Chapter 4

But if Maughold was Caliban in Ireland, he was more than Prospero in Man. Rumour of his piety went back to Ireland, and St. Bridget, who had founded a nunnery at Kildare, resolved on a pilgrimage to the good man's island. She crossed the water, attended by her virgins, called her daughters of fire, founded a nunnery near Douglas, worked miracles there, touched the altar in testimony of her virginity, whereupon it grew green and flourished. This, if I may be pardoned the continued parallel, is our Manx Miranda. And indeed it is difficult to shake off the idea that Shakespeare must have known something of the early story of Man, its magicians and its saints. We know the perfidy of circumstance, the lying tricks that fact is always playing with us, too well and painfully to say anything of the kind with certainty. But the angles of resemblance are many between the groundwork of the "Tempest" and the earliest of Manx records. Mannanan-beg-Mac-y-Lear, the magician who surrounded the island with mists when enemies came near in ships; Maughold, the robber and libertine, bound hand and foot, and driven ashore in a wicker boat; and then Bridget, the virgin saint. Moreover, the stories of Little Man-nanan, of St. Patrick, and of St. Maughold were printed in Manx in the sixteenth century. Truly that is not enough, for, after all, we have no evidence that Shakespeare, who knew everything, knew Manx. But then Man has long been famous for its seamen. We had one of them at Trafalgar, holding Nelson in his arms when he died. The best days, or the worst days--which?--of the trade of the West Coast of Africa saw Manx captains in the thick of it. Shall I confess to you that in the bad days of the English slave trade the four merchantmen that brought the largest black cargo to the big human auction mart at the Goree Piazza at Liverpool were commanded by four Manxmen! They were a sad quartet. One of them had only one arm and an iron hook; another had only one arm and one eye; a third had only one leg and a stump; the fourth was covered with scars from the iron of the chains of a slave which he had worn twelve months at Barbadoes. Just about enough humanity in the four to make one complete man. But with vigour enough, fire enough, heart enough--I daren't say soul enough--in their dismembered old trunks to make ten men apiece; born sea-rovers, true sons of Orry, their blood half brine. Well, is it not conceivable that in those earlier days of treasure seeking, when Elizabeth's English captains were spoiling the Spaniard in the Indies, Manx sailors were also there? If so, why might not Shakespeare, who must have ferreted out many a stranger creature, have found in some London tavern an old Manx sea-dog, who could tell him of the Manx Prospero, the Manx Caliban, and the Manx Miranda?

But I have rambled on about my sailors; I must return to my Bishops. They seem to have been a line of pious, humble, charitable, godly men at the beginning. Irishmen, chiefly, living the lives of hermits and saints. Apparently they were at first appointed by the people themselves. Would it be interesting to know the grounds of selection? One was selected for his sanctity, a natural qualification, but another was chosen because he had a pleasant face, and a fine portly figure; not bad qualifications, either. Thus things went on for about a hundred years, and, for all we know, Celtic Bishops and Celtic people lived together in their little island in peace, hearing nothing of the loud religious hubbub that was disturbing Europe.

BISHOPS OF THE WELSH DYNASTY

Then came the rule of the Welsh kings, and, though we know but little with certainty, we seem to realise that it brought great changes to the religious' life of Man. The Church began to possess itself of lands: the baronial territories of the island fell into the hands of the clergy; the early Bishops became Barons. This gave the Church certain powers of government. The Bishops became judges, and as judges they possessed great power over the person of the subject. Sometimes they stood in the highest place of all, being also Governor to the Welsh Kings. Then they were called Sword-Bishops. Their power at such times, when the crosier and sword were in the two hands of one man, must have been portentous, and even terrible. We have no records that picture what came of that. But it is not difficult to imagine the condition. The old order of things had passed away. The hermit-saints, the saintly hermits, had gone, and in their place were monkish barons, living in abbeys and monasteries, whipping the poor bodies of their people, as well as comforting their torn hearts, fattening on broad lands, praying each with his lips: "Give us this day our daily bread," but saying each to his soul: "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease; eat, drink, and be merry."

BISHOPS OF THE NORSE DYNASTY

Little as we know of these times, we see that things must have come to a pretty pass, for when the Scandinavian dynasty came in the ecclesiastical authorities were forbidden to exercise civil control over any subjects of the king that were not also the tenants of their own baronies. So the Bishops were required to confine themselves to keeping their own house in order. The Norse Constitution established in Man by King Orry made no effort to overthrow the Celtic Church founded by St. Patrick, and corrupted by his Welsh successors, but it curtailed its liberties, and reduced its dignity. It demanded as an act of fealty that the Bishop or chief Baron should hold the stirrup of the King's saddle, as he mounted his horse at Tynwald. But it still suffered the Bishop and certain of his clergy to sit in the highest court of the legislature. The Church ceased to be purely Celtic; it became Celto-Scandinavian, otherwise Manx. It was under the Archbishop of Drontheim for its Metropolitan, and its young clergy were sent over to Drontheim to be educated. Its revenues were apportioned after the most apostolic manner; one-third of the tithes to the Bishop for his maintenance, the support of his courts, his churches, and (miserable conclusion! ) his prisons; one-third to the priests, and the remaining third to the relief of the poor and the education of youth. It is a curious and significant fact that when the Reformation came the last third was seized by the lord. Good old lordly trick, we know it well!

SODOR AND MAN

The Bishopric of the island was now no longer called the Bishopric of Man, but Sodor and Man. The title has given rise to much speculation. One authority derives it from _Soterenssis_, a name given by Danish writers to the western islands, and afterwards corrupted to _Soderensk_. Another authority derives it from _Sudreyjas_, signifying in the Norwegian the Southern Isles. A third derives it from the Greek _Soter_, Saviour, to whose name the cathedral of Iona was dedicated. And yet a fourth authority derives it from the supposed third name of the little islet rock called variously Holm Isle, Sodor, Peel, and St. Patrick's Isle, whereon St. Patrick or St. Germain built his church, I can claim no right to an opinion where these good doctors differ, and shall content myself with saying that the balance of belief is in favour of the Norwegian derivation, which offers this explanation of the title of Bishop of Sodor and Man, that the Isle of Man was not included by the Norsemen in the southern cluster of islands called the Sudereys, and that the Bishop was sometimes called the Bishop of Man and the Isles, and sometimes Bishop of the Sudereys and the Isle of Man. Only one warning note shall I dare, as an ignorant layman, to strike on that definition, and it is this: that the title of Bishop of Sodor dates back to the seventh century certainly, and that the Norseman did not come south until three centuries later.

THE EARLY BISHOPS OF THE HOUSE OF STANLEY

But now I come to matters whereon I have more authority to speak. When the Isle of Man passed to the Stanley family, the Bishopric fell to their patronage, and they lost no time in putting their own people into it. It was then under the English metropolitan of Canterbury, but early in the sixteenth century it became part of the province of York. About that time the baronies, the abbeys, and the nunneries were suppressed. It does not appear that the change of metropolitan had made much change of religious life. Apparently the clergy kept the Manx people in miserable ignorance. It was not until the seventeenth century that the Book of Common Prayer was translated into the Manx language. The Gospels and the Acts were unknown to the Manx until nearly a century later. Nor was this due to ignorance of the clergy of the Manx tongue, for most of them must have been Manxmen, and several of the Bishops were Manxmen also. But grievous abuses had by this time attached themselves to the Manx Church, and some of them were flagrant and wicked, and some were impudent and amusing.

TITHES IN KIND

Naturally the more outrageous of the latter sort gathered about the process of collecting tithes.

Tithes were paid in kind in those days. It was not until well within our own century that they were commuted to a money payment. The Manxman paid tithe on everything. He began to pay tithe before coming into the world, and he went on paying tithe even after he had gone out of it. This is a hard saying, but nevertheless a simple truth. Throughout his journey from the cradle to the grave, the Manxman paid tithe on all he inherited, on all he had, on all he did, on all his wife did, and on all he left behind him. We have the equivalent of this in England at the present hour, but it was yet more tyrannical, and infinitely more ludicrous, in the Isle of Man down to the year 1839. It is only vanity and folly and vexation of spirit to quarrel with the modern English taxgatherer; you are sure to go the wall, with humiliation and with disgrace. It was not always so when taxes were paid in kind. There was, at least, the satisfaction of cheating. The Manx people could not always deny themselves that satisfaction. For instance, they were required to pay tithe of herring as soon as the herring boats were brought above full sea mark, and there were ways of counting known to the fishermen with which the black-coated arithmeticians of the Church were not able to cope. A man paid tithe on such goods and even such clothes as his wife possessed on their wedding day, and young brides became wondrous wise in the selection for the vicarage of the garments that were out of fashion. A corpse-present was demanded over the grave of a dead man out of the horses and cattle whereof he died possessed, and dying men left verbal wills which consigned their broken-winded horses and dry cows to the mercy and care of the clergyman. You will not marvel much that such dealings led to disputes, sometimes to quarrels, occasionally to riots. In my boyhood I heard old people over the farm-house fire chuckle and tell of various wise doings, to outwit the parson. One of these concerned the oats harvest. When the oats were in sheaf, the parson's cart came up, driven by the sumner, the parson's official servant. The gate of the field was thrown open, and honestly and religiously one sheaf out of every ten was thrown into the cart. But the husbandman had been thrifty in advance. The parson's sheaves had all been grouped thick about the gate, and they were the shortest, and the thinnest, and the blackest, and the dirtiest, and the poorest that the field had yielded. Similar were the doings at the digging of the potatoes, but the scenes of recrimination which often ensued were usually confined to the farmer and the sumner. More outrageous contentions with the priest himself sometimes occurred within the very walls of the church. It was the practice to bring tithe of butter and cheese and eggs, and lay it on the altar on Sunday. This had to be done under pain of exclusion from the communion, and that was a penalty most grievous to material welfare. So the Manxmen and Manxwomen were compelled to go to church much as they went to market, with their butter- and egg-baskets over their arms. It is a ludicrous picture, as one sees it in one's mind's eye, but what comes after reaches the extremity of farce. Say the scene is Maughold old church, once the temple of the saintly hermit. It is Sunday morning, the bells are ringing, and Juan-beg-Marry-a-thruss, a rascally old skinflint, is coming along with a basket. It contains some butter that he could not sell at Ramsey market yesterday because it was rank, and a few eggs which he knows to be stale and addled--the old hen has sat on them, and they have brought forth nothing. These he places reverently on the altar. But the parson knows Juan, and proceeds to examine his tithe. May I take so much liberty with history, and with the desecrated old church, as to imagine the scene which follows?

Priest, pointing contemptuously towards the altar: "Juan-beg-Marry-a-thruss, what is this?" "Butter and eggs, so plaze your reverence." "Pig-swill and chalk you mean, man!" "Aw 'deed if I'd known your reverence was so morthal partic'lar the ould hen herself should have been layin' some fresh eggs for your reverence."

"Take them away, you thief of the Church! Do you think what isn't fit for your pig is good enough for your priest? Bring better, or never let me look on your wizened old wicked face again."

Exit Juan-beg-Marry-a-thruss, perhaps with butter and eggs flying after his retreating figure.

THE GAMBLING BISHOP

This is an imaginary picture, but no less outrageous things happened whereof the records remain. A demoralised laity usually co-exists with a demoralised clergy, and there are some bad stories of the Bishops who preceded the Reformation. There is one story of a Bishop of that period, who was a gross drunkard and notorious gambler. He played with his clergy as long as they had anything to lose, and then he played with a deemster and lost five hundred pounds himself. Poor little island, that had two such men for its masters, the one its master in the things of this world, the other its master in the things of the world to come! If anything is needful to complete the picture of wretchedness in which the poor Manx people must have existed then, it is the knowledge of what manner of man a deemster was in those days, what his powers were, and how he exercised them.

THE DEEMSTERS

The two deemsters--a name of obvious significance, deem-sters, such as deem the laws--were then the only judges of the island, all other legal functionaries being of more recent date. On entering into office, the deemster took an oath, which is sworn by all deemsters to this day, declaring by the wonderful works which God hath miraculously wrought in six days and seven nights, that he would execute the laws of the island justly "betwixt party and party, as indifferently as the herring's backbone doth lie in the midst of the fish." But these laws down to the time of the second Stanley existed only in the breasts of the deemsters themselves, being therefore called Breast Laws, and thus they were supposed to be handed down orally from deemster to deemster. The superstition fostered corruption as well as incapacity, and it will not be wronging the truth to say that some of the deemsters of old time were both ignorant and unprincipled. Their jurisdiction was absolute in all that were then thought to be temporal affairs, beginning with a debt of a shilling, and going up to murder. They kept their courts in the centres of their districts, one of them being in the north of the island, the other in the south, but they were free to hold a court anywhere, and at any time. A deemster riding from Ramsey to Peel might find his way stopped by a noisy claimant, who held his defendant by the lug, having dragged him bodily from the field to the highway, to receive instant judgment from the judge riding past. Or at midnight, in his own home, a deemster might be broken in upon by a clamorous gang of disputants and their witnesses, who came from the pot-house for the settlement of their differences. On such occasions, the deemster invariably acted on the sound old legal maxim, once recognised by an Act of Parliament, that suits not likely to bear good costs should always be settled out of court. First, the deemster demanded his fee. If neither claimant nor defendant could give it, he probably troubled himself no further than to take up his horse-whip and drive both out into the road. I dare say there were many good men among deemsters of the old order, who loved justice for its own sake, and liked to see the poor and the weak righted, but the memory of deemsters of this kind is not green. The bulk of men are not better than their opportunities, and the temptations of the deemsters of old were neither few nor slight.

THE BISHOPRIC VACANT

With such masters in the State, and such masters in the Church, the island fell low in material welfare, and its poverty reacted on both. Within fifty years the Bishopric was nineteen years vacant, though it may be that at the beginning of the seventeenth century this was partly due to religious disturbances. Then in 1697, with the monasteries and nunneries dispersed, the abbeys in ruins, the cathedral church a wreck, the clergy sunk in sloth and ignorance, there came to the Bishopric, four years vacant, a true man whose name on the page of Manx Church history is like a star on a dark night, when only one is shining--Bishop Thomas Wilson. He was a strange and complex creature, half angel, only half man, the serenest of saints, and yet almost the bitterest of tyrants. Let me tell you about him.

BISHOP WILSON

Thomas Wilson was from Trinity College, Dublin, and became domestic chaplain to William, Earl of Derby, and preceptor to the Earl's son, who died young. While he held this position, the Bishopric of Sodor and Man became vacant, and it was offered to him. He declined it, thinking himself unworthy of so high a trust. The Bishopric continued vacant. Perhaps the candidates for it were few; certainly the emoluments were small; perhaps the patron was slothful--certainly he gave little attention to the Church. At length complaint was made to the King that the spiritual needs of the island were being neglected. The Earl was commanded to fill the Bishopric, and once again he offered it to his chaplain. Then Wilson yielded. He took possession in 1698, and was enthroned at Peel Castle. The picture of his enthronement must have been something to remember. Peel Castle was already tumbling to its fall, and the cathedral church was a woful wreck. It is even said that from a hole in the roof the soil and rain could enter, and blades of grass were shooting up on the altar. The Bishop's house at Kirk Michael, which had been long shut up, was in a similar plight; damp, mouldy, broken-windowed, green with moss within and without. What would one give to turn back the centuries and look on at that primitive ceremony in St. Germain's Chapel in April 1698! There would be the clergy, a sorry troop, with wise and good men among them, no doubt, but a poor, battered, bedraggled, neglected lot, chiefly learned in dubious arts of collecting tithes. And the Bishop himself, the good chaplain of Earl Derby, the preceptor of his son, what a face he must have had to watch and to study, as he stood there that April morning, and saw for the first time what work he had come to tackle!

BISHOP WILSON'S CENSURES

But Bishop Wilson set about his task with a strong heart, and a resolute hand. He found himself in a twofold trust. Since the Reformation, the monasteries and nunneries had been dispersed, and all the baronies had been broken up, save one, the barony of the Bishop. Thus Bishop Wilson was the head of the court of his barony. This was a civil court with power, of jurisdiction over felonies. Its separate criminal control came to an end in 1777, Such was Bishop Wilson's position as last and sole Baron of Man. Then as head of the Church he had powers over offences which were once called offences against common law. Irregular behaviour, cursing, quarrelling, and drinking, as well as transgressions of the moral code, adultery, seduction, prostitution, and the like, were punishable by the Church and the Church courts. The censures of Bishop Wilson on such offences did not err on the side of clemency. He was the enemy of sin, and no "gentle foe of sinners." He was a believer in witchcraft, and for suspicion of commerce with evil spirits and possession of the evil eye he punished many a blameless old body. For open and convicted adultery he caused the offenders to stand for an hour at high fair at each of the market-places of Douglas, Peel, Ramsey, and Castletown, bearing labels on their breasts calling on all people to take warning lest they came under the same Church censure. Common unchastity he punished by exposure in church at full congregation, when the guilty man or the poor victimised girl stepped up from the west porch to the altar, covered from neck to heels in a white sheet. Slanderers and evil speakers he clapped into the Peel, or perhaps the whipping-stocks, with tongue in a noose of leather, and when after a lapse of time the gag was removed the liberated tongue was obliged to denounce itself by saying thrice, clearly, boldly, probably with good accent and discretion, "False tongue, thou hast lied."

It is perhaps as well that some of us did not live in Bishop Wilson's time. We might not have lived long. If the Church still held and exercised the same powers over evil speakers we should never hear our own ears in the streets for the din of the voices of the penitents; and if it still punished unchastity in a white sheet the trade of the linen weaver would be brisk.

You will say that I have justified my statement that Bishop Wilson was the bitterest of tyrants. Let me now establish my opinion that he was also the serenest of saints. I have told you how low was the condition of the Church, how lax its rule, how deep its clergy lay in sloth and ignorance, and perhaps also in vice, when Bishop Wilson came to Man in 1698. Well, in 1703, only five years later, the Lord Chancellor King said this: "If the ancient discipline of the Church were lost elsewhere it might be found in all its force in the Isle of Man." This points first to force and vigour on the Bishop's part, but surely it also points to purity of character and nobility of aim. Bishop Wilson began by putting his own house in order. His clergy ceased to gamble and to drink, and they were obliged to collect their tithes with mercy. He once suspended a clergyman for an opinion on a minor point, but many times he punished his clergy for offences against the moral law and the material welfare of the poor. In a stiff fight for integrity of life and purity of thought, he spared none. I truly believe that if he had caught himself in an act of gross injustice he would have clambered up into the pillory. He was a brave, strong-hearted creature, of the build of a great man. Yes! In spite of all his contradictions, he _was_ a great man. We Manxmen shall never look upon his like again!

THE GREAT CORN FAMINE