Record of customary law declared at a Tynwald held by Sir John Stanley II in 1417.

A nineteenth-century Manx Society account states that Stanley visited the Island in 1417 and held a Court of Tynwald at Tynwald Hill, St John’s. At that assembly the ancient manner of holding Tynwald was declared and certain older customary laws were declared and confirmed.

The same source records a second visit in 1422. Stanley then held a court at the Hill of Reneurling, identified by the editor with Cronk Urleigh in Michael, where the barons of the Island were called to do homage. A Tynwald was also held at Castle Rushen, where certain customary laws were committed to writing.

The label “codification of 1417” is therefore a modern shorthand rather than the title of a surviving statute. The evidence describes a process in which existing custom was formally declared and confirmed in 1417, followed by further declaration and writing of customary law in 1422.

These records belong to the early Stanley period, when the relationship between the Lord, officers and Twenty-four Keys was being expressed through formal statements of Manx law and constitutional practice.