Manx newspaper and printing establishment founded in Douglas in 1833. The Manx Society’s nineteenth-century bibliography records that the first number of Mona’s Herald appeared on 3 August 1833. It was printed by William Walls of New Bond Street and Robert Fargher of Atholl Street and published from the Herald Office and General Printing Establishment in New Bond Street Lane. The Herald Office quickly became an important Manx printing house as well as the home of the newspaper. Sir William Hillary’s writings on harbour improvement and the preservation of life from shipwreck were among the works printed there. The third edition of his proposal for a great central harbour for the Irish Sea was printed by Walls and Fargher at the Mona’s Herald Office in 1836. Robert Fargher later printed Hillary’s 1842 letter on the preservation of life from shipwreck and the proceedings of a public meeting at Douglas Court House concerning a proposed harbour of refuge using floating breakwaters. The press also produced ecclesiastical and legal material. In 1843 it printed Bishop Thomas Vowler Short’s charge to the Convocation held at Bishopscourt. Mona’s Herald also published folklore. William Cashen’s “Superstitions of the Manx Fishermen” appeared in the newspaper on 25 December 1895, followed by “Customs of the Manx Fishermen” on 1 January 1896.

The central legislative assembly of the Isle of Man, historically composed of the Lord Proprietor or Crown representative, the Governor and Council, and the Twenty-four Keys. The 1792 constitutional inquiry described the more regular form of Manx legislation as resting on the concurrence of three branches: the Lord Proprietor, the Governor and Council, and the Keys. When the latter two assembled together they were called the Tynwald Court. Laws governing the Island were enacted through the joint concurrence of these branches. The Council included senior lay and ecclesiastical officers. The 1792 report listed the Receiver-General, Comptroller, Clerk of the Rolls, Water-Bailiff, Attorney-General and Deemsters alongside the Bishop, Archdeacon, his Official and the two Vicars-General. Its function was to consider measures proposed by the Lord Proprietor or Governor and give assent or dissent. The Keys formed the third branch. They were twenty-four principal commoners, described in the constitutional record as “the worthiest men in the land”. Their existence is documented in medieval records, including a declaration of law made to Sir John Stanley in 1422 and an act in which twenty-four Keys participated in 1417. Tynwald was not simply an indoor legislative sitting. Its public ceremony at St John’s included the promulgation of laws. William Harrison’s nineteenth-century compilation preserved records of the Tynwald and St John’s chapels, including the order of procession for 5 July 1770 and drawings of Tynwald Hill made by Captain Grose in 1774. Harrison also noted that other places had been associated with older Tynwald assemblies. He described an ancient Tynwald site near St Luke’s, Baldwin, which had been levelled by the time he visited it in the nineteenth century.

Society associated with the preservation, publication and promotion of the Manx language. The surviving evidence pack is particularly strong for the Society’s work in the early twentieth century. Sophia Morrison edited William Cashen’s Manx Folk-Lore, published in Douglas by the Manx Language Society in 1912. The book preserved Cashen’s recollections of domestic life, fishing customs, folklore, songs, sayings and riddles, with substantial material in Manx. The Society also provided a public setting in which native and fluent speakers continued to use the language. Morrison’s account of William Cashen records that he read at Manx Language Society entertainments, as well as reading lessons in Manx at Oie’l Voirrey services. He twice read the laws in Manx on Tynwald Hill. Later language preservation work included recording the last native speakers. Stephen Miller’s introduction to W. Walter Gill’s collected folklore refers specifically to the activities of Yn Cheshaght Ghailckagh in tape-recording the remaining native speakers of Manx. The Society’s name continued to appear in later Manx-language publications and phrase books, alongside references to membership, activities and material produced under its auspices.