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John Cockrane
John Cockrane was a Manx sailor rated as Boy Third Class who served at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. He was twelve years old and was wounded during the engagement.
John Corlett (Cleveland)
John Corlett, one of the five founders of the Manx Society at Cleveland. He was one of the five men, all bearing Manx names, who set the society up in 1851: James Christian, John Corlett, William K. Corlett, William Cubbon and William Brew. It existed to help the immigrant from the Isle of Man who reached Cleveland with an empty pocket or in poor health, and it is counted among the earliest bodies of its kind in America. Corlett was one of the Manx names that took firmest root in northern Ohio, and the family produced both the fullest surviving set of emigrant letters and, two generations on, a physician of international standing.
John Cottier
Merged. This man was one of the six jurors who found William Christian, Illiam Dhône, a traitor in 1662. The whole of the record concerning him is the single line of the verdict naming that jury, so the account is now held under one item, The Jury that Convicted Illiam Dhône (1662), rather than divided among six near-empty records. See that item.
John E. Christian
John E. Christian was a member of the Christian family of Manx origin who settled in America. He forms part of the wider pattern of Manx emigration to the United States.
John Frissell
John Frissell, High Bailiff, member of the House of Keys and one-time Attorney-General of the Isle of Man. He had held the Attorney-Generalship under the Duke of Atholl and resigned it with a view of going into the army. In May 1774 he memorialised for the appointment again, this time from the Crown, the office being the one commonly called Attorney-General but formally that of solicitor for the Crown in the Isle of Man. He sat in the Keys through the Revestment and after it. His name is on the resolution of the House at Castletown on 21 March 1765 appointing commissioners to act for the good of the people and inhabitants so far as was consistent with the welfare and prosperity of the community, and he signed the Acts promulgated at Tynwald from the 1740s onward. As High Bailiff he put his name first to a petition to the public of the Isle, praying aid and assistance for the erection of a bridge over the river of Ballure at the highway, which would conduce to the safety of all who might have occasion to travel that way. Twenty other subscribers followed him. He was a captain in the Island's own forces, in the first battalion of the Manx Volunteers before 1802, under Lieutenant-Governor Alexander Shaw as Major Commandant. The family went into the navy. His son John, by Elizabeth daughter of Captain John Llewellyn, was a lieutenant wounded in the battle of the first of June 1794, and afterwards married a French marchioness and settled in France. Two more sons, Charles and William, were also in the navy.
John Howard, 15th Earl of Suffolk
John Howard, fifteenth Earl of Suffolk (1739-1820), a speaker on the Duke of Atholl's claim. He is listed among those who spoke when the claim came before the House of Lords on 5 July 1805, with the Lord Chancellor, the Duke of Norfolk, the Duke of Montrose, Lord Holland, Lord Hawkesbury and the Marquis of Buckingham. He had spoken earlier the same day on the case of Colonel Cochrane Johnstone.
John Kneene
John Kneene was a Ramsey fisherman whose boat was illegally seized in Ramsey Bay in November 1765, just six months after the Revestment. He petitioned against the seizure alongside fellow fishermen John Sayle and John Wattleworth.
John Miller Nicholson
John Miller Nicholson (29 January 1840 - 1913) was a Douglas-born painter, apprenticed as a house-painter and decorator in his father's business, who became regarded as the Isle of Man's leading Victorian artist. His meticulous pencil sketches of Douglas shore at sunrise, annotated with time, date and weather notes, drew the admiration of critic John Ruskin, who purchased several and compared his talent to Turner's. He continued in the family decorating trade throughout his life while amassing a substantial body of work now held largely by the Manx Museum.
John Moore
John Moore of "The Hills," Douglas, served as Speaker of the House of Keys on the Isle of Man and was the uncle of Edward Moore Gawne, who succeeded him in that role. He was a member of a prominent Manx family with deep roots in the Island's political life.
John Murray (Atholl agent)
John Murray, one of the three trustees of the Atholl settlement of the Isle of Man. The indenture of enfeoffment conveyed the island, castle, pele and lordship of Man, with the other premises described in it, to John Earl of Dunmore, William then Lord Mansfield, and John Murray, and to their heirs and assigns for ever, upon the trusts and for the intents and purposes declared in it. A power was reserved to the Duke. The trust was the machinery by which the sale to the Crown became possible. Its terms provided for the trustees, or whoever was then in actual receipt of the rents, revenues and profits of the Isle, being of the age of twenty-one years, to sell and convey, or release and surrender, the Isle, castle, pele, lordship and territories of Man, and the other trusted premises over which the Duke had made no appointment in his lifetime under the power reserved to him, to the King's Majesty, his heirs or successors, for such price as was named.
John Murray, 3rd Duke of Atholl
John Murray, third Duke of Atholl (1729-1774), the Lord of Mann who sold the Island to the Crown. He held it in right of his wife. Charlotte, daughter of the second Duke and Baroness Strange in her own right, was the heir to the lordship, and the deeds of the transaction name the two of them together as the Duke and Duchess of Atholl. The sale was carried through by trustees and in stages. The Island was conveyed to John Wood, the Governor, to be re-enfeoffed to Viscount Stormont, Sir Charles Frederick and Edmund Hoskins, and the Duke's own power of appointment over the trust property was reserved to him for his life. The contract with the Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury of 7 March 1765 was made between four of the Commissioners on one part and the Duke and Duchess with Frederick and Hoskins their trustees on the other, for the absolute purchase of the Isle with its dependencies, and provided that on payment of seventy thousand pounds into the Bank of England in the four names the Island should vest unalienably in the Crown. His friends thought he had done well out of a bad business. Lord Kinnoull wrote to him from Dupplin on 9 March 1765, having heard of what he called the happy conclusion of the Duke's troublesome and interesting business, saying that he could not judge whether the compensation matched the loss of income but that all circumstances considered the agreement was proper, wise and prudent to accede to, and putting the success down to the Duke's own firmness, moderation and spirit.
John Murray, 4th Duke of Atholl
Fourth Duke of Atholl and the last member of the family to retain substantial proprietary rights in the Isle of Man. By the early nineteenth century the sovereign rights formerly held by the Atholls had already passed to the Crown under the 1765 Revestment. The family nevertheless retained property, patronage and other rights which had not formed part of that original purchase. The fourth Duke pressed further claims for compensation. Parliamentary proceedings in 1805 repeatedly considered “the Duke of Atholl’s Claim”, leading to the settlement of an annuity calculated by reference to Manx customs revenue but charged on the Consolidated Fund. He later also held the office of Governor-in-Chief of the Isle of Man. Home Office indexes preserve warrants and instructions concerning his appointment, together with correspondence over Manx judicial and constitutional questions. His role brought him into disputes and petitions involving the courts, the Keys and local administration. Surviving Home Office entries include questions put by Atholl concerning the role of the Keys in the Court of Gaol Delivery and petitions transmitted to him during the 1820s. Parliament authorised the Treasury in 1825 to purchase the remaining Atholl rights in Mann. Later Manx accounts identify the final surrender as taking place in 1828.
John Quayle
Clerk of the Rolls of the Isle of Man in the decades after Revestment, and steward of the Atholl manorial interests. His patent for the office came from George III, reciting the King's confidence in the fidelity and prudent circumspection of his trusty and well-beloved John Quayle, and appointing him to hold the Clerkship of the Rolls during pleasure with all its rights, fees, profits and privileges. The office made him the custodian of the Island's memory. When the Commissioners of Inquiry sat in 1791 and 1792 and wanted the record, it was Quayle who produced and certified it. Extracts from the Liber Scaccarii of 1641, 1690, 1707, 1719 and 1770, printed in the Commissioners' appendices, each close with his examination of the copy as Clerk of the Rolls. He was himself examined repeatedly at Douglas and Castletown through late September and October 1791, on the herring custom, on wrecks and flotsam, and on the constitution. He also put his own view on paper. Writing from the Rolls Office at Castle Rushen on 17 October 1791, he told the Commissioners that he had carefully perused and considered Sir Wadsworth Busk's sketch of the history of the constitution and government of the Isle, that he believed it a just representation of facts, and that he concurred entirely with the Attorney-General in the principles and reasoning it advanced. Alongside the public office he acted for the Atholl family. He and William Callow were appointed stewards of the manorial interests by the third Duke and continued under the fourth, remitting rents in bills through Drummonds and handling the mines, the impropriate tithes of Malew and the drafting of a proposed Act of Parliament on the ducal revenues. It fell to Quayle to report the death of Governor John Wood in a letter of 1 May 1777, noting that the Governor had been appointed by the Duke's grandfather and had remained a steady friend to the family.
John Sayle (Ohio emigrant)
John Sayle, Wesleyan local preacher, one of the Manx emigrants who settled in Ohio. He sailed in 1827 in the ship Ocean, which carried something like a hundred and twenty-nine Manx people, and he went out with Patrick Cannell, another local preacher. They were part of the first real movement. Manx people had been going to America since the seventeenth century, but the Cleveland district was opened only in 1826, when three families arrived: William and Eleanor Kelly, Patrick and Ann Tear, and William and Mary Kneen, with seven children between them. The next year something like seventy families, about two hundred people in all, followed them into Ohio. The names that took root there are a roll of the Island: Crellin, Shimmin, Kaighin, Cowley, Collister, Gelling, Kermeen, Monier, Mylchreest, Carran, Kewley, Lewin, Bridson, Crow, Killip, Cain, Corkill, Looney, Clucas and Kneen. The settlers organised early. A Manx Society was founded at Cleveland in 1851 by James Christian, John Corlett, William K. Corlett, William Cubbon and William Brew, to assist and take care of the poor immigrant from the Isle of Man who came with an empty pocket or in feeble health, and it holds an honoured place among the pioneer bodies of its kind.
John Sayle (Ramsey fisherman)
John Sayle was a fisherman from Ramsey on the Isle of Man whose boat was illegally seized in Ramsey Bay in November 1765, six months after the Revestment. He petitioned for its return alongside John Kneene and John Wattleworth.
John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon
John Scott, first Earl of Eldon (1751-1838), Lord Chancellor, who spoke on the Duke of Atholl's claim. The claim came before the House of Lords on 5 July 1805, and the report of the debate lists the Lord Chancellor as a speaker twice in it, with the Duke of Norfolk, the Duke of Montrose, Lord Holland, Lord Hawkesbury and the Marquis of Buckingham. Eldon held the Great Seal from 1801 to 1806, so the office was his at that date. The claim itself was the Duke's petition for further compensation for the rights sold in 1765. A committee of the Commons had reported that he had fully established his allegations and that compensation should be granted, charged on the revenue of the Island, and the argument in both Houses that summer was over whether the Manx revenue or the Consolidated Fund should bear it. The Consolidated Fund did.
John Stevenson
John Stevenson of Balladoole (c. 1655-1737), Speaker of the House of Keys and one of the commissioners who negotiated the Act of Settlement of 1704 with the Earl of Derby. The Act is sometimes called the Manx Magna Carta, and Bishop Wilson styled him the Father of his Country. What the Act did is put plainly in the Manx sources: it did away with the proceedings that had gone before and restored the violated tenures. That is the whole of his public reputation in this corpus, and later writers reach for the Act rather than for the man. Balladoole itself kept the papers. The account of James, Duke of Atholl, first taking possession of his kingdom of Man in 1736 comes from an old manuscript formerly in the possession of Stevenson of Balladoole, and was probably written by one of that family. It gives a detailed narrative of the Duke and his suite embarking at Liverpool on board the ship Prince William, and of the proceedings at the Tynwald at St John's on 24 June 1736. Stevenson was alive that summer and died the following year.
John Taggant
John Taggant was a Manx sailor who served at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. He was forty-one years old and was killed in action during the battle.
John Taubman
Merchant of Castletown and Speaker of the House of Keys at the time of the 1792 inquiry. He was returned to the Keys in 1752 and sat there for the rest of his life. Examined by the Commissioners of Inquiry at Castletown on Saturday 15 October 1791, he told them he had been a member of the House these forty years and upwards, and Speaker for six or seven, and that the House consisted of twenty-four members filling their own vacancies. His evidence is one of the fullest accounts of how the Keys actually worked. He described the closing of a session, when the Speaker informs the Governor that the business is finished, asks whether he has any further commands, and then adjourns the House without a day. He set out the original jurisdiction of the Keys over complaints against their own members in their public capacity, and over libel or scandal touching the public magistrates or the House itself. He held that the attestation of Governor, Council and Keys to the promulgation of an Act of Tynwald was the act of each of those persons signing in a legislative capacity. He had also, for some years, superintended the application of the Lord's carriage services for the southern division, which went to the repairs of Castle Rushen and to work on the Lord's demesnes. He led the House's dealings with the inquiry. In September 1791 the Keys appointed him first of a committee of seven to attend the Commissioners on the Duke of Atholl's claims, and in October he signed their observations on the public buildings and harbours as Speaker. His own claim ran alongside. He and John Stevenson petitioned the Commissioners over the old harbour debts in October 1791, and Taubman separately memorialised the Treasury for a debt settled at £337 3s 4½d English in December 1774, which with interest at six per cent and one payment received stood at £602 12s 6¼d by 1790.
John Tear
John Tear, born in 1760, who emigrated from the Isle of Man in 1826 and died in America in 1841. He was one of the first of the Manx settlers in Ohio, going out in the year the Cleveland district was opened, and he was a Wesleyan. His tombstone in the Brakeman Cemetery in the Leroy district describes him as a follower of Wesley, under whose ministry he had sat, and gives his birth, his emigration and his death. Patrick and Ann Tear were among the three families who made up that first party of 1826.
John Wattleworth
John Wattleworth was a Ramsey fisherman whose boat was illegally seized in Ramsey Bay in November 1765, six months after the Revestment. He petitioned for its return alongside John Sayle and John Kneene.
John Wood
Governor of the Isle of Man before and after the Revestment, in office from the early 1760s until the later 1770s. His surviving letters to the Duke of Atholl run from 1762 to October 1764, and much of their business is money. They record the remittances sent over regularly to the Lord of Man, among them £1,100 British despatched with the Michaelmas abstract by Charles Lace, who was held by contrary winds and storms long after the sailing and reached Liverpool safely in the end. The quarterly abstracts of imports were the instrument by which the state of the Island's trade was laid before its proprietor, and Wood noted the wrecks of ships bound for the Isle by which the Duke's revenues suffered. Writing from Castletown in December 1762, he reported that the box of tithe conveyances had arrived safe and that he had received the King's commands to proclaim the cessation of arms, which he hoped would put more spirit into a trade that had seemed for some months to be declining. On the death of the second Duke he set the Island's mourning in order, arranging for minute guns to be fired for an hour on the return from chapel and directing enquiry into whether the parish churches had customarily been hung with mourning. He also recalled the interim commission he had given to young Taubman, acting on a paragraph in the late Duke's last letter which had wished the surviving Deemster to carry both offices, and their perquisites, until a successor could be settled by established rules. Revestment changed whom he served rather than what he did. His predecessors had sworn to deal uprightly between the Lord and his people. Wood's own oath as Governor bound him to deal truly and uprightly between the King and his subjects within the Isle, and as indifferently between party and party as the staff of office then stood, and to call the Council together whenever he thought it necessary. His warrant of appointment as Governor under the Crown was issued by Sandwich on 21 June 1765. In March of that year, in the weeks when the sale was before Parliament, it was to Wood that George Moore applied for the Keys to be convened, and Wood who issued the precepts. The new revenue establishment brought a jurisdictional quarrel. In 1771 he wrote to the Treasury complaining of deputations issued to revenue officers, arguing that the office and jurisdiction of the Water-Bailiff had not been properly explained to their Lordships, and warning of the confusion and clashing of jurisdictions likely to follow. Charles Lutwidge answered him in the same file. Wood was succeeded as Governor-in-Chief by Colonel Edward Smith.
Josef Pilates
Joseph Hubertus Pilates (1883-1967) was a German-born physical fitness instructor who gave his name to the Pilates method of exercise. Living in England at the outbreak of the First World War, he was interned as an enemy alien and transferred from Lancaster to Knockaloe on 12 September 1915, where he is believed to have been held in Camp 4. He was repatriated to Germany in March 1919. The documented trace of his years at Knockaloe is slight. The one firm camp record is the Camp 4 newspaper, the Lager Zeitung of 25 January 1917, which names him as referee at a boxing match, disqualifying one contestant for ignoring his instructions. Beyond this, the record of his time on the Island rests largely on his own later recollections. Much of the popular Pilates origin story is legend rather than record. The founding tale of his equipment, that he worked as a hospital orderly and rigged springs from internees' bed frames, is unproven. The Knockaloe Charitable Trust finds no evidence of hospital work, and his biographer Javier Perez Pont found no such springs on the camp beds. The story that he took inspiration from watching cats comes from his own interview with Robert Wernick in Sports Illustrated in February 1962, which places the cats at the camp on the Isle of Man. That some of those cats would have been Manx is a reasonable inference, but the sources say only "cats", never "Manx cats", and the familiar claim that he copied his movements from Manx cats goes beyond anything the record supports.
Joseph Mylchreest
Joseph Mylchreest (c. 1839 - 28 December 1896), known as 'the Diamond King', was born in Peel and apprenticed as a ship carpenter before travelling through Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and the Americas as a prospector, eventually striking success at the Kimberley diamond fields in South Africa in the 1870s (the mine he developed became known as the Balfontein Mine). He returned to the Isle of Man in 1888 a wealthy man, becoming a magistrate and Member of the House of Keys for Peel and a notable benefactor of Manx causes; a memorial window to him survives in Kirk Michael Church, and his South African career is said to have inspired an episode in Hall Caine's novel The Manxman.
Josephine Kermode (Cushag)
Margaret Letitia Josephine Kermode (18 September 1852 - 15 February 1937), who wrote under the pen name 'Cushag' (Manx for ragwort, the unofficial national flower), was a Manx dialect poet born in Ramsey. Her first collection, Poems by Cushag, appeared in 1907 and captured the speech and beliefs of Manx crofters in verse; she was a sister of P.M.C. Kermode, first Director of the Manx Museum, for whom she later kept house. A memorial to her was unveiled at Maughold churchyard in 1944.