil officers to enforce its decrees was not alluded to.

Though, too, Home was either removed or retired from his office, the men who were chosen to succeed him showed equal determination in curbing the power of the Church. Home was followed by a Mr. Floyd or Lloyd, who, after enjoying his office for only a few months, during part of which he was absent from the Island, was followed by a Mr. Horton. Of Floyd or Lloyd we have two accounts. In Keble's pages, Floyd is "the patron of criminous persons," in other words, he did his best to shield the servants of the State from the horrible tortures of ecclesiastical discipline. A very different character of him has been given by Waldron, who wrote a Latin ode in alcaic stanzas in his honour, who describes him as a gallant soldier and an eloquent orator, rightly chosen for the arduous task of government,' and urges his return from a temporary absence in England to the little kingdom which had been blessed by his appointment.² The excessive panegyric of Waldron may be safely set against the exaggerated strictures of Keble; and the student may conclude that Lloyd was a soldier who had seen good service, and a governor who, without much consideration for religion, was animated by a desire to do his duty.

However this may be, Lloyd steadily clung to the privilege which he asserted, that the officers of the State were free from ecclesiastical censures. He even screened notorious evildoers by appointing them to offices which gave them this immunity, and he as steadily refused to allow the ecclesiastical officers the assistance of the civil power, denying them the aid of soldiers to enforce their arrests. Church discipline, in these circumstances, may have theoretically remained intact. In practice, the thunder was still audible, but the lightning was powerless; and Horton, who succeeded Lloyd, pursued the same policy. So far as the Bishop was concerned, indeed, he had gained little by the substitution of Horton for Horne. Horton appears to have been the worse man and the more powerful opponent. He thwarted in every way in his power the continuance of the discipline. He persuaded Lord Derby, as the crown livings fell vacant, to fill them with persons opposed to the Bishop's policy, and he successfully asserted his right to appoint the chief sumner, the Bishop's principal executive officer.

And so, though the Church had been represented by the strongest and best man who had appeared in the island, though the State had to find its champions in comparatively weak men like Horne and Horton, victory was already pro nouncing on the side of the State. The relaxation of discip line followed surely on the proceedings of the Government. The wardens and the grand inquest neglected to present spirittlal offenders; offenders, when presented, braved out their sentences; even the awful name of excommunication lost its terrors when it carried with it nothing but ecclesiastical censures;¹ and, though the Bishop struggled on for some years, the discipline gradually fell into decay, and was ultimately abandoned.

In these days it is needless to express any opinion on the horrid system which Wilson attempted to revive. It is difficult lndeed to understand how a man whose kindness shines so pleasantly in all that he wrote and in most that he did should have ever made himself the agent of such a policy. Perhaps his history helps to explain how the Inquisition became a possibility. They, indeed, who believe that eternal suffering is the inevitable doom of those who infringe the commandments of the Church and disbelieve its doctrines, must logically conclude that no discipline can be too severe which is exercised with the object of reconciling offenders. "The sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared" with the interminable tortures of an endless hereafter. The best men, the most faithful Christians, become in consequence the worst persecutors; and a Wilson in the eighteenth century wields, and a Keble in the nineteenth century defends, a discipline which shocks the ordinary reader.

The fact that the people–if indeed the Keys of the eighteenth century can be said to have represented the people–sided with the Bishop may induce regret, but ought not to cause surprise. An ignorant and superstitious population is always in favour of strong, and even cruel, measures; and the Manx men may have enjoyed the spectacle of a wretched woman dragged through the sea, just as the Spaniards enjoyed the spectacle of an auto da fe. And the Manxmen of Wilson's time were as superstitious as they were ignorant. Waldron, our chief authority, is full of the excessive superstition which reigns among them. Their spiritual masters, he says in another passage, "take care to maintain their authority by keeping the laity in the most miserable ignorance.... Some (he adds) who are willing to entertain the most favourable Opinion of this people impute their general ignorance to their want of books; but I, who have lived and conversed some time among them, attribute their want of books to their innate ignorance."

Thus, then, in a little island where the arm of the State was weak, and the people were ignorant and superstitious, a good Bishop, endowed with exaggerated ideas about the duties of the Church, was enabled temporarily to revive the discipline of the Middle Ages, and to renew on a minor stage the struggle which Becket, six centuries before, had waged on a larger one. But thus, too, failure resulted from the last effort of the Church to reassert its authority in these islands. The Hornes and the Hortons proved too strong for Wilson, or rather, the genius of the age both anihilated their resistance and was fatal to his policy.

Footnotes

1 Rutter is now chiefly recollected from the singular inscription which was placed on his monument at Peel; and which, lost for the best part of a century, was found and replaced on his tomb in 1875

In hac domo–quam a vermiculis
Accepi confratribus meis–Spes
Resurrectionis ad vitam
Iaceo Sam: Permissione divinae
Episcopus hujus insulae.
Siste lector: Vide ae Ride
Palatium Episcopi.
Obit xxx. die Mensis Maij. Anno 1662.

2 A Bishop who had the governorship was known as a Sword-Bishop.

3 Barrow, on his death, bequeathed his lease of £20 per annum, which had been purchased from Lord Derby, of the lands of Ballagilley and Hango Hill "towards the maintenance of three boys at the Academic School.' More than a century and a half after Barrow's death this bequest led to the foundation of King William's College–an excellent public school, which attracts boys from almost all parts.

4 The Bishop assented to the man's petition in these words: "I have considered yor petition, and I find nothing in it contrary to ye rules of our holy religion, or ye ors [orders] and determinations of learned and judicious Christians in all ages; and therefore I give you liberty to make such a choice as shall be most for yor support and comfort, and I pray God to direct you in it. (Signed) THo. Sod. and Man." Keble's Life of Wilson, p. so8. The evident consternation of Wilson's orthodox biographer at this decision is very amusing.

5 Keble's Wilson, p. 767.
2 Ibid., p. 63. t Ibid., p. 493.
1 Keble's Life of Wilson, p. 242. 2 Ibid., p. 285.
~ Ibid., p. 369. 4 Ibid., p. 362. Ihid., p. 296, and cf. p. 350.
1 Waldron, A Description of the Isle of Man, pp. 114–124.
Train, vol. i. p. 356.

1 Keble's Wilson, p. 361.

2 As an illustration of ecclesiastical discipline, it may be well to quote the words of excommunication :–" We have . . . in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by His authority, cut off and excommunicated the said Mary Henricks from the Body of Christ, which is His Church, and from all hopes of mercy throitgh His merits, until she shall be reconciled by penance, and received by a judge that has authority to do so. And to the end that she may be held by the whole multitude of believers as an heathen and publican, and that all Christians (as they are obliged by the express command of the Apostle and the laws of the Church. . . to refrain the company of persons excommuni cated) osay avoid all unnecessary communication with her, that she may be ashamed, we do require the Vicars of Kirk Braddan and Kirk Onchan, and the Chaplain of Douglas, to publish this our Act to their respective congrega tions, lest they be partakers of her guilt and punishment. And if the said Mary Henricks (which God forbid) should die under this dreadful sentence, we do require all our clergy to observe the rubrick before the Office for the Burial of the Dead, and not to suffer her body to he interred among the faithful within any church or churchyard. Given, &c. THO. Sodor and Man." Keble's Wilson, p. 367.

1 Keble's Wilson, p. 376. 1 Ibid. p. 393.

1 Keble's Wilson, p. 396.

2 The contention of the Bishop that appeals from the spiritual courts of the Island lay to York long continued doubtful. Sir Wadsworth Busk, who was attorney-general in 1791, wrote :–"In affairs merely spiritual, the appeal from these courts was to the Archbishop of York, in all others to the Governor; a vague distinction, which was the source of continual disputes." Manx Soc. Pub., vol. xxxi. p. no. Sir W. Busk, however, did not notice Governor Home's contention that the appeal lay neither to York nor to the Governor, but to the Lord as head of the Church.

1 Keble's Wilson, p. 551. 2 Ibid., pp. 425, 426.

1 Keble's Wilson, p. 428.

1 Stowell's Life of Wilson, Appendix i., p. 331.
2 Ibid., p. 364. 1 Keble's Wilson, p. 465.

1 Keble's Wilson, p. 467. I have retaincO toe passage, tI) because it is the last instance with which I am acquainted in which an appeal was made to the old machinery, the Deemsters and Keys," to deem" the law; and (2) because; if Wilson's use of the word "deem" was correct and usual, we apparently need look no further for the etymology of the word Deemster.

1 Stowell's Wilson, p. 394. The Tynwald at which the fines were im posed appears to have been duly constituted; but the Keys and some members of the council had left the court before the order imposing the fines was made. The Keys distinctly stated that "though we were present at the Tynwald during the whole time of the sitting of the court, and until the same was dismissed as usual, we neither were snade acquainted with nor gave our consent to the order you mention, neither was any such order then made or concerted." Ibid., p. 353.

1 "Dehioc Imperi te munus ad arduum
Parem evocat Stanlelus."
2 " Statim revertas : nec liceat tibi Curarum onus deponere; gloriae
Utcunque pertceso; nec artes
Exuere, Imperiique pondus."

And again:

"Sufficis in novum
Preeconium, Stanleie, magno
Parva beans tua regna Lloydo.'

 1 Mr. Harrison says that he was dismissed because he had given offence by hunting on a Saturday at the time of divine service. Manx Soc. Pub., vol. xi. p. xi~
Keble's Wilson, p. 690.

1 Waldron says: " I know not, idolisers as they are of the clergy, whether they would not be even refractory to when were they to preach against the existence of fairies, or even against their being commonly seen for though the priesthood are a kind of gods among them, yet still tradition is a greater god than they; and, as they confidently assert that the first inhabitants of their island were fairies, so do they maintain that these little people have still their residence among them. They call them the good people, and say they live in wilds and forests and on mountains, and shun great cities because of the wickedness acted therein; all the houses are blessed where they visit, for they fly vice. A person should be thought impudently profane who should suffer his family to go to bed without having first set a tub or pail full of clean water for these guests to bathe themselves in, which the natives aver they constantly do as soon as ever the eyes of the family are closed wherever they vouchsafe to come."-Waldon, folio edition, p. 126.

Superstition is still clinging to the people, A man is still living who, in a period when his cattle were ill, sacrificed one of then at the cross roads in the hope of curing the plague,