CHAP. gree from his brethren on this occasion, went far beyond what is above recorded in his expressions of dissent : XVI. The Bishop required to cancel his proceedings. "Marowne. Mr. Brideson, the Vicar, upon the Archdeacon's being suspended, very insolently declared before his brethren in convocation, that for all his censure he would keep him company, and that nobody should hinder him from doing so, for he believed him to be an honest man k." One may fairly observe on the general unanimity of the clergy, that very few of them could have been nominees of the Bishop, (except it were indirectly through Mawdesley,) he being at that time patron of only four cures of souls in the island. But in truth they were only expressing, as will soon appear very distinctly, the common mind of the flock towards the shepherd. Another comfort was, that in the May Sheading Courts which came on the same week, ten out of the seventeen parishes return nothing which can be called scandalous. But on the other hand, the very day after the suspension, and partly, no doubt, in consequence of it, "My Registrar brought me from the Temporal Court a sentence upon the hearing of Feb. 9, 1721,-the most partial, malicious, and illegal that my eyes ever saw, as I hope to make appear before proper judges." This was the paper, I suppose, of which the substance has already been given'. The air of surprise which blends with disgust in the Bishop's way of speaking of it is accounted for when we come to understand that the judgment, although dated Feb. 9, had not until now, May 24, been made known to the condemned persons; so the spiritual officers state, as will appear hereafter, in their petition to the King":-" What orders or determinations were made your petitioners never knew until the 24th of May." The Bishop however went on as if nothing had happened. On the 25th he provided for one part of the Archdeacon's interrupted duty. "The Rev. Mr. Ross, Academical Professor, is authorised and required to officiate in Castletown Chapel during the Archdeacon's suspension, or until further orders from us." The parish of Kirk Andreas was supplied XVI. by the curate, Mr. Wattleworth. The Archdeacon, meantime, CHAP. with small gratitude for so much kind help, was agitating at Castletown, and arranging future moves with the Governor. "In a rage," says Dr. Wilson in Cruttwell," instead of applying to the Archbishop of York as Metropolitan, he threw himself on the civil power." "May 31," says the Bishop, "he brought me an appeal to the Lord of the Isle, which I returned, and bade him see the Acts of Parliament of Henry VIII., &c., and there he would see before whom appeals of this nature are cognizable"." The next day, his fierceness having cooled, "he brought me another appeal, to Lord Derby, or to whom appeals lie;' which being not explicit, I gave him again. He said at parting that he was ready to make all reasonable satisfaction, &c. I bade him do it in writing, and I would consider it." He returned probably to Castletown, and his milder mood soon passed away; at least we hear of no further proposal from him. The Attorney-General instead on June 8 brought the Bishop the following letter, which made it evident that the Council, with Horrobin, meant to rest their cause, as far as he and Mrs. Horne were concerned, mainly on the assumed exemption of all the Lord's officials and family from spiritual discipline : "Castletown, June 5, 1722. "My Lord,-The Governor being informed that the Archdeacon having upon several of his trials before your Lordship's Courts made a reserve of the rights and privileges of our Right Honourable Lord, and the legal exemption of the Governor's family and others of his Lordship's household of Castle Rushen; and being your Lordship was also sufficiently reminded of the same upon the 9th of February last, at the Court then held at Castle Rushen aforesaid, and might have had full satisfaction therein, either by entering upon the subject in dispute, or coming to a private conference, which was freely offered to your Lordship as a most probable expedient to compose such differences: the laws were then ready to be produced, and the Governor thinks your Lordship was as nearly concerned to have known them, and under the same sacred obligation to maintain them, as he himself; and he hearing lately that your Lordship was pleased to say that you had been often told that there were laws for exemption, but that you had never seen any, CHAP. hath therefore ordered me to transcribe and send your Lordship XVI. the inclosed copy, which you might have had (if desired) before now, with all the proceedings and other copies of record relating thereunto. "I am, My Lord, "Your Lordship's most dutiful, most obedient servant, "Jo" QUAYLE." "As I did by the Governor's order give to Mr. Woods a copy of the order of Court of the 9th of February last, to be delivered to your Lordship, so I hope he delivered it accordingly. "To the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of this Isle." The inclosure certainly looks more to the purpose than any other of the Governor's arguments; perhaps more than all of them taken together. It is a report of a decision in Governor Ireland's time, Feb. 1, 1610. The then Bishop, Phillips, had exhibited articles by way of petition to the Lord of the Isle against the Governor, the eleventh, headed "Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction," running thus: "If a parishioner that is a soldier be enjoined by the Church to penance for satisfying the congregation, Mr. Lieutenant, contrary to the old order, will privilege him from it. Yea, I having adjudged a vyld incestuous offender to penance at the market-cross, he disallowed it." The Governor, two of his Council, the Deemsters, and Keys, with the Vicars-General, meet to consider this, the Bishop being absent. Their report is : "We the two Vicars-General do answer, that the punishing of soldiers or any other that receive pay of the Lord, or of any of the Lieutenant's families, for criminal causes, doth not by law belong to the Bishop or spiritual jurisdiction, for special reasons and good considerations formerly set down by the late Bishop Merrick in a letter sent by him to Capt. Robert Mollineux the deputy in this isle. Which letter ... remaineth of record And this we say doth agree to the ancient laws of this land." ... This looks at first glance very much like what the Bishop was always challenging his opponents to produce, an authority for the proceedings against him from those empowered to "deem the law." Nevertheless, if we may judge by his indorsement, he was not greatly dismayed by this allegation. "Quayle's letter, and the pretended law for exempting," &c. -thus he dismisses it. There was probably something in the history of it more than we know, which made it of less XVI. value as a precedent than at first reading we might imagine. CHA P. The memoranda for his counsel in the great cause, where they notice it, refer us especially to the 34th Customary Law, which is indeed decisive, if its authority be as complete as its interpretation is clear. "No appeal shall be made from Church censures to the Staff, (i. e. the Governor,) and none to be privileged from them. See practice and precedents upon this for more than 100 years last past." And certainly, besides Earl James's directions, of which something has been said before, the records of the island from Bishop Barrow's time abound in cases which prove beyond a doubt that if there were such an exemption it was hardly ever claimed or enforced. The à priori argument from common sense and practical utility is of course altogether against it. If spiritual discipline be a good thing at all, it must be a good thing for a Sovereign's retainers as well as for other men ; unless their souls be of a different make from the rest. However, the Bishop would probably have passed over Mr. Quayle's second communication sub silentio as he had done the former, but that in a day or two came from Castle Rushen the news of what they were doing with poor Halsal, by which he understood better the full purpose of their legal researches. It was to be made a crime, not only in him to censure, but in the Lord's servants to seek absolution. This was on the 12th of June, and on the 17th he wrote to the Governor, as we have seen, a calm and argumentative and very friendly expostulation, embodying the topics which I have just referred to. We have seen how far this availed in Halsal's case. But it had its effect, no doubt, in quickening the Council to further proceedings. "To the Right Reverend the Bishop and the Vicars-General of this Isle. "Whereas, by an order of the 9th of February last, you were required to retract and cancel your late proceedings against certain persons therein mentioned, exempt by the laws of this island from the jurisdiction of your Court, which proceedings were found to be contrary to the laws and the Lord's prerogative within this island and forasmuch as I do not find that you have yet observed the aforesaid order, these are therefore to require you to give obedience thereunto, according to the tenor and purport therof, and CHA P. forthwith make a due return of your performance therein, under the penalties the law prescribes in such cases. XVI. Castletown Chapel shut up. "Given under my hand at Castle Rushen, the 20th day of June, 1722. "ALEX HORNE." Such was the rejoinder of the civil power to the Bishop's arguments and appeals. As he afterwards remarked to the Privy Council, "What makes these orders more irregular and surprising... is, that they do not appear to have been issued at the request of the several parties censured; ... but rather to proceed from the mere motion of the Governor and other officers." The Bishop received this second order June 21, the Court of Tynwald being to meet on the 25th, (for the 24th was Sunday); and he resolved to try the efficacy of a remonstrance there. In the meantime another grievance arose, which touched him nearly for his opponents, if illogical and absurd in many things, shewed a certain dexterity in hitting the points where they knew he would be most sore and sensitive. "About the same time the said Governor Horne took upon him to lock up a Chapel of Ease at Castletown, belonging to the parish of Kirk Malew, whereby the people were deprived of the public worship of God in the principal town of the island"." That Chapel, it may be remembered, was in some sense Bishop Wilson's own work, and the first which he had undertaken for his diocese, and that with much prayer. He had preached in it-so his memorandum on suspending the Archdeacon signifies" from Easter, 1698, to Oct., 1711, thirty-three times." Castletown had been the scene of his earliest ministrations in the island, both at first landing, and when he brought his wife home. But of course the scandal was more a great deal than all these personal mortifications: and it continued, as we shall see, three years and a-half. On June 21, he writes to Mr. Ross to demand the keys of the chapel of the Governor, well knowing what the answer will be: but he must establish the grievance before he seeks redress. June 22, one of his employments is relieving a clergyman's widow of part of her dilapidations "in consideration of the house being fired." And on the Sunday, the feast of St. • Petition to Privy Council-Cruttwell. |