Major in the 23rd Light Dragoons, son of John Joseph Bacon — one of Douglas's foremost merchants in the pre-Revestment era, whose shipping ledger recorded voyages of the brig Caesar to Naples and Gothenburg. The father's ledger was the record of the commercial world the Revestment destroyed. The son fought in the war that followed. Bacon was wounded twice — at Quatre-Bras and again at Waterloo. His uniform — navy and red jacket, silver-threaded epaulettes, leather sabretache — survives as the oldest known Napoleonic light cavalry uniform in the British Isles, held by Manx National Heritage alongside Quilliam's naval uniform.
Manx soldier captured while serving in Wellington's army, held prisoner at Longwy in France from 1806. Wrote to Robert Cannell in Douglas distributing £40 that the Bishop of Sodor and Man had raised for the relief of twenty-seven Manx prisoners held across seven French depots from Cambrai to Besançon. His letter names every man and traces each to his parish. The relief came not from the Crown but from the Island itself — the Bishop's collection, ordinary Manx people contributing what they could for men they would have known by family if not by face.
Launched the Mona's Herald in 1833 and began a thirty-year campaign for a democratically elected House of Keys. His method was straightforward: he published what the Keys did, and the publication itself was the argument. A self-elected body operating in secrecy could maintain its authority only as long as nobody outside the chamber knew what happened inside it. Fargher opened the doors with newsprint. The Keys responded by prosecuting him for libel. He was imprisoned. The imprisonment produced public petitions for reform. He had argued in 1844 that the Keys should not be given financial authority because they were unelected. Twenty-two years later, Governor Loch used precisely the same argument to force the Keys to accept popular election.
Owner of the Isle of Man Times, picked up Robert Fargher's reform cause in the 1860s. He reported on Keys proceedings. The Keys objected. Brown was summoned before the House and refused to apologise. Governor Henry Loch, watching the confrontation between a newspaper editor and a self-perpetuating legislature, drew the conclusion that Fargher had drawn thirty years before: there could be no responsible government while the Keys remained unelected.
Lieutenant Governor who forced the Keys to accept popular election as the price of financial control. The House of Keys Election Act of 1866 was promulgated at Tynwald. The first popular elections took place 2–5 April 1867. The franchise was limited — male ratepayers holding property valued at eight pounds or more, roughly twenty per cent of the adult population. Thirteen of twenty-four seats went to men who had sat in the old self-elected House. The revolution was conservative. But the principle was established. The mechanism that the Revestment had destroyed — accountability, proximity — had been rebuilt by Manx people themselves.
Speaker of the House of Keys, perhaps the finest historian the Island produced. His History of the Isle of Man documented the crime with the restrained fury of someone who loves the thing that has been damaged. In 1899 he helped found Yn Cheshaght Ghailckagh, the Manx Language Society, with the motto Gyn chengey, gyn cheer — without language, without country. Moore understood what Wilson had understood two centuries before: the language was not a cultural ornament. It was the medium through which the Island knew itself.
Last native speaker of the Manx language. He had learned Manx as a child from an aunt who spoke no English. He died at ninety-seven in 1974. A language spoken on the Island since at least the fifth century — older than English, older than Parliament, older than the lordship that Parliament had purchased — and when he died, the thread of unbroken transmission that connected the Island to its own past was severed. UNESCO declared Manx extinct. But the recordings existed — made in 1948 when the Irish Taoiseach Eamon de Valera sent equipment across. The grammars existed. The Bible existed. Wilson's translations, Hildesley's completions. UNESCO revised its classification to 'critically endangered.' The language came back.
Chairman of the committee that produced the Fincastle Resolutions in January 1775, rejecting Parliament's claim of 'unlimited power' over the colonies. Grandson of Robert Christian of Cedar Grove (Chief Magistrate of New Kent County, 'Washington's devoted friend'), descended from William and Jonathan Christian who emigrated from the Isle of Man in 1655. Patrick Henry's brother-in-law. Served in the Virginia Senate alongside Jefferson and Madison. Sat on the Committee of Safety. Killed in 1786 in Kentucky. In 1775, there were Christians governing on both sides of the Atlantic — William Christian, Esquire, in the House of Keys, and Colonel William Christian in Fincastle. The same refusal to accept that Parliament's word was final on a people's rights.
The Island's most celebrated artist, one of the first pupils at the Douglas School of Art that Manx people had fundraised themselves. His Celtic designs for Liberty are sold worldwide. During the First World War he worked at Knockaloe internment camp as a civilian censor, reading the letters of 23,000 imprisoned men. The Knox exhibition at the Manx Museum does not mention his work at Knockaloe.
Interned at Knockaloe camp near Peel from September 1915 for three and a half years. He developed what he called 'Contrology' during his internment, using springs from camp hospital beds to build his early equipment. Millions practise Pilates worldwide. How many know it was developed on the Isle of Man?
Attorney General of the Isle of Man. Writing in 1882, he drew the constitutional parallel explicitly: 'In the previous year, the Parliament had asserted their right to tax the American colonists against their consent... no greater, and probably a lesser, right existed in the Parliament to tax the people of the Isle of Man.' In 1901, writing from Castletown, he argued that the proper title should still be 'King of Man' or 'Queen of Man' — the Stanleys had surrendered a Kingdom, 'the Kingly title of which having been by the voluntary act of a Predecessor changed for the lesser title — but a title merely — the substance surrendered was a Kingdom.'
Speaker of the old self-elected House of Keys. Resigned in protest at the notion of popular elections and withdrew from public life entirely. His outrage at being made accountable to the people was, in its way, the most eloquent argument for the reform he was protesting.
Whitehaven merchant who co-signed the merchants' memorial to the Treasury in the early 1750s, calling for 'purchasing the sovereignty of the said Island' and claiming £200,000 in annual losses to the Crown plus 'great damage' to the East India Company. The memorial proposed that if purchase failed, smugglers might be transported 'unto the British colonies in America.' The Lutwidge family lobbied for the seizure; Charles Lutwidge was then appointed to administer the result.
Whitehaven merchant who co-signed the merchants' memorial to the Treasury alongside Walter Lutwidge, calling for the purchase of Mann's sovereignty. The memorial was signed by thirty-two traders and represented the Whitehaven commercial interest that competed against the Manx running trade. The same family would provide the Receiver-General who administered the consequences of the seizure they had lobbied for.
King of Great Britain and Lord of Mann from 1765 to 1820. Fifty-five years as Lord of Mann. He never visited the Island. The Revestment was done in his name, with his Royal Assent, and he never saw the place whose sovereignty he had purchased for seventy thousand pounds. His response to Grenville's papers: 'The proposal of the Duke and Duchess of Athol seems modest; I return the papers signed.' Seven words on the price. Nothing on the principle. Nothing on the people. The fate of the Island was settled in a sick-note. George came from a dynasty selected by Parliament — the Hanoverians, whose experience of sovereignty was Imperial and German, not English. They had no framework for understanding what the lordship of Mann was.
Lady of Mann for sixty-four years — the longest-reigning Lord since the Stanleys. In 1847, the royal yacht anchored in Ramsey Bay. The weather had been too rough for Douglas. Victoria was seasick and could not leave the cabin. Prince Albert came ashore, was rowed to Ballure beach, and walked up the hill at Lhergy Frissel to admire the view. He chatted about the potato blight. He returned to the yacht. The chief bailiff of Douglas, who had rushed north in full municipal dress, arrived in time to watch the yacht sail away. Victoria — sixty-four years as Lady of Mann — never set foot on the Island. The Manx people built a forty-five-foot granite tower on the spot where Albert had stood.
Consort of Queen Victoria. Came ashore at Ramsey in 1847 when the weather was too rough for Douglas and Victoria was seasick. Was rowed to Ballure beach, walked up the hill at Lhergy Frissel to admire the view, chatted about the potato blight, and returned to the yacht. The Manx people built a forty-five-foot granite tower on the spot where he had stood. They named the hill after him. They erected an inscription recording the date and the fact of his visit. The Manx response to the afternoon her husband looked at their view was to build a permanent monument to it.
Reigned for 326 days. Never visited the Isle of Man and abdicated. The Manx people named a pier after him — the King Edward VIII Pier at Douglas, opened in May 1936. It is the only public structure in Britain bearing his name. The Island named a pier for a king who never came and never would.
Presided at Tynwald in 1945 — the first Lord of Mann to stand on Tynwald Hill since the Duke of Atholl's last appearance in 1736. Two hundred and nine years without a Lord of Mann presiding over the parliament they held authority over. Two centuries. George VI broke the silence.
Presided at Tynwald twice — in 1979 for the Millennium of Tynwald and in 2003. Every visit a day trip. Every Lord of Mann arriving by morning and leaving by evening. No monarch since the Revestment has stayed on the Island the way the Stanleys stayed — living at Castle Rushen, governing from the ground, being buried in the Island's churches. The Stanleys governed. The Crown visits.
Commander at Ramsey, of the Christian family seated at Milntown in Lezayre. In August 1750, Captain George Dowe of the Whitehaven customs sloop Sincerity lured him aboard and presented pistols to his breast, 'with terrible oaths, said that for the turn of a shilling they would blow his brains out.' Dowe threatened to level his guns at Christian's house and batter it to the ground. After three hours, they extracted a five-hundred-pound bond. The cause: Dowe's crew had earlier boarded a Manx wherry with firearms and cutlasses, and the Manx authorities had imprisoned them. The clash followed the fault line between the Lord's jurisdiction and the King's.
Of the Christian family that had signed the Keys' Resolution of March 1765. Forced to sell the family home at Bemahague in 1789 — twenty-four years after the Revestment — because the economic conditions the Revestment had created had ruined him. The property had been a Christian family home from at least 1600, the same family that had produced Deemsters from 1408. Robert Heywood bought it. The Manx Government purchased it in 1904 and turned it into Government House — maintained at Manx expense for the representative of a Lord who has never spent a night under its roof. A family's farm, lost to the consequences of the Revestment, paid for by the Manx people.
Kinsman of Illiam Dhone. Walked out of the trial rather than participate — 'Edward Christian his son and assistant had also forborne to sit.' Restored to his judicial office by the King's command after the Privy Council intervened. The King who could not save the man's life could at least restore the judge who had refused to be complicit in taking it.
