General Collection of MSS.

Document No. 79. [Given by Miss Kissack, Douglas.]

1826.

BISHOP MURRAY'S INEFFECTUAL ATTEMPT TO PUT TITHE ON POTATOES AND TURNIPS.

Lyncombe,
Oct. 11th, 1826.

Dear Sir,

Having been absent from home on a visit to my Living in Dorsetshire, the events which have recently occurred in the Isle of Man have only this day been communicated to me.

Mr. McCrone will, I hope, have conveyed my thanks to you for the letter you wrote me on the subject of the former Accons in Lezayre, and I now, with regret, have again to thank you for your exertions under circumstances equally lamentable. The Insula Government will now, too late, discover the state to which their apathy and I fear I may add a worse feeling, has brought the Country, and if Mr. Gawne will permit, perhaps the Lieut. Govr may now think it necessary to adopt some measures to put an end to such outrageous proceedings.

I am quite satisfied you will do all that existing circumstances will enable you to effect an order to bring the Delinquents to punishment, but I at the same time I too well know how many difficulties you must have to encounter where the local authorities are, with few exceptions, hostile to the cause in which you are engaged.

I beg you will offer my Regards and good wishes to my friends at Ramsey, and if any local distress should require the charitable exertions of the Inhabitants during the approaching Winter, I beg you will apply to Mr. McCrone on my behalf for such assistance as you may deem proper and necessary; for although I fear there are some bad spirits amongst the lower orders in that Town, I am unwilling to believe that all are as hostile as the Cretneys of Lezaire.

McWhanell, and his associates, must either be Madmen or Rogues.

Very faithfully yours,

G. SODOR AND MANN.

To The High-Bailiff of Ramsey. [Thomas Arthur Corlett.]

This was Bishop George Murray, brother of the Duke of Atholl. He had continuous trouble during his episcopate from 1814 to 1827, when he was translated to Rochester. Bishop Murray attempted to collect the tithe on potatoes, turnips and other green crops, which had not been demanded for many years. See A. W. Moore Hist. p. 661 : 'In Oct. 1825 there was a combination amongst the farmers not to pay ; and when in October the col-lection began, dangerous riots broke out in Peel and other places. Finally a body of 5,000 remonstrators, armed with bludgeons and pitchforks, and waving a " bloody ensign," marched on Bishopscourt, and extorted a promise from the Bishop that he would not collect the tithe for that year': it was never collected, and he soon left the Island. Llewellyn McWhannel was a Banker at Ramsey, and James McCrone was the agent to the Duke of Atholl and the Proctor of the Bishop.