From Manx Soc vol IV,VII & IX

CAMDEN A.D., 1607

WHEN Alexander III., king of Scotland, had possessed himself of these western islands, partly by victory, partly by purchase of the king of Norway, he set about the reduction of Man as one of them, and by the bravery of Alexander Steward brought it under his dominion, and set up a petty king there on condition of being ready whenever called upon to assist him in any war at sea with ten ships. Mary, daughter of Reginald, king of Man, who was become liege man to John, king of England, preferred a suit for the island to that prince, but was answered, she must lay her claim before the king of Scots, at that time in possession of the island. Her son's son, John Waldebeof, (into which family she had married) prosecuted his grandmother's claim in parliament 33 Edward the first, before the king of England as lord paramount over the king of Scotland. He obtained, however, no other answer than (to borrow the terms of the record) that, "he might prosecute his claim before the justices of the king's Bench, be heard and have justice done him." But what he could not effect by right, William de Montacute, his kinsman, descended from the kings of Man, did by arms. For with a body of English troops hastily collected he drove all the Scots out of the island; but having contracted a considerable debt for this war, and being unable to discharge it, he mortgaged the island and its revenues for seven years to Anthony Bee, bishop of Durham and patriarch of Jerusalem, to whom the king afterwards gave it for life. King Edward II. afterwards gave it to his minion Pierce Gaveston, when he created him earl of Cornwall; and, upon his death, he bestowed it on Henry Beaumont, " with all the demesnes and royal jurisdiction." The Scots afterwards under Robert Brus recovered it, and Thomas Randolph that Scottish hero, as long after Alexander duke of Albany, wrote themselves Lords of Man, and bore the more modern arms of the kings of the Isles, viz., three human legs, armed, conjoined, and bending the knees, such as appear naked on the ancient coins of Sicily to denote the three promon tories. For before (as I find on the seals of the kings) they used a ship with the sails furled, with the title of Rex Manniæ et Insularum, king of Man and the Isles. From the Scots William de Montacute the younger, earl of Salisbury, wrested it in the year 1340, with an armed force, and sold Man with its crown for a considerable sum of money to William Scrope in 1393, according to Walsingham. Scrope being executed for high treason, and his estates confiscated, the right of it came to Henry IV. king of England, who as victor over William Scrope, whom he, when only a private person, had arrested and beheaded for aspiriug to the crown, granted this island to Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, on condition he and his posterity at the coronation of the kings of England, should bear the sword worn by Henry aforesaid at his return to England, commonly called Lancaster Sword. But it maybe worthwhile to insert here the king's own words from the record: "We have of our special favor given and granted to Henry, earl of Northumberland, the island, castle, pile, and dominion of Man, and all the islands and dominions belonging to the said island, lately belonging to William Scope, knight, deceased, whom we in his lifetime conquered, and have declared to be so conquered, and which by virtue of that conquest we have taken into our hands as conquered territory : which said conquest and decree in this our present parliament by consent of the lords temporal in the said parliament assembled as far as concerns the person of the said William and all his lands, tenements, goods, and chattels, " as well within our realm as out of it, at the petition of the commons of our realm, affirmed to be, &e. To have and to hold to the said earl and his heirs, &c., by the service of carrying on the day of our coronation and the coronation of our heirs at our left shoulder and the left shoulder of our heirs by himself or his sufficient and honorable deputy, that naked sword which we wore when we landed in Holderness, called Lancaster sword, &e." Four years after this Henry Percy was attainted, and though afterwards restored in blood was deprived of Man, which was bestowed first on William Stanley, afterwards on John Stanley, with the patronage of the bishopric, &c. His descendants were honored with the title of earl of Derby and commonly called king of Man.