Chapter 12 from 'Land of Home Rule' (1893) examining the 1703 Act of Settlement, which reformed Manx land tenure by converting leaseholders to perpetual tenants at low quit-rents. The chapter discusses Bishop Wilson's pivotal role in persuading the 10th Earl of Derby to resolve the land question that had troubled the island since the 7th Earl's 1645 lease reforms, and compares the Manx settlement with contemporary Irish land grievances.
Under Manx law, leaving the Isle of Man without the Governor's licence was a criminal offence. The statute provided that 'if any inhabitant of the Island, not being a licensed trafficker, shall transport himself from it without special license from the governor, whether it be in his own boat or in the boat of a neighbour, he shall be proceeded against as a felon, and his goods and property confiscated to the Lord.' A replacement law of 1736 imposed a ten-pound fine on any ship's master who carried a person off the island without the Governor's licence, 'besides paying the debts which such person did owe at the time of his departure.' Train, writing in the nineteenth century, noted that 'this act, although not yet repealed, has fallen into disuse.' The pass system meant that Manx emigration, whether to the colonies or anywhere else, required official permission. Those who left without it risked forfeiture of everything they owned. This makes the question of how Manx people reached the American colonies more complex than simple economic migration: they needed either the Governor's consent, a willingness to risk felony, or passage through an English or Irish port where they were not known. The system also helps explain why so few departure records exist for Manx emigrants in this period.
In the autumn of 1811, twenty-seven Manx soldiers captured while serving in Wellington's army were held in French prisoner-of-war depots scattered across the continent. Thomas Crellin of Peel — himself a prisoner at Longwy — wrote to Robert Cannell in Douglas reporting the distribution of forty pounds that the Bishop of Sodor and Man had raised for their relief. The letter names every man and traces each to his parish: John Lace of Kirk Onchan, Thomas Faragher of Peel, Robert Quay of Kirk Maughold. Two of those men had been prisoners for ten years, captured in 1803. The relief came not from the Crown but from the island itself — ordinary Manx people contributing what they could for men they would have known by family if not by face.
A summer-long project. You are George Moore, merchant of Douglas, and it’s 1750.
Keep a trade ledger for the summer — a real notebook, handwritten. Each week, research one real cargo that arrived at a Manx harbour. Enter it in your ledger: the ship’s name, where it came from, what it carried, what the duty was, and what the goods might sell for on the other side of the Irish Sea.
By the end of the summer, you’ll have a working picture of what the running trade actually looked like — not the caricature, but the reality.
The twist: also record what the same goods would cost today, and where they’d come from. Tea still comes from China. Brandy still comes from France. The routes haven’t changed as much as you’d think.
The waters surrounding the Isle of Man support a rich marine ecosystem. The basking sharks that visit in summer, the seal colonies, the seabird populations on the Calf of Man, and the marine life of the Irish Sea are all part of the Island's natural heritage. The sea was not just a barrier or a highway but a living environment that Manx people depended on for food, for transport, and for their understanding of the world they lived in. Manannan's kingdom was not empty.
This ornate, sandstone cross is probably of 14th century date, though it is possibly mounted on an earlier shaft. The cross was removed from its original site just outside church gates to a site to the north of the cross shed in the churchyard between 1930 and 1940 because it was getting in the way of the traffic.
This cross has a square socket stone, 66 centimetres (26 inches) wide at the base and 28 centimetres (11 inches) high, set on a modern calvary. The shaft is of square lower section with sides of 23 centimetres (9 inches) and chamfered 7.5 centimetres (3 inches) above the socket stone to an octagonal section. The shaft is 1.5 metres (59 inches) tall upon which is an ornate cross bead 1.12 metres (44 inches) high. No trace of a calvary was found at the original site. The top of the head is flat with dowel-holes, proving that it was originally crowned by another stone.
By 1779, Major Paul Crebbin was reporting that the militia had collapsed entirely. Without the Lord's administration to maintain it, without equipment or funding, the militia decayed as surely as the harbours and the prison and the court buildings. The men who had served as the island's defenders for centuries were left without arms, without training, without any structure to organise them. By 1801, the men of Mann were reduced to pikes. An island in the Irish Sea, sitting across the shipping lanes between Britain, Ireland, and France, defended by men with pikes — while the same island's fishermen were being pressed into the Royal Navy to crew the ships that defended the Empire.
The black dog of Peel Castle. Waldron, writing in the 1720s, recorded an apparition in the shape of a large black spaniel with curled shaggy hair that haunted the guard room nightly. The English garrison soldiers grew so accustomed to it that they adjusted their behaviour in its presence, refraining from swearing and profane discourse as though a senior officer were watching. A drunk soldier went alone to test whether the creature was dog or devil. A great noise was heard. He came back unable to speak, and died within three days. The passage where the apparition had appeared was closed up and another way made. Waldron recorded this not as folklore but as something the garrison took seriously enough to alter the architecture of the castle.
The Mona's Herald was a Manx newspaper founded by Robert Fargher in 1833. It was the vehicle for Fargher's thirty-year campaign for a democratically elected House of Keys, publishing what the self-elected House did in its secretive proceedings. The Keys responded by bringing libel action, and Fargher was imprisoned for his reporting.
A standing stone at the west side of Glen Mooar, about 180 metres west of the stream.
It marks the site of a rock outcrop which bears five distinct cup-marks (0788.20). It is known locally as 'The Monkey Stone' or 'The Moses Stone'. The cup marks, the largest of which is about 20cm in diameter and 12cm deep, are situated immediately to the southeast of the stone.
A rock outcrop which bears five distinct cup-marks is marked by a standing stone at the west side of Glen Mooar and about 180 metres west of the stream.
The cup marks, the largest of which is about 20cm in diameter and 12cm deep, are situated immediately to the southeast of the stone.
The little people, the fairies proper in Manx tradition. They lived under the hills and sometimes helped and sometimes harmed. They were not the gossamer creatures of Victorian illustration. They were neighbours of a kind, powerful, unpredictable, and best treated with respect. Waldron observed that the Manx people would be even refractory to their clergy if the clergy tried to preach against the existence of fairies. The Church knew better than to try. The accommodation between Christianity and the older world meant the fairy faith and the Sunday service coexisted without contradiction.
The dominant mercantile and political family of mid-eighteenth-century Mann. George Moore of Ballamoore was Speaker of the House of Keys and the most successful merchant of his generation — running triangular voyages from Peel to Boston, Barcelona, Barbados, Venice, and Naples. His Letter Books, now among the Bridge House papers in the Manx Museum, reveal a merchant whose sophistication matched his ambition. He maintained correspondence across northern Europe, insured ships in London, dealt in multiple currencies, and arranged a fictitious sale of the Peggy to a Danish captain to continue trading under neutral colours during the French war. His daughter Peggy married John Quayle, the Clerk of the Rolls. Moore spent months in Treasury antechambers at his own expense defending Manx rights after the Revestment. He wrote: 'I am become quite tired about the general Good of the Community of this Island, and of thinking about it, for I find by Experience that it is alike thankless and useless.' Philip Moore, member of the Keys, wrote of 'anarchy and confusion' in July 1765.
A post medieval boathouse, dock, coach-house and store complex, housing the Nautical Museum.
The site has been inscribed in the Protected Buildings Register (No. 299).
Beyond Cleveland itself, Manx emigrants settled in the surrounding townships of Newburgh and Warrensville, and in small settlements along the lake. These communities replicated the parish structures they had left behind — organised around worship, centred on families who knew each other, using the Manx language freely among themselves. Pastor Cannell held services in Manx in his own log house. The communities they built in Ohio were organised around the same chapel networks that had spread Methodism across the island.
Carved stone crosses from the Norse period, found across the Island, combining Norse artistic styles with Christian imagery. They are evidence of the accommodation at work in stone: Norse settlers adopting Christianity and expressing it through their own artistic traditions, creating something that belonged to neither culture alone but to the Island's distinctive fusion of both. The crosses at Kirk Andreas, Kirk Braddan, and Kirk Michael are among the finest examples of Norse art in the British Isles.
The carved stone crosses from the Norse period are among the finest examples of Norse art in the British Isles. They combine Scandinavian artistic traditions with Christian imagery in a fusion that belongs to neither culture alone but to the Island's distinctive accommodation. The ring-chain patterns, the scenes from Norse mythology carved alongside Christian symbols, and the runic inscriptions represent a people expressing their faith through the artistic language they brought with them. The crosses at Kirk Andreas, Kirk Braddan, and Kirk Michael are the physical evidence of the accommodation working in stone.
The departures continued through the 1830s and 1840s, and the press notices accumulated like entries in a parish register of the dying. Seventeen parishioners of Ballaugh in 1835. Several families from Kirk Michael and Ballaugh in 1837, and a week later, some hundred individuals chiefly from Ballaugh. In 1840, five carts laden with emigrants' luggage arrived in Douglas from the north of the Island. In 1842, no fewer than a hundred and ninety emigrants chiefly from Jurby and Ballaugh were about leaving the Island for the United States — a vessel from Liverpool chartered for the express purpose of taking them out. The northern parishes bled the most because they had the least.
The Nunnery of St Bridget was probably in existence circa 1176 but there is no record of its foundation. By an indenture of 1532 the nunnery was vested in the crown and by 1610 became the property of the Earl of Derby. St Bridget's, the Nunnery Chapel, is now the only building which survives of the 12th and 13th century buildings and had long been used as a store-room and coach-house. It was restored in 1887 by Mr Leigh Goldie-Taubman. Evidently it belonged to the later Priory on this ancient site. Unfortunately no particulars of the original buildings have been recorded. The inscribed fragment of an oak-beam now in Manx Museum is believed to have been a rood-screen in the Chapel.
St Bridget's was brought back into temporary use as a chapel about 90 years ago. It had previously been used as a coach house and is now in very occasional use as a private chapel. The chapel is orientated east to west and measures 18 metres by 7 metres, stone-built with a modern roof. The north wall has been considerably patched and has one large ashlar framed, arched window which may be original and two modern red sandstone framed windows. The east wall has a wide, rectangular, blocked-in doorway and above it an ashlar framed, arched window, largely restored.. The south wall has mainly modern ashlar framed windows and doorway, but has one long narrow ogee window framed with brown and red sandstone and an original arched brown sandstone window partly restored. The interior is equipped as a Catholic Chapel and is in a good state of preservation. The west wall is masked by a modern building. The piscina and pilasters were seen in the interior of the chapel.
The burial ground in which a great number of skulls and other bones have been found is probably on the ancient site, perhaps originating with the foundation of an early medieval keeill here (PRN 0691.00).
Prehistoric cup-marked stone.
A small cup and ring-marked granite boulder was found at the Nursery, Glen Vine and donated to the Manx Museum in 1938. The findspot is believed to refer to the Ballagarey area.
The object is in the Manx National Heritage collections, accession no. 1954-3776.
Mary's Eve, the vigil service held on Christmas Eve in every parish church. The service was the occasion for the singing of the carvals, the Manx Christmas carols. Young men composed carvals and competed to perform them. The service lasted through the night, combining Christian worship with community gathering and creative expression in the Manx language. The tradition declined as English replaced Manx in the churches, but it represented something the institutional church had sustained: a living connection between faith, language, and community creativity.
