Peter King, first Baron King (1669-1734), Lord Chancellor from 1725 to 1733, and the author of the one sentence about the Isle of Man that every Manx writer quotes.

Bishop Thomas Wilson framed his ecclesiastical constitutions in 1703. They were confirmed in full convocation of the clergy, passed in the House of Keys, ratified by the Earl of Derby as Lord of the Isle, and published at the Tynwald Hill on 6 June 1704, which made the canons of the Manx Church part of its statute law as well. King was so much pleased with them that he said that if the ancient discipline of the Church were lost, it might be found in all its purity in the Isle of Man.

The remark took on a life of its own. Cruttwell printed it in his preface to Wilson's works, and from there it passed into every account of the Manx Church. It is quoted in the Manx Society volumes, in Feltham, in Bullock, in Walpole and in Hall Caine, and it is set beside Coke's remark that the Island has such laws the like whereof are not to be found in any other place. Train turned it against Wilson, using it to argue that the Bishop had been unduly severe, and altered the word purity in doing so, which his critics have not let pass. Hall Caine gives the word as force rather than purity and dates the saying to 1703. Keble observed that its date is nowhere actually given.

Not every Manx writer took it as a compliment. Walpole, having described the officers of the consistory courts who gathered the tithes and were required to stand at the church doors during divine service on Sundays and whip away the dogs, remarked that it might charitably be hoped that Lord Chancellor King had only a superficial acquaintance with the discipline he was pleased to commend.