channel, but from the circumstance alluded to, it has since been called King William's Bank.'

In Ireland as well as in Flanders colonel Stanley commanded under his royal relative with signal bravery; but quitting the army on his elevation to the peerage he generously bestowed his regiment on an old friend and brother officer.2

At the accession of James to the lordship of Man, many of the leases, which had been granted for a term of three lives in the time of his grandfather, had expired, while others were on the eve of expiring, without any provision being made for their renewal. Agriculture, in consequence, became so much neglected that several seasons of scarcity, approaching to famine, had occurred, whilst the people continued to be chiefly engaged either in the fishery or in following the more pernicious employment of smuggling, depending on the opposite coasts for such a supply of corn as was necessary for their maintenThe revenue of the Island had, on these accounts, fallen so low that Lord Derby farmed it to a merchant in Liverpool for the sum of £1000 per annum.3

ance.

A.D. 1703. During the time of the late earl, commissioners had been dispatched by the Islanders to England, in order to negotiate with his lordship for a redress of the various grievances, but his death occurred before the object had been finally accomplished. On the accession of the present earl, therefore, these negotiations were renewed, and chiefly through the influence of Bishop Wilson the act of settlement was obtained, which passed into a law on the 4th February, 1703.* This statute is justly considered the Manks Magna Charta, as by it the landholder was finally established in his holding, and the des

1 Hume's Hist. of England, cap. 71; Waldron, p. 190.

2

Seacome, p. 406.

3 Parliamentary Report of 1805; Speech of Sir William Young in reply to the Duke of Atholl's Petition.

* Appendix, Note iv, "Act of Settlement."

1

cent arranged in perpetuity on payment of certain fixed fines, rents, and duties to the lord.'

By the act of settlement, however, the inhabitants were not exempted from giving their best assistance in the defence of the Island during the time of war or imminent danger, but were bound to afford such and in the way agreed on by the governor and twenty-four keys, for the time being."

From this auspicious epoch in its history, the improvement of the Island is stated to have steadily advanced; but its illicit trade continued unabated; yet, thirty years afterwards we find the Manks legislature complaining of and providing against a scarcity of corn, by "An act to prevent petty tippling houses," passed at a Tynwald held on the 16th July, 1734. It being found that the great consumption in those sort of houses often occasioned scarcity of corn and other provisions, thereby reducing the Island to supply itself from abroad; while they also wastefully destroyed what would not only have been profitable, but would have brought "money and other necessaries" into the Island, "which the commonality could not want,"3 It was enacted-That no person should keep a public-house, unless recommended for that purpose by the minister and captain of the parish, the coroner of the sheading, and four of the grand inquest of each parish yearly, and approved of by the governor. Every person receiving such licence being required to pay two shillings and six pence for the same-to be dividedfourteen pence to the governor's clerk, seven pence to the comptroller, and the remaining nine pence to the House of Keys "for reparation of their houses and to find necessaries at the time of their meetings."

1 Statute, anno 1703; Lex Scripta, p. 190. Mr. Ewan Christian disbursed the sum of £160 in obtaining the act of settlement, for which the landed property of the Island was assessed in 1707.-Lex Scripta, p. 213; Stowell's Life of Bishop Wilson. 2 Johnson's Manks Jurisprudence, p. 111.

3 Statute, anno 1734; Lex Scripta, pp. 254, 255.

4

Lex Scripta, p. 256.

On the same occasion it having been represented to his lordship that several vicarages in the Island had not for ages past had a house on them, for the residence of the incumbents, and that others were in a ruinous state for want of proper means of keeping them in repair, he sanctioned an act of Tynwald, of same date, for the encouragement of any rector or vicar to repair or build a dwelling house on any church glebe within the Isle of Man.'

These were the last public acts of the Stanleys in Man, that family having now in a direct line governed the Island for upwards of three hundred years.* James, the tenth Earl, and thirteenth in the Manks dynasty, died at Knowsley, 1st February, 1735--6, at an advanced age, having been born 3rd July, 1664. He married Mary, only daughter and heiress of Sir William Morley, of Halnacar, in Sussex, by whom he had only one child, who died young-thus leaving him childless at his decease.

The lordship of Man consequently devolved, by the female line, on James Murray, second Duke of Atholl, in right of his grandmother, Lady Amelia Sophia Stanley, daughter of James, the great Earl of Derby. The earldom of Derby, on the other hand, passed, in the male line, to Sir Edward Stanley, descended from Thomas, the first Earl, who placed the crown on the head of the Earl of Richmond in Bosworth field on the 22nd of August, 1485, and proclaimed him King of England by the title of Henry VII.

While under the dominion of the house of Stanley, the Manks people enjoyed all the privileges of their ancient constitution; and while the best blood of the surrounding

1 Lex Scripta, p. 257.

* Appendix, Note v, "Succession of the House of Stanley."

2 In Bullock's History of the Isle of Man, p. 140, it is stated that by the death of James, Earl of Derby, in 1736, the lordship of Man devolved on James Murray, first Duke of Atholl, son and heir of the Marquis of Atholl; and other writers on the same subject have fallen into a similar error, as will be clearly pointed out in the next chapter.

nations was spilling in fearful profusion, the sword was sheathed in Man; but when the people departed from their pastoral pursuits by becoming the promoters of a trade hostile to the interests of Great Britain, they took the first step towards the overthrow of the independency of their little enfeebled kingdom.

On the accession of Sir John Stanley to the sovereignty of the Island, he found the inhabitants living in mud huts, without doors or windows, and constructed with the single purpose of protecting them from the inclemency of the weather. The nobility of the little state were dispersed, and scarcely an individual remained in the country above the rank of a peasant.' From this primitive state the Islanders seem to have advanced slowly under the rule of Sir John's successors. The exactions made by the clergy from the scanty gains of the people were always oppressive, as were, in most instances, "the suits and services" required for the support of the civil and military government of the Island; consequently, the clear revenue received by the lord superior was insignificant, in comparison with the princely income derived from his possessions in England and Wales, and the affairs of the little Island seem to have occupied only a corresponding part of his attention. The Islanders, however, enjoyed the blessings of peace under the rule of the house of Stanley; and when, at length, certain restrictions on commerce were removed, and their "estates made descendible from ancestor to heir," they were politically placed on a footing of equality with the inhabitants of the surrounding countries. Referring to the period in question, Bishop Wilson remarks," As no people are more blessed, so none are more happy and content than the Manks under their venerable laws, and simple, primitive, I had almost said patriarchal constitution."2

1 Bullock's History, p. 48.

2 Ward's Ancient Records, p. 21.

CHAP. VIII.

2 D

APPENDIX.-CHAPTER VIII.

NOTE I.-PAGE 204.

TRIAL OF THE EARL OF DERBY, AND HIS DEPORTMENT AT THE PLACE OF EXECUTION.

His lordship was brought to his trial, before a court martial at Chester, composed of twenty sequestrators and committee-men. General Mackworth was president, assisted by the colonels Mitton, Duckenfield, Bradshaw, Croxton, and Twistleton; the lieutenant-colonels Birkenhead, Finch, and Newton; with the captains Stopford, Smith, Downs, Delves, Griffith, Portington, Alcock, Powel, Grahtham, Scolfar, and Corbet.

His lordship was allowed neither counsel nor books in court for his assistance: therefore he addressed the president in manner following:

"Sir, I understand myself to be convened before you, as well by a commission from your general, as by an act of parliament of the twelfth of August last.-To the articles exhibited against me, I have given a full and ingenuous answer.-What may present itself for my advantage, I have gained liberty to offer and urge by advice: and I doubt not, but in a matter of law, the court will be to me, instead of counsel in court."

"Sir,-First I shall observe to you, the nature and general order of a court-martial, and the laws and actions of it, as far as concerns my case; and then shall apply my plea to such orders.-Therefore I conceive, that the laws of courts-martial are as the laws of nature and nations, equally binding all persons military, and to be inviolably observed. So it is that if a judgment be given in one court-martial, there is no appeal; of which law martial, the civil law gives a plentiful account. But because it is one single point of martial law, which I am to insist upon for my life, I shall name it, and debate the just right of it; as quarter for life given by captain Edge; which I conceive to be a good bar to a trial for life, by a council of war.That you are a council of war, will be admitted; and being so, that you must judge and proceed according to the law of war, and no otherwise, cannot be denied.-That quarter was given me, if scrupled, I am ready to prove; and that it is pleadable, is above dispute. I shall only remove one objection; which is, that although this be a court-martial, yet the special nature of it is directed by parliament.—To this I answer: though the parliament directed the trial as it is, yet it is to be considered as a court-martial, which cannot divest itself, nor is divested of its own nature, by any such direction. For to appoint a court-martial, to proceed by any other laws than a court-martial can, is a repugnancy in the nature of things. Therefore as such a court-martial retains its own proper laws and jurisdiction for the support of itself; so the pleas and liberties incident to it cannot be denied the prisoner.-That quarter, and such quarter as I had given to me, is a good plea for life to a council of war, I shall not endeavour so much to evince by authors, that being the proper work of the learned in the civil law; but by such way as that which we call the right of mankind,