as good for the island. They gave the tenants
security of tenure, and the landowners an act of settlement. They lifted
the material condition of our people, gave us the enjoyment of our
venerable laws, and ratified our patriarchal Constitution. Honour to the
Stanleys of the Manx dynasty! They have left a good mark on Man.

ILIAM DHOAN

And now I come to the one incident in modern Manx history which shares,
with the three legs of Man and the Manx cat, the consciousness of
everybody who knows anything about our island and its people. This is
the incident of the betrayal of Man and the Stanleys to the Parliament
in the time of Cromwell. It was a stirring drama, and though the curtain
has long fallen on it, the dark stage is still haunted by the ghosts
of its characters. Chief among these was William Christian, the Manxman
called Iliam Dhoan, Brown William, a familiar name that seems to hint
of a fine type of man. You will find him in "Peveril of the Peak." He is
there mixed up with Edward Christian, a very different person, just as
Peel Castle is mixed up with Castle Rushen, consciously no doubt, and
with an eye to imaginative effects, for Scott had a brother in the Isle
of Man who could have kept him from error if fact had been of any great
consequence in the novelist's reckoning.

Christian was Receiver-General, a sort of Chancellor of the Exchequer,
for the great Earl of Derby. The Earl had faith in him, and put nearly
everything under his command that fell within the province of his
lordship. Then came the struggle with Rigby at Latham House, and the
imprisonment of the Earl's six children by Fairfax. The Manx were
against the Parliament, and subscribed L500, probably the best part of
the money in the island, in support of the king. Then the Earl of Derby
left the island with a body of volunteers, and in going away committed
his wife to the care of Christian. You know what happened to him. He
was taken prisoner in Lancashire, charged with bearing arms for Charles
Stuart and holding the Isle of Man against the Commons, condemned, and
executed at Bolton.

With the forfeiture of the Earl the lordship of the island was granted
by Parliament to Lord Fairfax. He sent an army to take possession, but
the Countess-Dowager still held the island. Christian commanded the Manx
militia. At this moment the Manx people showed signs of disaffection.
They suddenly remembered two grievances, one was a grievance of
land tenure, the