CHAP. tions and counter-revolutions. At this very time, or soon XVII. after, the Keys, as representatives of the people, were pre

The Bishop lame in his right hand.

paring a petition to Lord Derby which should bring their grievances to an issue concurrently with the Bishop's appeal : the details of which petition, as will be seen by and by, plainly shew how thoroughly they blended his cause-the cause of Church discipline-with their own, as equally necessary to be upheld, if there was to be anything like orderly freedom in the island.

One immediate result there was of the Bishop's imprisonment, very mortifying as likely to impair his usefulness. He was now in his sixtieth year, and his constitution, naturally hale and robust, had nevertheless begun to feel the effect of his hard trials and incessant work, so that, as we have seen, he was constrained to deprecate quarantine by reason of his age and infirmity; and in the known condition of that prison it was not wonderful that he had ere long to complain to the Privy Council, "Your petitioners' long imprisonment has greatly damaged their health, especially that of your petitioner the Bishop, who is ancient and infirm." And again, that whereas they all suffered great hardships during the nine weeks of their restraint, "your petitioner the Bishop contracted such infirmities as are likely to last him the remainder of his life." This alludes especially to a disorder in his right hand, caused by the dampness of the prison. He lost the free use of the fingers of that hand, "so that he was constrained ever after to write with the whole hand grasping the pen."

"In this manner," continues his thoughtful and amiable biographer, "he penned the greater part of his useful and valuable writings. The activity of his mind, and his zeal to do good, would not suffer him to lose the use of his pen while he had a nerve to hold it. It was one of his chief instruments of usefulness, and to the last he exercised it with a masterly hand. Charity is ingenious in devising expedients. She has many substitutes. The privation of one instrument of good only excites her to the discovery of

another g."

The first week of the Bishop's liberation was marked by two deaths which would touch him deeply. He left his

& Stowell, 178.

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prison on Friday, August 31; the Saturday was the day of CHAP. his triumphal march home; and while they were keeping the Sunday (it was the fifteenth after Trinity) poor Henry Halsal was dying of the ill-treatment he had received in the same prison, and as a witness in the same cause. I have noticed the event before: it stands without remark in Episcopalia :-"Sept. 2. Henry Halshall (see above) died."

Sept. 6, being Thursday in the same week, he has marked in his obituary thus:-"Rach. Murray, my god-daughter, Sept. 6, 1722, aged 17." The Murrays were merchants in Douglas, akin to the Patten family, and through them to the Bishop. Mr. William Murray has been mentioned as his companion in that adventurous voyage to Scotland about the Customs, and became also his surety on sundry important occasions: and of his wife Susanna we shall hear more hereafter. It would seem that their presence in the island must have been a great comfort to him in many ways. This girl might have been a playfellow or rather plaything of his daughter Mary's, whom he buried at thirteen about ten years before, and so might be associated with her in his memory. At any rate we know how he prayed for her in common with his other god-children :

"Give Thy holy grace to all those for whom I have undertaken at the sacred font, that they may in their own persons renounce the devil and all his works, and constantly believe Thy holy Word, and obediently keep Thy commandments; that Thou mayest give unto them the blessing of eternal life, and make them partakers of Thine everlasting kingdom h.”

This prayer, by the handwriting and the place where it occurs, seems to have been written into the book about the time of his release.

In the course of this year, 1722, came out Bishop Gibson's revise of his edition of Camden's Britannia, for which our Bishop had been preparing an article on the Isle of Man, to complete, or rather perhaps to supersede, that which his predecessor Bishop Merrick had contributed to the original publication by Camden himself in or about 1607. It is a terse vigorous sketch, full of matter, thought, and energy:

CHAP. and few I suppose have written, or will write, on the Isle XVII. of Man, without being greatly indebted to it. One thing

The Governor's ways of petty per

secution.

in it very remarkable is the candid and good-tempered tone in which (stern reformer as many might account him) he treats of matters to which a strong partizan might easily give a violent and exclusive turn. Although while it was in writing, certainly long before it was published, Lord Derby had gone very far in the ways of oppression and insult, the Bishop (as I have before observed) makes none but honourable mention of the dealings of that House with the Islanders1. Evidently the work was a labour of love to him. He was an antiquarian in grain, and delighted in exact observation; it was all about his own beloved island; and he was working for Bishop Gibson, and in conjunction with Thoresby-friends who entirely sympathized with him. Thoresby was transcribing for the press his own contribution to Gibson's work as early as 1719, from October to December, as his Diary shews.

Although the Bishop's person was free, the anxiety and irksomeness of his position were hardly abated. His own and his Vicar-Generals' English letters were intercepted as while they were in prison, so they state in their second petition to the King, which was read in Council, Feb. 1: a thing hardly conceivable in times so near our own, and shewing more distinctly perhaps than anything else in these strange proceedings the great need of eventual annexation to England.

Moreover, whereas the order of July 19 required the officers to allow the petitioners free access to the insular records, and authentic and attested copies of such as they needed, at the accustomed charge,

"They were not," they say, "allowed to take copies of such as they wanted, but were obliged to take several unnecessary copies of other papers both before and after the same, (to make the charge the greater). And even then, when your petitioners have sent

I may add here, that in this book Wilson estimates the population of his diocese at about 20,000 natives, besides strangers, "which obliges them every where to enlarge their churches:" (p. 481, Works, 4to., t. i.) Yet Mr.

Train (i. 31) says, "By a MS. still extant in the handwriting of Bishop Wilson, the population of the island in 1726 appears to have been 13,971. And in p. 36 he gives the detail by parishes.

XVII.

a proper person to examine the copies with the records, and see CHA P. the officers attest them, such persons have been denied admittance, and kept out by the soldiers of the garrison."

This was indeed afterwards denied by the officers, but the Bishop's remark on the denial is, "It will be proved by undeniable evidences." In the absence of further information, we are at liberty to believe which we please.

Some time in the course of the five months he discovered another part of the Governor's proceedings, which he was not aware of when he sent in his first petition: viz. that upon payment of the fines being refused, June 26, on return of their refusal the Governor and officers decreed such refusal to be "a contempt," and the parties refusing were "left in mercy" (that is, I suppose, delivered over to the mercy of the Lord of the Isle) "for other fines," to be settled by him at his discretion.

The Episcopal Registry contains also a copy of the following paper, certified by Mr. Woods the Registrar :

"Fines and Amercements in Kirk Michell, anno 1722. "June 25, 1722. The Right Rev. the Bishop of this Isle for contemptuously refusing (after being required by several orders of Court) to retract and cancel several of his proceedings, wherein he was found to have acted contrary to law, the Lord's prerogative, and the State and Government of this Isle, is therefore fined in £50.

"This is a true copy out of the Moars Debet published at Kirk Michael Cross, Jan. 13, 1722.

"File 1722, p. 11. John Looney for suspicion of stealing a beehive is fined in 6s. 8d. And to be whipped at the Market Cross of Peele the next market-day after this comes out in charge, by the coroner of Michael Sheading, whereof he is to return certificate."

It seems they took advantage of a form of law customary in ordinary cases, to offer an elaborate insult to the Bishop and his coadjutors, posting up their names by way of stigma on the market-cross of the Bishop's own parish, along with the name of a poor fellow who had been flogged for petty larceny, (or rather for the suspicion of it, for so the record runs); as if by a kind of fatality the then "staff of Government" could not do the least thing without shocking our English notions of law and equity. And it was done on

XVII.

CHAP. a Sunday, the first after Epiphany, as the Calendar for that year will shew: so that the people could not pass on their way to and from their church, to receive their Bishop's blessing or to bear it home with them, without being met by the announcement that he was no better than a vulgar felon.

To make that twelvemonth more completely a year of troubles, a dispute came on in the month of October touching interments in the Cathedral at Peel. The Bishop we know was most averse in a general way to burying within a Church at all, but was accustomed to allow it when there seemed to be a sort of hereditary claim which it might be painful to disturb. Such a claim in his judgment existed in a family called Cannon in respect of the Cathedral, which was also the parish Church of St. German's; and he had permitted one Hugh Cannon to bury his wife Isabel there, it being already the burial-place of her child. But the Constable of the Fort, Captain Mercer, had refused permission, unless her friends should first obtain license from the Governor. The Bishop (Oct. 9) writes to him :

"You would do well to consider that this is the first instance of such a practice, and will be a new invasion of the Church's rights and the subject's property; for if a license must be asked, it may be refused, and then the Bishop may be shut out from his cathedral, and the people from their parish church, for such it was before ever it was a garrison. I think fit to give you this hint, that you may not create new trouble to yourself or me.

"I am your friend,

"THO. SODOR AND MAN."

The remonstrance was disregarded. The next page in the Register contains a certificate from the Vicar of the parish that the same thing was done in two subsequent instances, on Oct. 11 and Jan. 21 following: with a view to which last the Bishop had had an extract previously made from the Castletown Records, proving that the parishioners, not the Lord of the Isle, were chargeable with the repairs of St. German's, and therefore had a right in it without asking the Governor, though it did stand within the limits of a fortress.

Nov. 22, a circumstance occurred so shocking, that he

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