William Christian of Ronaldsway, Receiver-General of the Isle of Man, shot for treason at Hango Hill on 2 January 1662-3.

He was the son of Ewan Christian, Deemster, of Ronaldsway near Castletown, and first appears in the record in 1643, in a petition to James, seventh Earl of Derby, brought against his father. He had held the office of Receiver-General since 1648, a position of trust through which large sums passed.

When the Earl left the Island for the last time to join Charles II, he placed the insular infantry under Christian's command and left his Countess and children in his care. Sir Philip Musgrave was left as governor, with Sir Thomas Armstrong at Rushen Castle and Armstrong's brother at Peel. The commission from the Earl to his Countess to act for him in every respect during his absence is dated 6 August 1651.

What Christian then did is the disputed centre of the case. The charge against him was that he had headed an insurrection against the Countess in 1651, assuming the power to himself and depriving her, the Earl and their heirs of it. His own dying speech says instead that he carried the petition to the Countess, that she accepted it, and that she came to terms with the petitioners. Shortly afterwards, with Colonel Duckenfield's army lying off Ramsey, Musgrave marched against him at the head of the Manx troops.

He petitioned Charles II in 1660 and believed himself covered by the act of amnesty and indemnity. A mandate of Charles, eighth Earl of Derby, dated at Lathom in September 1662, had him proceeded against for all his illegal acts at, before or after 1651. The court overruled the plea of general amnesty on the ground that it did not avail in the Isle of Man in a case of treason against the Lord. The Manx Society editor who printed the records regarded that court as a packed jury and said so. Christian was buried in the chancel of Kirk Malew.

Even his name is disputed in the sources. One Manx Society editor glosses Illiam Dhone as William the brown haired, another as fair-haired William, and a Manx grammar of the same series as swarthy William.

The memory was kept by the ballad Baase Illiam Dhone, which one editor thought had done more than anything else to preserve him among Manx country people. It was translated by George Borrow as Brown William and by the Rev. John Crellin, and its refrain returns each stanza to the death that broke their hearts. A Manx distich remembers William M'Cowle, said to have been rewarded with land in the north of the Island for doing his duty, and wishes him no good of it. Sir Walter Scott drew on the case in Peveril of the Peak. Some have doubted whether the dying speech is Christian's at all, or the later composition of a friend.