John Christian, Banished Quaker (1660s)
One of the Manx Quakers banished from the Island under the restored Stanley lordship.
The persecution began under the Commonwealth and went on after it. In 1656 William Callow and Evan Christian suffered severe imprisonment in Peel Castle, the one for refusing to pay sixteen pence and the other twopence demanded by a priest for the bread and wine of the sacrament, and similar cases are recorded through to 1659. James Chaloner, then Governor, was heard to say that he would quickly rid the Island of Quakers.
The end of it was transportation. The prisoners were told that as persons cast out of the Church by excommunication they were delivered over from the power of the Bishop and his law, to be and continue the Earl of Derby's prisoners. On 15 April 1665 Governor Henry Nowell came to the Castle and read them an order from the Earl of Derby that they must forthwith be transported into some other land, and on the 29th two men came by the Deputy-Governor's order to carry it out.
Banished Manx Quakers were among the earliest Manx settlers in the American colonies.