[From Manx Soc vols 25+28 - Blundell's History]

CHAPTER XI.

CERTAINE LAWES AND CUSTOMES CONCERNING y^e CLERGY OF THE ISLE OF MAN, BOTH ANCIENT AND MODERNE.

THEIR lawes ecclesiasticall (as Byshop Merrick in Cambden truly relateth), next after y^e cannon law, approacheth nearest to the civil law, but in execution thereof they have their particular customes, as you may here observe, wherein you may alsoe note y^t y^e kings and lords of Man, in ancient time, kept y^e clergy in great awe and subjection.

1. They can keep no court but y^e lord his deemster’s controwler and attorney must bee there present.

2. If y^e byshop or any of y^e abbotts doe receive any out-law after hee is outlawed (w^thout y^e lord’s especiall grace and pdon), hee forfeiteth his temporallityes to the lord.

3. Neither byshop, abbott, nor baron, can entertain any stranger into their houses w^thout knowledge of y^e lieftenant, wt they are, from whence they came, whither they goe, and wt condition they are of.

4. Noe abbott is to receive any monk to be resident, nor any priest, without y^e licence of y^e lord of y^e Island.

5. Any y^t have committed treason and taketh sanctuary, ye sanctuary shall not avayle him.

6. If any of y^e holy church doe forfeit an amercemt, if ye distresse be wthin y^e stepps of holy church y^e lord’s officer is to goe to y^e sumner, and he to deliver to y^e officer sufficient distresse. If y^e sumner will not so doe, y^e officer him-selfe may goe in and take distress or pawne.

7. The probates of testamts and debts (by legacy) are ntried in y^e spirituall court for a year and a day (taking y^e time from y^e death of y^e testator) ; but if it be not decided wthin y^t time, y^t is after a year and a day is expired, the controversyes for those debts are decided in y^e temporall court.

8. All legacyes are to bee paid wthin fourteen dayes after y^e probate of the testament.

9. If a man remoove from one parish to another, and doe stay there three nights and three dayes, y^e cock crowing thrice, and there dye, he shall pay all spirituall dutyes to y^e same church he remooves unto.

10. If a woman w^th child be delivered of a dead child, they ought not to pmite y^e child to be buried in y^e church-yard except y^e mother will and doe take her oath shee hath received ye sacramt since her quickening.

11. The ecclesiasticall judges doe cite psons, and doe determine causes there w^thin eight dayes, and they are to stand to his award, otherwise he hath power to imprison them. Which y^e Lord Cooke expresseth thus :—Judex ecclesiasticus in hac insula, citat definit et infra octo deis parent ant carceri intruduntur. Institut., part 4, ch. 69, p. 289.

12. All causes in y^e spirituall court as well as y^e temporall are prosecuted and ended without one penny charge, or any expence at all. Mercator’s Atlas, and Cambden’s Brit. Isles, p. 204.

13. If any one having a child one or two years before marriage, and after he marrieth ye, woman the child is legitimated by the customary lawes.