The Land of Home Rule. An essay on the history and constitution of the Isle of Man

Front matter

BY THE SAME AUTHOR. HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE CONCLUSION OF THE GREAT WAR IN 1815 TO 1858. Library Edition, 5 vols. 8vo, £4, iof. Cabinet Edition, 6 vols. crown 8vo, 6s. each. A LIFE OF LORD JOHN RUSSELL (EARL RUSSELL. K.G.). With 2 Portraits. Library Edition, 2 vols. 8vo, 36s. 1 abinet Edition, 2 vols. crown 8\o, 12s. LONDON AND NEW YORK.: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. Hn ]£ssav> ON THE HISTORY AND CONSTITUTION OF THE ISLE OF MAN BY SPENCER WALPOLE AUTHOR OF "A HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM 1815 TO 1858 ' "I mentioned a scheme which I had of making a tour to the Isle of Man, and giving a full account of it ; and that Mr. Burke had playfully suggested as a motto, ' The proper study of Mankind is Man.' " — Boswell's "Life of Johnson." LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. AND NEW YORK : 15 EAST 16"' STREET 1893 AH rig/its reserved TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAP. t'AGE I. THIC PREHISTORIC PERIOD I II. THE AGE OF MYTH AND LEGEND .... 23 III. THE COMING OK THE VIKINGS 37 IV. THE RULE OK THE NORSE 52 V. THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND . 73 VI. THE RULE OK THE TWO FIRST STANLEYS . . 93 VII. TWO CENTURIES OF STANLEY RULE .... IO9 VIII. THE GREAT EARL OK DERBY 1 30 IX. THE CIVIL WAR AND ITS CONSEQUENCES . . 144. X. THE ISLAND AT THE RESTORATION . . . l6l XL CHURCH DISCIPLINE 171 XII. THE .MANX MAGNA CHARTA 191 XIII. THE ACCESSION OF THE ATHOLES .... 202 XIV. THE SALE OF THE ISLAND 213 XV. THE LAST OF THE ATHOLES 233 XVI. MODERN TIMES 249 XVII. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE ISLE OK MAN . . 260 XVIII. CONCLUSION 28

Chapter I. The Prehistoric Period

Historians are naturally inclined to select as subjects for their investigation the careers of great men or the rise and fall of great communities. They reject, as hardly worthy of their labours, the story of those smaller nations which have exercised no considerable influence on the fortunes or the progress of the human family. And their choice is at least intelligible. "Les grands evenements et les grands bommes sont les points fixes et les sommets de l'histoire ; c'est de la qu'on peut la con siderer dans son ensemble, et la suivre dans ses grandes voies." But the byways as well as the highways of the world teem with matter for the observer to watch, the moralist to study, the teacher to explain. The new discoveries, the new ideas, which have added dignity to man, have been elaborated at least as frequently in the cottage as in the palace • the struggle for existence, on which progress has depended, has been as acute and bitter in the village as in the town ; and the writer who relates the story of a small community will usually find that its fortunes have been affected by the causes which have influenced the progress of mighty empires.

This circumstance has been illustrated in our own time by the selection which a great historian has made for the subject of a comprehensive history. Mr. Freeman had the perspicacity A to see that the story of the Norman conquest of England could be properly accompanied by the story of the Norman conquest of Sicily. But, in addressing himself to this task, he fortu nately did not confine himself to a single episode in the annals of the island. He saw that the annals of Sicily illustrated in a striking way the great struggle between East and West which contributes the longest and perhaps the most important chapter to the history of mankind. The comparatively little island in the Mediterranean in which the Sikel had supplanted the Sikan, and in which Phœnician and Greek, Greek and Roman, Rome and Carthage, Norman and Italian, Saracen and Chris tian, had successively struggled for supremacy, furnished in this way an epitome of universal history.

The little island which forms the subject of the present work cannot boast that it reflects in its annals the history of mankind, but it may at least claim that it has witnessed many of the changes which have affected the destinies of the larger countries around it. Like them, it has seen the irruption of successive races, who have all left their mark on the character of its people and on the names of the country. Like them, or like the larger island of Great Britain, it has successfully preserved the independence which its ancestors secured for it. It enjoys such advantages as autonomous institutions can confer on a people, and it has retained these privileges while neighbouring and larger com munities have been deprived of them. " There is a current tradition, both in Ireland and the Isle of Man, that in the wars of the giants one took up a handful of earth, which he threw at another, but missed his aim.

The place from which the handful of earth was lifted became Lough Neagh, and that at which it fell the Isle of Man." » If this legendary Titan missed his opponent, he at any rate achieved a notable purpose ; for the precious handful of earth, which 1 Manx Society's Publications, vol. xv. p. 123. thus became the Land of Man, and which was destined to form an island thirty-four miles in length and eight to twelve miles in width, fell in the very centre of the United Kingdom, every division of which may be seen from its highlands on a clear day at the same time. The Cumberland hills in England, the Mull of Galloway and Burrow Head, the two arms which enclose Luce Bay in Scotland, the Mourne hills in Ireland, and the Snowdon range in Wales, may all be simultaneously detected from the summits of many of its mountains.

Hence, in his " Poetic Vision," Cowley placed himself on a Manx mountain to deplore the miseries and calamities of the nation,1 while Wordsworth says — " Off with yon cloud, old Snaefell ! that thine eye Over three realms may take its widest range." Thus the sea in which the island lies is almost completely land-locked. On the north-west, indeed, the waves which have gathered in the Atlantic are occasionally driven by tide and wind through the comparatively narrow strait which separates Scotland from Ireland. On the south-west, St. George's Channel affords direct communication with the Atlantic. The seas which sweep past Holyhead and the Mull of Galloway increase, not in size, but in fury, as they are driven into the shallower and land-locked waters which surround the island. But, if the situation of the Isle of Man accounts for its storms, it is also answerable for its climate ; for while, on the one hand, it lies in the direct course of those barometric de pressions which, created either in America or in mid-ocean, pass so constantly over these islands, on the other hand its climate is tempered by the influence of the Gulf Stream, which 1 " I was suddenly transported afar off (whether in the body or out of the bodv, like St. Paul, I know not), and found myself on the summit of that famous hill in the Island Mona, which has the prospect of three great, and not long since most happy, kingdoms." — Preface to the "Vision." follows the same route, and one branch of which impinges on its shores.

The surrounding waters still further temper its summer heat and its winter cold ; so that few places in the world, and probably no place situated so far north, can claim a milder and more equable climate.2 Its position in the ocean has affected its shape. It lies with its face to the south-east. The currents which sweep past it are perpetually gnawing away portions of its surface, and the north-east as well as the north-west coasts are slowly crumbling before the advancing waters. The rocks which fringe its shores on the south-east and the south-west, and which rise at Spanish Head into perpendicular cliffs 350 or 400 feet high, have in these parts afforded more effectual protection against the inroads of the waters ; but, in the lapse of centuries, the hard rock is no more able than the soft clay to resist the impression of the moving flood, and the shape of the island has thus been largely affected by the currents which impinge upon it.

In a physical sense the island is divided into two parts by a high range of hills which intersects it from the north-east to the south-west. The land under plough lies to the north-west and south-east of these highlands. This natural feature has made a permanent impression on the history, the constitution, and the arrangements of the Isle of Man. The hills are inter sected in its centre by a low valley, once probably sub merged beneath the ocean, but which now forms the bed of two streams, finding their way into the sea on the west and on the east. In the north, where the hills are highest, risin**- " Humboldt pointed out long ago that the latitude of the Isle of Man is 540 12', that of Bordeaux 44° 50' (or nearly ten degrees farther south). Bor deaux, according to the same authority, has a mean summer heat of 21 70 Centigrade, against 13.16° in the Isle of Man; but its mean winter heat is only 6.i°, against 5.53° in the Isle of Man.

The range is thus only 7.23° in the island, and no less than 15.6° in Bordeaux. in one place to 2000 and in other places to 1800 and 1600 feet, the only roads originally ran round the mountains. In the south, where the hills on the south-west fall precipitately into the sea, the roads were carried over the highlands or through passes between adjacent hills. The mountain range which thus forms the backbone of the Isle of Man, and over which red-deer roamed and grouse flew less than two centuries ago, consists almost entirely of schist. This schist, which is of great thickness, in the south of the island is built up in horizontal strata, but in its centre is tilted at an angle which is said to average 60 degrees. In the north east and towards the south-west the granite, on which the schist reposes, has risen up in what have been called " gigantic bubbles of molten matter, forcing itself in amongst the schists wherever they gave way." l It is chiefly in the neighbourhood of these granitic outbursts that the rich veins of lead, which have added largely to the wealth of the island, have been discovered.

But these granitic bubbles do not supply the only evidence of volcanic action ; distinct traces of such disturbance may be found in the south. The Stack of Scarlett, which forms the south-western boundary of Castletown Bay, is believed to be the crater of an extinct volcano. A violent convulsion, which ran from Scarlett to Poolvash, crumpled up the strata into a series of folds, and has to some extent rendered the geological history of the island a little more difficult to determine. Volcanic action continued till historic times, and one of the earliest records of Man is of a great earthquake rather more than 1200 years ago.2 Vast ages must necessarily have elapsed while the schist rocks, which form the backbone of the island, were being 1 Cumaiing's Isle of Man, p. 237. 2 "Terræ motus in Eubonia factus est magnus."—Anna!es_Cambriœ, Manx Society's Publications, vol. iv. p. 26.

Cf. Ibid., p. 31. slowly deposited on the bottom of some prehistoric sea from the debris which was washed down from some prehistoric con tinent. During the whole of that period the rocks were slowly sinking. But the period of depression passed away. An ele vating process set in ; and the rocks, slowly raised above the surface of the sea, presented the appearance of an island or a series of islands to such animals as may have been there to gaze upon them. "As the land gradually emerged above the sur face of the waters, a thick bed of dark red conglomerate formed along the southern shore of the partially upheaved island, with a corresponding deposit of soft red sandstone along its north western side."1 The latter ultimately hardened into the old red sandstone which colours the cliffs at Peel.

The former passes " with great regularity into the overlying carboniferous limestone." While the latter deposits were taking place, the island enjoyed a heat which was tropical. It was subjected to volcanic action, which profoundly affected the character of the growing strata. Hence, in a comparatively small area, the limestones are won which furnish the farmer with a rich fertilising agent, which formed the material out of which Castle Rushen has been erected, and with which many of the piers and quays of the island have been faced, and which has supplied the so-called black marble out of which the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral in London have been hewn. But change again set in. The land, which had been slowly rising, was again depressed ; the climate, which had been tropical in its warmth, grew colder and colder.

Gravel beds formed beneath the surface of the waters in the valleys and at the roots of the mountains, and covered the area which lies to the north-west of the bisecting range of hills.2 1 Brown's Guide to the Isle of Man, " Physical History," p. 357. 2 This area may possibly contain later rocks than the other parts of the island ; and if coal should ever be found in it, it can only be found here. Then succeeded that glacial epoch, or those series of glacial epochs, which have left so enduring a mark on the face of the British Islands. The great river of ice which slowly streamed from Southern Scotland covered the Isle of Man and filled up the circumjacent sea. It stood at such a height above the sur face of the land that it deflected the glaciers from the Cumber land mountains, giving them a south-eastern course, instead of allowing them to find their natural outlet towards the south west.

Ample record of this period may be found in the stiff boulder clay which the sea is gradually wearing away in Michael and Jurby on the west, and at Hango Hill on the south-east ; while here and there on the hill-tops erratic blocks may be met with, which have been carried from distant places and deposited by the melting ice. While the ice still covered the island, or even while, at its final retreat, an opportunity was afforded for the incoming of the higher forms of life, the distribution of sea and land in North-Western Europe differed widely from that with which we are now acquainted. A continuous continent stretched over the whole of the British Islands. The Rhine and the Thames joined their waters in the latitude of Northumberland, and, flowing in a northerly course, found an outlet in a northern ocean to the north-east of the Shetland Islands.

The Mersey, the Dee, and the rivers of North-Western Britain were joined with the Liffey, and were finally discharged into the sea to the south-west of the Long Island. The mammalia of Pleistocene Europe were thus able to move over a continuous continent to every portion of the United Kingdom ; and, when man made his first appearance in these islands, he was in all pro bability able to avail himself of the same advantage.1 When 1 See Boyd Dawkins' Early Man in Britain p. 150, where a map of Pleistocene Europe is given. Mr. Freeman says, "I know few flings more instructive than a look at Mr. Dawkins' map of what we may c.ill Eskimo a period of subsidence again set in, land and water in thesa latitudes gradually assumed the distribution with which we are now familiar. But it is probable that the ultimate separation of the Isle of Man from England preceded its final division from Ireland.

In this way it seems possible to account for the presence of the great Irish elk in both Ireland and the Isle of Man, and the absence of snakes and toads from both countries. Such an explanation is more satisfactory to the inquirer than the popular tradition that reptiles were excluded from those districts in which St. Patrick carried on his labours.1 The physical characteristics of a country largely influence the history of its people, and the reader should always en deavour to have some acquaintance with the natural features of a land whose annals he is studying. But the physical history of the Isle of Man is of more importance, because it has produced that rich and varied scenery which has made it the playground of Northern England. In few other places is it possible for the eye to refresh itself with more agreeable prospects.

Though its mountains are small com pared with those of either Cumberland or Wales, their situa tion, springing as they do almost directly from the sea, adds to their apparent height ; while their outline has been moulded by ice and water into forms of peculiar beauty. Descending in some places precipitately into the sea, they have invested the coasts of the island with the charm that attaches to cliff scenery. Though the winds which sweep from the Atlantic have prevented their being clothed with timber, trees grow with luxuriance in every sheltered nook. Europe. We feel at once that the European history which we have to master could never have happened in such an Europe as that." (Methods of Hist. Study, pp. 45, 46). The remark applies to the map on p. m of Mr Dawkins' work. It is equally applicable to that on p. 150. 1 Cf. a paper by Professor Forbes in Cumming's ' ' Isle of Man " on the Flora of the island, p. 360.

The deep watercourses which have been gradually cut into the mountain ranges in the centre of the island, and the shorter glens, which carry the drainage of the hills more directly down their slopes into the sea, afford many oppor tunities for the growth of timber. And in these glens, which form so agreeable a feature to the tourist, the ash and the sycamore, the natural weeds of the country, mingle their foliage with the deeper tints of the oak, the elm, the beech, and the fir. Ferns, from the rare osmundi to the delicate maidenhair, root themselves in every crevice in the rock over which the water in the glen tumbles ; the bracken, which grows luxuriantly at the side, is alternated with the beautiful colours of a singularly rich flora ; in the early spring the great dykes, which are the common fences of the country, are ablaze with gorse ; while in August the heather and the gorse, blowing together on the mountain-tops, present a rich carpet of colour which might move a Linnæus to tears.

Of the river courses, which thus contribute to the natural beauties of the island, the four most important are the Sulby, which falls into the sea at Ramsey ; the Glass, or Clear River, with its tributary the Dhoo, or Dark River, which form the harbour and give a name to Douglas ; the Neb, which joins the western sea at Peel ; and the Silverburn, which discharges its waters into Castletown Bay. From time immemorial the largest places in the island have been situated at the mouths of these rivers. Thus, in little Man as well as in larger England, the towns have naturally seated themselves on the banks of the principal streams. Their names and those of the rivers on which they are built singularly illustrate the history of the island. The Dhoo and the Glas,1 with their compound 1 This is equally true if Mr. Moore is right in following Joyce and denning Glas as a small stream or brook.

Surnames and Place-Names of the Isle of Man, p. 175. , Douglas, the Neb and Peel, are purely Celtic words. The Sulby, and Ramsey (Hrafn's Water or Raven's Water J) are Norse names. Castletown and Silverburn are modern names. the English rendering of the Manx or Celtic Ballacashel and Awin (Avon) Argid. But the name of the island itself has a more enduring interest than the names of its principal towns. In Cæsar, Man is Mona ; in Ptolemy, Monoæda ; in Pliny, Monabia ; in Bede, Menabia : in Gildas, Eubonia ; in the Norse sagas, Manu or Man ; in the Welsh records, Manaw (the Irish genitive being Mannan) : the natives call it Mannin or Vannin ; the English, Man. This nomenclature is further complicated by the facts that the ancient name of the Isle of Anglesey, which still survives in the Menai Straits, was also Mona ; and that, while Tacitus applies the term Mona to Anglesey, Cæsar uses it for Man.2 Various explanations have been given of the name.

Mr. Train s thinks that it may be derived from Maedhon In, the Middle Island ; Mr. Cumming 4 is inclined to ascribe it to Maen, a pile of stones, the word that occurs in Penmaenmaur. Blundell refers it to Maune, one of the names of St. Patrick • 5 others have derived it from Mon, isolated; while a recent writer has ascribed it to another Mon, "the most ancient Celtic name " for a cow, and has found corroboration for his 1 The raven was the war-standard of the Danes. 2 Cæsar, who, it must be recollected, wrote on hearsay, having never been in the North of England, says of Ireland: " Dimidio minor, ut æstimatur, quam Britannia, sed pari spatio transmissus, atque ex Gallia, est in Britanniam. In hoc medio cursu est insula quæ appellatur Mona." Tacitus, in his account of the expedition against Anglesey, says that the infantry crossed over to it in flat-bottomed boats, the cavalry followed on the shoals, swimming the deeper channels. 3 Hist, of Isle of Man, vol. i. p. 39. 4 Cumming's Isle of Man, p. 256. 5 Manx Society Publications, vol. xxv. p. 20.

(theory in the survival of the Calf.1 The Manx themselves refer the name to ManAnnan or Mananan MacLir — Mananan the Son of the Sea, who in Manx and Irish legend was the first man who held the island. But, without entering at present into the question whether Mananan had a real existence or not, it seems much more likely that he should have derived his name from the island than that the island should have derived its name from him, for Cæsar's application of the word Mona to Man is more than four centuries older than the traditional age of Mananan MacLir ; while, as no tradition connects him with Anglesey, the contrary hypothesis would fail to account for the same name being applied to both places.2 Professor Rhys, in our own time, has had the merit of making a more plausible suggestion. He says, in effect, that the name which the Celts gave to the land of the Picts was Mann or Mannin ; that the Irish or Goidelic Celts would call the Islands of the Picts the Isles of the Mannan; and that the circumstance that the name Man was applied to two islands is a proof that the original inhabitants of both were a Pictish tribe, and that both naturally received the name of the Pictish Islands.

In confirmation of this etymology it may be added that the region which the Picts occupied on the southern side of the Firth of Forth in a late period of the Roman occupation was "called by the Welsh Manaw of the Gododin, to distinguish it from another Manaw beyond the Forth, as well as from the Isle of Man, which appears in the same language as the Island of Manaw."3 The Welsh form of the word may be traced 1 The Calf is the name of the islet south-west of Man. 2 Manx Soc. Pub., vol. xv. p. 140. 3 Celtic Britain, p. 112, and Skene's Celtic Scotland, vol. i. p. 131. Manaw of the Gododin is believed to have included the part of Lothian where again in Monmouth, the Mouth of the Monnow or Monaw, and possibly in Munster • the Goidelic form in Slamannan Moor (in Linlithgowshire) and in Clackmannan j1 the Latin form in the Menapii of Ireland and Gaul, in Menevia, the old name of St. David's,2 and in the Menai Straits.

With this information before us, it is easy to obtain a rational derivation. So far from any difficulty arising from Anglesey having once borne the same name, the identity of nomenclature helps to establish the derivation. For, just as Great Britain and Ireland are the British Islands, the two Monas are the Pictish Islands ; and the name of the Picts is not confined to these islets. It extends to other places in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, where the Picts retreated or dwelt. Thus, to sum up the whole thing, the Isle of Man is the Isle of the Picts ; in Gaelic, the Isle of Mannan ; in Welsh, the Isle of Monaw ; in Latin, Menapia and Mona ; in Manx, Elian Vannin ; in English, the Isle of Man. If, however, Professor Rhys is thus correct, we obtain from his researches more than a rational etymology for the word : we are introduced at once to the first inhabitants, or, at any rate, to the first Neolithic inhabitants of the island.

From a purely insular point of view, we might be satisfied with this position. But, if the history of even a little island like Man can throw light on larger historical problems, we ought not to Edinburgh is situated and a portion of the Pentland Hills. Pentland is supposed to have been a corruption of Pehtland, the land of the Peht or Pict Thus probably the Pentland Firth inthe North of Scotland and the Pentland Hills in the South owe their name to the presence of the Pictish branch of the Iberian race. 1 Celtic Britain, p. 154. - Mrs. J. R. Green tells me that among the gifts paid by the municipality of Canterbury in the fifteenth century were gifts to the Bishop of St. David's, who got a double supply, one grant being provided for the Episcopus Menevensis and another for the Bishop of St. David's. Cons.

Mann, its Names and their Origin, in Manx Soc. Pub., vol. be contented with the bare statement : we ought to endeavour to discover who were the Picts whom we find in original pos session of Man. Till a comparatively recent period one answer would at once have been returned to this inquiry. " All ancient writers," wrote Hume, expressing the knowledge of his time, " agree in representing the first inhabitants of Britain as a tribe of the Gauls or Celtæ, who peopled that island from the neighbouring Continent ; " and again—" The Picts seem to have been a tribe of the native British race, who, having been chased into the northern parts by the conquests of Agricola, had there inter mingled with the ancient inhabitants. The Scots were derived from the same Celtic origin."1 Hume does not seem to have seen that these two passages are not entirely consistent.

For, if it be true that the first inhabitants of Britain were a tribe of the Gauls or Celtæ, then a branch of this tribe driven into the highland fastnesses by Agricola could have found no more ancient inhabitants with whom they could intermingle. But the fact is that Hume's statement is opposed to what we know of the early history of Britain, and is inconsistent both with the discoveries of ethnologists and geologists in our own time, and with the evidence which may be drawn from the present inhabitants of these islands. Moreover, Cæsar divides the in habitants of Gaul into three races — the Aquitani (or Iberians, to use the usual name), the Celts, and the Belgæ — and Tacitus identifies the inhabitants of Wales or the Silures with the Iberian race : " Silurum colorati vultus torti plerumque crines, et positaa contra Hispania, Iberos veteres trajecisse, casque sedes occupasse, fidem faciunt."2 These Iberians, the oldest Neolithic race known in Europe, a small, dark-haired, dolicocephalic people, are believed at 1 Hist, of England, vol. i. pp. 2, 12. 2 Agricola, ch. one time to have occupied the whole of Europe west of the Rhine.

They gave their name to ancient Spain ; they have left their representatives on the Continent in the Basques ; they are allied with the Berbers of Northern Africa; they were probably identical with the Sikans, the primeval inhabitants of Sicily. At the dawn of written history they were already retreating before the great Celtic race which has made so much impression on Western Europe. But, though the Iberian retreated before the Celt, he does not seem to have died out before him. The history of France, and perhaps our own history, proves that the two races possessed rare powers of amalgamation. While, though the Iberians were the in ferior, the Celtic the superior race, the prevalence — perhaps the increasing prevalence — of small, dark-haired men, both in France and the British Islands, shows how strong has been the tendency of the earlier people to survive.

The evidence that the Silures of Wales were identical with the Iberians of the Continent does not rest on the testimony of Tacitus alone. " There is," writes Professor Boyd Dawkins, " clear proof that the Iberic element in the Welsh and Scotch peoples formerly possessed the whole of the British Isles in the remote period defined by archæologists as the age of polished stone or the Neolithic age. The numerous skele tons found in tombs and caves throughout the length and breadth of these islands prove that they were the only folk in these islands before metals were known." 1 " The small dark race," he writes in another paper, " is to be found in certain mountainous and inaccessible regions in the west. We have them in certain parts of Wales, we have them in Ireland, we have them in the Highlands, they are isolated fragments of one people who were formerly homogeneous." 2 This conclu- 1 The Place of the Welsh in the History of Britain, p. n. 2 Our Ancestors, p. 4. sion might easily be supported by other testimony.