XXV. CHAP. legitimacy, a revenue officer is reprimanded for canonizing Oliver Cromwell. But it may have helped to continue that spitefulness in Henderson to which the Callister letters bear witness. Therein we are told, "his unrestrained abuse of the Bishop painfully illustrates the persecution he [the Bishop] was subjected to by what seems to have been a small but very virulent opposition." His presence in such a position in Ramsey may partly account for the disposition in that town. to support even such a man as Knipe against the Bishop's admirer although the latter personally, as the letters shew, continued on good terms with Henderson. The school subsists yet in Ramsey, and the care of it was united in 1831 with that of St. Paul's Chapel, a recent foundation. In contrast with the frowardness of the Ramsey people, the Bishop's register contains a paper professing unusual submission;-a father not venturing to entrust his children to a tutor, even in the most private way, without the episcopal licence. John Gelling of Kirk Braddan states,— ... "That he has been favoured with the blessing of two or three children, whom he is egregiously desirous....to send to school ... but as it persists that there is no school kept at the parish schoolhouse, which was purposely erected by your Lordship and the parishioners, which is now become quite obsolete, and the school is kept at the clerk's dwelling... at a prodigious distance from your petitioner's residence: ... Your Petitioner supplicates your Lordship may be pleased to grant one John Clarke (who is capable to instruct youth) authority to indoctrinate your petitioner's three children only, until they shall be able to travel to some better school." There is no date: but in 1727, 30th January, there was a petition from the inhabitants of Braddan in want of a petty school; and, Feb. 26, an order made, both that the master diligently attend the school, and the parishioners send their children, and the churchwardens to make presentments accordingly. Yet the parish school-house was only in progress in 1736. Between which two dates John Gelling probably made his application-more perhaps for his own convenience than out of any extraordinary reverence for the Bishop. Still the wording, like that in the Malew case, sounds as if the Episcopal licence were required for all CHAP. teachers. The Bishop's last special interference in behalf of a petty school, noticed in the register, bears date March 3, 1743. It intimates, but not so undoubtingly as in a former instance, the right of the vestry to tax the inhabitants for the purpose:: "To the Reverend Mr. Quayle, Vicar of Kirk Malew. "We are given to understand, from all hands, that the public school-house of Castletown is falling into ruins, to the great concern of all such as have any regard to learning, and to the reproach of that place especially; and upon making a more particular enquiry about it, we are informed that a moderate sum would be sufficient to repair it, if taken in time, and such as might probably be raised, either from the voluntary contributions of such as have been, or who hope to have their children educated there, or by a general cess, or as shall be thought most agreeable to law and equity. "In order to this, you are hereby required to call a vestry, and the Church and Chapel wardens, and to conclude upon some method or other of repairing the said school-house, that a school may be regularly kept in it. And that there may be no reasonable objection made, the inhabitants may be assured, that if the present licensed master, either through age or infirmity, cannot attend it there, a proper and well-qualified usher, with a salary, shall be appointed to perform the duty. I do therefore recommend this affair to yourself, the Archdeacon, and to the rest of the gentlemen of your town and parish, to forward so commendable a work; and I shall not be wanting to add my assistance when once the work is like to go forward." Pleasant or unpleasant, this at least goes straight to the mark. By way of completing this subject, I may add that the last Charge he regularly delivered to his clergy was mainly on the duty of catechizing; and his latest order in Convocation, as it appears in his Register, bearing date 1751, is this: "His Lordship likewise pressingly enjoins his clergy to visit the petty schools of their respective parishes according to the constitutions of 1703." One of the latest of his business letters (if not the very XXV. CHAP. latest) preserved in the same way, is thus endorsed in his own hand : XXV. New en and increased "Copy of my letter to Mr. Edward Kean, (May 10, 1745,) touching the Academic Moneys, by Mr. Wilks. "Good Mr. Kean,-Your great regard for everything that relates to this island, and your particular respect for myself, gives me hopes that you will not deny me your best advice and direction to the bearer, the Rev. Mr. Wilks, whom I have sent on an affair of great consequence to this Church and diocese. There is a fund of £650 for the support of an academic master in this place, £400 of which hath been secured upon a long lease, and is still pretty safe. But there is £250 in the hands of one Mr. Phil. Walker, who was by the trustees (Mr. Cholmondley of Valeroyal, and Mr. Legh of Lime,) empowered to receive and lay it out at interest on land, or the best security that could be gotten. Instead of this, he has kept it in his own hands for six or seven years, paying the interest duly, but neither giving nor procuring security for the principal. Mr. Wilks [, who?] cannot be supposed to be so well versed in matters of this nature, and in a country where he is so much a stranger, will wait upon you with this, and in confidence of your regard for me and this place, will entirely rely upon your direction and [?on] the steps he shall take, and the counsel you shall advise him to bring this affair to as speedy an end as possible. It being a public concern, every one shifting off the concern for himself, the greatest trouble will fall upon me, who, at the age of eighty-one, cannot well go through a law-suit, if there should be occasion for such a thing, as I hope there will not. I acknowledge your great and repeated respect for me, both in my son's and in Mr. George More's letters; I shall always endeavour that so much regard shall not be lost or forgotten by, kind Sir, "Your most obliged, grateful, and affectionate friend, "THO. SODOR AND MAN." Passing to another field of charity, we may observe that dowments, the year of distress since 1735,-distress aggravated to his clergy by the state of the Impropriate Fund,-was the time chosen by him to augment their permanent endowments; preferring, of course, the four vicarages in his own patron rate of alms. age. For Kirk Patrick and Kirk German, in 178, he purchased a tenement in Peel, and lands in the neighbourhood, of which lands he sold a portion "by the advice and desire of the present Vicars of Patrick and German" (Mr. Radcliffe XXV. and Mr. Woods) for £40, to be appropriated (it is not said CHAP. how nor in what proportion) for the benefit of them and their successors. But the remainder of the lands and the house in Peel, "out of a zeal for the honour of God, and for the better support and maintenance of the Vicars of Kirk German for ever," were added to the endowment of that vicarage, which was and still is the poorer of the two. The Vicars "are to read prayers and catechize the youth of the parish every Lord's Day in the afternoon according to the directions of the canon and rubric." The lands thus granted amount to a little above nine acres and a-half, and were valued in 1831 at £13 rent. By way of dimensions, the deed of gift describes the arable fields by so many days' ploughing," and the meadow as "containing about three day-math' of hay." It bears date April 30, 1739. His memorandum in Sacra Privata is, "I gave £20 for a glebe to Kirk Patrick and German,"-meaning probably £20 to each. On one of the last days of the same year, March 20, 1739, "I gave," he writes, "£20 towards buying a glebe to Kirk Braddan; with £35 of Mr. Thompson's." The deed, bearing date April 30, 1740, calls it "the lands of Ballacretney," and annexes the same condition, of catechizing. Near two years after, "March 23, 1741, I gave £15 towards building a new house for the Vicarage of Kirk Braddan." The site of this had to be obtained by exchange, for which an Act of Tynwald was granted on the application of the Bishop, April 19, 1742; himself having been first solicited by the Vicar and parishioners, and Mr. Cosnahan engaging to find the remainder of the money. It was stipulated that the new house was to be of the same dimensions as that at Kirk Lonan, as itself the next year was made the measure of one to be built at Kirk Michael, on an additional piece of glebe (eighteen acres) provided there also by Bishop Wilson at the desire and expense of his son. There remains the church of Jurby, which had to wait for a similar favour until 1748, when the Bishop endowed it also with a meadow in Lezaire parish, bringing in £2 a-year. The secret of his being thus enabled to increase his alms. CHAP. as the times grew worse is doubtless to be found in the following sentence of his devotions: XXV. "Easter Day.[April 6,] 1735. St. Luke xix. 8: 'Behold, Lord, the half of Thy goods (for indeed they are Thine, and of Thine own) I do give to Thee and to Thy poor.' The Lord having convinced me by an experience of more than forty years, that He will be no man's debtor, and having in every station of life in which His Providence has placed me given me much more than was necessary for a decent support: in an humble gratitude to my gracious Benefactor, I do from henceforth dedicate one-half of my rents to pious uses; as also the whole interest of all my moneys; one-tenth, in corn, of the profits of the demesnes, and of all customs paid in moneys." This, it will be observed, was just the year before the great pressure on the island began. Bishop last set of clergy. CHAPTER XXVI. CONCLUDING PASTORAL LETTER. END OF CONVOCATION WORK. 1738-1749. FOR all these good works, of discipline, education, endowment, and the rest, although he never again had a Walker to help him, yet neither was he troubled with any one so inefficient as Walker's colleague. Young Mr. Woods, as VicarGeneral, more than answered his expectations. Being also curate of Kirk Michael, (which benefice it had been Lord Derby's policy or caprice to keep open for an indefinite time.) he was for a good while close to the Bishop, who had thus become aware of his good qualities, and evidently the more he saw of him the more he loved and trusted him. In 1730 he collated him to Kirk German Vicarage, and in 1731 gave him special directions on his going the Michaelmas circuit when he could not go himself: and the returns following appear as accurate and careful as if they had been made by the Bishop in person. But his health failed, and his Diocesan, to his great grief, soon had to inscribe his name and the date of his death in the roll of those whom he wished to comme |