River flowing through the south of the Isle of Man, past Ballasalla and Rushen Abbey, to the sea at Castletown. Castle Rushen stands beside its course.
Sometime in the 1750s, an anonymous author wrote a document addressed to the Prime Minister describing the smuggling trade in extraordinary detail. He named the routes, the methods, the prices. He proposed four solutions — all punitive, none involving consultation.
Buried in the document is a passage that changes everything: in 1743, the House of Keys secretly drafted a remonstrance against the tobacco trade. The Governor suppressed it. The Manx people opposed the smuggling — and were silenced.
Key passages provided (modernised spelling). Analysis questions: Who wrote it? How do we know they were telling the truth? The author knows the Manx people oppose the trade. His solutions are still punitive. Why?
Lords of Mann from 1405 to 1736 — over three centuries of custodianship. Sir John Stanley received the grant from Henry IV in 1405; it was made inheritable the following year. Thomas Stanley crowned Henry VII at Bosworth in 1485 and was created Earl of Derby. The 2nd Earl changed the title from King of Mann to Lord of Mann — a gesture of submission to the Tudor dynasty, made in England for English reasons without consulting the Island. The 7th Earl, James — Yn Stanlagh Mooar, the Great Stanley — held the Island for the King during the Civil War, imprisoned Edward Christian for eighteen years, converted the ancient straw tenure to leaseholds, and was executed at Bolton in 1651. His widow Charlotte de la Trémouille held the castles; his son the 8th Earl ordered the execution of Illiam Dhone. The Stanley line ended with the 10th Earl in 1736, when the lordship passed through the female line to the Murray family. Robertson's verdict: 'Being Subjects of England, they generally resided in that country; and so long as their Lieutenants remitted the revenues of the kingdom, they supinely acquiesced in their administration.' Not tyrants. But neither were they the stewards that a small nation had a right to expect.
Three and a half centuries of Stanley rule. Sir John Stanley received the Island in 1405; the 1406 re-grant made it inheritable. The 1408 Tynwald confirmed Stanley legitimacy. The 1417 codification preserved Manx law. The Stanleys governed through deputies while they pursued English politics — the Bosworth gamble, Tudor connections, the earldom. The Great Stanley, James the 7th Earl, was the last lord to live among the Manx people. Edward Christian served as Lieutenant-Governor. Then the Civil War reached the Island, and Illiam Dhone faced the choice that would define him.
Extract from Draper's 'The House of Stanley' (1864) providing a comprehensive genealogical account of the Alderley branch of the Stanley family from Sir John Stanley (14th century) through the second Lord Stanley of Alderley (19th century). Includes details of marriages, offices held, and notable descendants. Directly relevant to understanding the Stanley family's holdings and political prominence during the 1765 Revestment period.
A genealogical and biographical history of the Cross-Hall branch of the Stanley family, a collateral line of the Earls of Derby. The work traces the Stanley lineage from the 17th century and includes detailed biographical information on family members, including Colonel Thomas Stanley (1749–1818), knight of the shire for Lancashire (1780–1812), who notably sat as chairman of a committee of enquiry in 1805 into the Duke of Atholl's claims for further remuneration as former proprietor of the Isle of Man. This parliamentary reference is directly relevant to the Revestment project.
A comprehensive compilation of Manx statutes and ordinances in force as of 1792, alphabetically arranged by Thomas Stowell, Advocate. Includes the foundational 1704 Act of Settlement establishing customary tenures, fines, rents, and land law, alongside ordinances covering civil procedure, probate, game preservation, wrecks, and other governance matters. Directly relevant to understanding the constitutional and legal framework of the Isle before the 1765 Revestment.
Thomas Grindle's comprehensive historical narrative examining the 1765 Revestment of the Isle of Man to the British Crown. Grindle argues that the Revestment resulted from deliberate English imperial policy rather than smuggling alone, tracing the commercial negotiations of 1710–1714, the suspension of anti-smuggling measures, and the subsequent fifty-year period of uncontrolled trade that provided the pretext for sovereignty acquisition. The work emphasizes the Manx Government's good-faith efforts to comply with English customs demands and the English Government's rejection of reciprocal free-trade agreements.
Thomas Grindle's historical essay on the 1765 Revestment, reprinted from The Isle of Man Times. Argues the Revestment resulted from deliberate English imperial policy rather than smuggling concerns, and traces Manx trade negotiations 1709-1714 with detailed analysis of Acts of Tynwald. Contends the English Government refused reasonable trade concessions, forcing the Manx to resume smuggling and ultimately lose independence.
L.B. Namier's foundational 1929 scholarly work analyzing the British House of Commons and electoral system circa 1760-1761. Examines why men entered Parliament, the electoral structure, the 1761 general election, and secret service money under the Duke of Newcastle. Essential context for understanding the political and constitutional dynamics preceding the American Revolution and relevant to the 1765 Revestment.
The water bull of Manx folklore. Part of a classified supernatural taxonomy recorded by Moore. Every body of water had its spirits, every landscape feature its associations. The Manx supernatural world was not random or chaotic. It was a mapped landscape of named beings with known territories and known behaviours.
An old Castletown merchant family intertwined with the Moores, Christians, and Quayles. John Taubman was George Moore's political lieutenant and successor as Speaker of the Keys. His commercial interests were as extensive as Moore's own. It was Taubman who accused John Quayle of deception — complaining that merchants had been 'amused and even assured' the Duke would not sell, the word 'amused' carrying its older meaning: deceived. Taubman held pre-Revestment stock and profited from shortages after the trade collapsed. Three years after the Revestment, he was writing operational orders routing a captain to Barcelona for brandy, approaching the Island 'in the dark of the Evening or night.' His son Major John Taubman married Dorothy Christian of Milntown — connecting the family to the Christians who had been providing Deemsters since 1408. As Speaker, Major Taubman was directly related to twelve of the other twenty-four Keys members. Captain Taubman recommended Fletcher Christian to Bligh in 1784.
The Island's commercial flowering. The trade — always 'the trade,' never 'smuggling' in Manx usage — operated as a legitimate system under Manx law. The Book of Rates governed imports and exports. Customs entries recorded transactions openly. The harbours of Douglas, Peel, Ramsey, and Castletown connected the Island to a network stretching from the Mediterranean to the Baltic. Wilson's mature episcopate shaped parish life. Waldron recorded the spirit traditions. The moral dimension of the trade — whether it was commerce or crime — depended entirely on which side of the water you stood.
An oral history of the Island preserved in verse form, recording events from the Norse period through to the early modern era. The ballad preserves memories that no written record kept: for each four quarterlands he made a chapel, for people of them to meet in prayer. A people's history, passed from voice to voice across the centuries.
Tynwald has met every year for over a thousand years — the oldest continuous parliament on earth. But what would it have looked like at different points in history?
This activity gives you five dates: 1100 (when representatives sailed from the Hebrides), 1405 (the Stanleys take over), 1700 (Bishop Wilson’s time), 1765 (the year everything changed), and today.
For each date, research who would have been there, what they wore, what language they spoke, and what they were deciding. Draw or write a scene for each.
When you line them all up, you’ve got a thousand years of democracy on one wall.
In 1655, William and Jonathan Christian left the Isle of Man for Virginia. They belonged to the Lewaigue branch of the Christians, descended from Deemster Robert Christian of Maughold. They were accompanied by the Cottier family, probably from Lezayre — two Cottier daughters married the two brothers. The timing was not accidental. 1655 was the year Deemster Ewan Christian died after serving fifty-one years on the bench, the longest-serving Deemster in the island's history. The Commonwealth had seized control of Mann. Illiam Dhone would be shot on Hango Hill in 1663. It was not a good time to be a Christian on the Isle of Man. The brothers carried with them a lineage stretching back to John McCristen, who had served as Deemster in 1408.
After Waterloo, the war stores of the island were sold by auction. Among the material at Peel were two eighteen-pounders and fifty rounds of shot. The island's defences, such as they were, were being sold off as surplus. The men who had fought at Quatre-Bras and Trafalgar came home to a country that was disposing of its own protection.
Hugh Bainbridge was twenty-four. He lost his right arm. David Christian lost his left arm below the elbow. Edward Crow lost his right leg. John Cockrane was a Boy Third Class — twelve years old — wounded at Trafalgar. John Taggant was forty-one, killed in action. John Cawle lost his right arm serving on HMS Temeraire and came home to Kirk Bride, where he became a schoolteacher. He taught children to read with one arm, because the Navy that took his arm paid him nothing. The veterans who came home came back to an island that could not support them. The wages were still sixpence a day. The harbours were still in ruins. A man who had served the Crown at Trafalgar returned to find himself in the same condition as a man who had never left — and in some respects worse, because the man who had never left still had two arms.
The song sung during the Hunt the Wren procession on St Stephen's Day, 26 December. Carried from house to house by the wren boys as they process with the wren on a decorated pole. One of the oldest surviving folk songs in the British Isles, connected to the midwinter ritual of hunting the king of the birds.
Letter from the Penn proprietors to Benjamin Franklin explaining delays in obtaining opinions from the Attorney and Solicitor General on matters in dispute between the Proprietors and the Pennsylvania Assembly. Discusses the procedural obstacles and expresses desire for speedy resolution, relevant to understanding the political and legal dynamics of colonial governance during Franklin's agency in England.
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.
Correspondence between Thomas Gawne (Acting Attorney General) and Treasury officials regarding unpaid salary for performing the duties of Attorney General in the Isle of Man from July 1813. Gawne requests remuneration from the official salary allocated to the absent Attorney General John Frankland. The letters illustrate administrative and constitutional issues in Manx governance post-Revestment, including the relationship between Manx officials and the Home Office/Treasury.
Correspondence from Thomas Gawne, Acting Attorney General of the Isle of Man, to Home Office officials requesting remuneration for two years of service (from 31 July 1813). Gawne argues that the nominal Attorney General, Mr Frankland, is incapacitated and cannot pay him, and requests the Treasury authorize payment from Frankland's £300 annual salary. Includes follow-up letter of 3 February 1816 to John Beckett (Under-Secretary of State) with marginal note indicating Treasury approval.
