English Period

1290 we find king Edward I of England in possession of Man, and it remained in English hands till 1313, when Robert Bruce took it after besieging Castle Rushen for five weeks

1333 King Edward III of England granted Man to William de Montacute, 3rd Baron Montacute, (later the 1st Earl of Salisbury), as his absolute possession, without reserving any service to be rendered to him

1392 his son sold the island with the crown to Sir William Le Scroope

1399 King Henry IV brought about the beheading of Le Scroope, who had taken the side of Richard II

1406 The island then came into the possession of the crown, which granted it to Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland, but following his attainder, Henry IV made a grant of it, with the patronage of the bishopric, to Sir John Stanley, his heirs and assigns, on the service of rendering two falcons on paying homage and two falcons to all future kings of England on their coronation.

From an early period of. Scottish History the family of Murray is found to have possessed great feudal influence in the North of Scotland. They derive their origin Friskin, who lived in 1123, and was a descendant of old Moravij. Friskin was the great grandfather of William de Moravia, who was Baron of Tullibardine in 1292. The Danish word Tynwald signifies in Latin forum individuum affirmatum, in English a Judicial Fenced Court; and the Court is held on a mount, curiously and artificially raised, in a fine plain, in the centre of the country, near St. John's Chapel, eight miles distant from Castle Rushen.

The cathedral of Sodor Diocese was on St Patrick's Isle at Peel (the only city on Man). It is possible that the origin of the name "Sodor" was lost and its meaning was applied to this islet as the seate of the bishop. An island of Great Britain in the Irish Sea off the northwest coast of England, between Ireland and Great Britain. It is connected with the Atlantic by the North Channel and (on the south) by St. George's Channel-a strait linking the Atlantic Ocean and the Irish Sea. The name is said to derive from a 14th Century legend that Saint George had voyaged to England from Turkey. Occupied in the 9th century by Vikings, it passed from Norway to Scotland in 1266 and to the earls of Salisbury and of Derby in the 14th century. The Surnames which are neither of Celtic nor of Scandinavian formation, but have been introduced by immigration subsequent to the period of Norse domination. Amongst exotic surnames the first place in order of time belongs to the HIBERNICISED ANGLO-NORMAN NAMES. Colonial and other regions (US).

Many names refer to Lancashire — the Stanley Lord had moved his own forces to guard his interests in his newly acquired Kingdom. With the accession of the Stanleys to the throne there begins a better epoch in Manx history. The focus of power was the Stanleys; the nearer a family stood to the Stanleys the greater was its influence there, and the more accountable its presence in the Isle of Man from 1405 onward. The Stanleys were one of the great families of England whose main houses were at Knowsley and Lathom in south-west Lancashire between Liverpool and Ormskirk. Sir John married Isabel Lathom. The Stanleys derive their descent from Adam de Stanley(c.1125-c.1200) to whom his cousin, Adam de Audley, conveyed the Manor of Stanley in Staffordshire close to the Cheshire border. The 1428 Garrison Roll indicates that there were 25 officials and household officers and 73 garrison soldiers at Peel Castle and Castle Rushen. By 1593 there were 55 soldiers at Castle Rushen alone who manned the day and night watches. ‘Bestiaries’, books describing real and fabulous creatures, had been an English speciality since the 13th century, and these creatures remained popular as decorative motifs until Elizabethan times. The field of flowers is inhabited by various medieval mythical and real creatures. Barony From Liber Bangor et Sabal 1603, in the Registry of Deeds.

Anglo-Norman names appear to be resolvable into three principal classes those which were Norman-French and had undergone little change in England; the Norman-English, which were often English place-names with the prefix " de "; and mere forenames such as those just mentioned. All these varieties became Gaelicised in Ireland, and some or each found their way into the Isle of Man. Some of the English names which occur in old Manx documents soon disappeared through the failure of their owners to strike root in the soil, and others have died out during the succeeding centuries. If the Lord's Rent Roll of 1510-13 did not comprise some absentee tenants, their early disappearance almost suggests that they followed the example of their fellow-countrymen in Ireland and assumed Insular surnames. Among the survivors are such familiar cognomina as Sansbury, Radcliffe and Norris, and the later comers Halsall, Heywood and Hampton. Many of this type are easily identifiable with the names of places in England, particularly in Lancashire. There are also place names within West Derby Hundred of Lancashire.

Surnames occurring in the Isle of Man before the 17th century derive from the names of places in Lancashire. The people of West Lancashire up to the 18th century formed a comparatively isolated community; on one side the sea, on the other side marshes and moors, were obstacles to travel; the great families pedigrees are more closely interwoven than those of most English districts. Names which have filtered in since the end of the Stanley period have been mostly English and Lowland Scotch.

List of parishes and Treens 1511-1515

List of Town Parishes

Isle of Man Registers and Monumental Inscription

 

Though the island's new rulers rarely visited its shores, they placed it under responsible governors, who, in the main, seem to have treated it with justice. Of the thirteen members of the family who ruled in Man, the second Sir John Stanley (1414 - 1432), James, the 7th earl (1627 - 1651), and the 10th earl of the same name (1702 - 1736) had the most important influence on it. The first curbed the power of the spiritual barons, introduced trial by jury, instead of trial by battle, and ordered the laws to be written. The second, known as the Great Stanley, and his wife, Charlotte de la Tremoille (or Tremouille), are probably the most striking figures in Manx history

1643 Charles I ordered him to go to Man, where the people, who were no doubt influenced by what was taking place in England, threatened to revolt. But his arrival, with English soldiers, soon put a stop to anything of this kind. He conciliated the people by his affability, brought in Englishmen to teach various handicrafts and tried to help the farmers by improving the breed of Manx horses, and, at the same time, he restricted the exactions of the Church. But the Manx people never had less liberty than under his rule. They were heavily taxed; troops were quartered upon them; and they also had the more lasting grievance of being compelled to accept leases for three lives instead of holding their land by the straw tenure which they considered to be equivalent to a customary inheritance. Six months after the death of King Charles (30 January 1649) Stanley received a summons from General Ireton to surrender the island, which he haughtily declined. August 1651 he went to England with some of his troops, among whom were 300 Manxmen, to join King Charles II, and he and they shared in the decisive defeat of the Royalists at Worcester. He was captured and confined in Chester Castle, and, after being tried by court martial, was executed at Wigan. Soon after his death the Manx Militia, under the command of William Christian, rose against the Countess and captured all the insular forts except Rushen and Peel. They were then joined by a parliamentary force under Colonel Duckenfield, to whom the Countess surrendered after a brief resistance. Fairfax had been appointed Lord of Man and the Isles in September, so that Man continued under a monarchical government and remained in the same relation to England as before.

CASTLE RUSHEN, and proudly overlooks the subject country. This stately pile was raised in 960, by Outhred, a prince of the Danish line, who lies obscurely buried in the edifice he had founded. Before the Isle of Man became an appendage to the Crown of England, the native kings resided here, in all the warlike pomp of those barbarous ages, supporting a petty splendor by the oppression of their wretched subjects. To the honor of its loyalty, the Isle of Man was the last place that submitted to Cromwell. This Castle is built on at rock, and, before the invention of artillery was deemed impregnable.

The restoration of Stanley government in 1660 therefore caused as little friction and alteration as its temporary cessation had. One of the first acts of the new lord, Charles (the 8th earl), was to order Christian to be tried. He was found guilty and executed. Of the other persons implicated in the rebellion only three were excepted from the general amnesty. But by order in Council they were pardoned, and the judges responsible for the sentence on Christian were punished. His next act was to dispute the permanency of the tenants' holdings, which they had not at first regarded as being affected by the acceptance of leases, a proceeding which led to an almost open rebellion against his authority and to the neglect of agriculture. In lieu of it the people devoted themselves to the fisheries and to contraband trade

The agrarian question subsided only in 1704, when James, Charles's brother and successor, largely through the influence of Bishop Wilson, entered into a compact with his tenants, which became embodied in an act, called the Act of Settlement. Their compact secured the tenants in the possession of their estates in perpetuity on condition of a fixed rent, and a sl fine on succession or alienation. From the great importance of this act to the Manx people it has been called their Magna Carta. As time went on, and the value of the estates increased, the rent payable to the lord became so sl in proportion as to be almost nominal

James died in 1736, and the sovereignty of the isle passed to James Murray, 2nd duke of Atholl. In 1764 there succeeded him his only surviving child Charlotte, Baroness Strange, and her husband, John Murray, who (in right of his wife) became Lord of Man.

1720 the contraband trade greatly increased

1726 parliament checked it somewhat for a time, but during the last ten years of the Atholl régime (1756 - 1765) it assumed such proportions that, in the interests of the imperial revenue, it became necessary to suppress it. With a view to so doing, Parliament in 1765 passed the Revesting Act, under which it purchased the sovereign rights of the Atholls and the customs revenues of the island for the sum of 70,000 pounds, and granted an annuity to the duke and duchess. The Atholls still retained their manorial rights, the patronage of the See, and certain other perquisites, until they sold them for the excessive sum of 417,144 pounds in 1828

Up to the time of the Revestment, the Tynwald Court passed laws concerning the government of the island in all respects and had control over its finances, subject to the approval of the lord. After the Revestment, or rather after the passage of the Mischief Act in the same year, the British Parliament legislated with respect to customs, harbours and merchant shipping, and, in measures of a general character, it occasionally inserted clauses permitting the enforcement in the island of penalties in contravention of the acts of which they formed part. It also assumed the control of the insular customs duties. Such changes, rather than the transference of the sovereignty from the lord to the king of Great Britain and Ireland, modified the Constitution of the Isle of Man. Its ancient laws and tenures remained untouched, but in many ways the Revestment affected it adversely. The hereditary lords seldom if ever functioned as model rulers, but most of them had taken some personal share in its government, and had interested themselves in the well-being of its inhabitants. But now the whole direction of its affairs became the work of officials who regarded the island as a pestilent nest of smugglers, from which it seemed their duty to extract as much revenue as possible.

Thomas, Earl of Derby.' tempore mortis suae, was seized of the Isle of Man, upon which Anne, Countess Dowager of Derby, by her council sued to have dower of the said Isle; to which Blundell, Chief Judge, ex assensu., Brook, Fitz-Herbert, and of all other the council of the King, said that the inquiry was merely void; for that the Isle of Man is no parcel of the realm of England, nor do they use the law of England; and it is like unto Tournay, when it was in the King of England's hands; and unto Normandy or Gascoigne, which are merely out of the Chancery of England, which is the place, and no other, to endow the widow of the King's tenants. But the Isle of Wight is made parcel of the county of Southampton, and Wales and Ireland are parcels of the realm, and a writ of error or judgment given there erroneously, lieth here in England; but for such an erroneous judgment given in Man, Gascoigne, and Callice, no writ of error lieth in England, for they be no parcels of the realm of England. This case being read at the council table to all the lords, it gave full satisfaction to the whole board; that the Admiral of England had not to do in the ports of Man, but that the Earl of Derby is Lord of Man and Admiral of the Isle. They were anciently called Taxiaxi, as appears by a statute quoted in the Lord's prerogative; and for the manner of their election in those ages, you will find in the succeeding Tynwald. Subordinate to these are the Coroners of each sheading, or subdivision, who act in the nature of sheriffs.

Some alleviation of this state of things happened between 1793 and 1826 when John Murray, 4th Duke of Atholl served as governor, since, though he quarrelled with the House of Keys and unduly cared for his own pecuniary interests, he did occasionally exert himself to promote the welfare of the island. After his departure the English officials resumed their sway. But they showed more consideration than before. Moreover, since smuggling, which the Revesting Act had only checked -- not suppressed -- had by that time almost disappeared, and since the Manx revenue had started to produce a large and increasing surplus, the authorities looked more favourably on the Isle of Man, and, thanks to this fact and to the representations of the Manx people to English ministers in 1837, 1844 and 1853, it obtained a somewhat less stringent customs tariff and an occasional dole towards erecting its much neglected public works

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