ould be the clergy, a
sorry troop, with wise and good men among them, no doubt, but a poor,
battered, bedraggled, neglected lot, chiefly learned in dubious arts
of collecting tithes. And the Bishop himself, the good chaplain of Earl
Derby, the preceptor of his son, what a face he must have had to watch
and to study, as he stood there that April morning, and saw for the
first time what work he had come to tackle!

BISHOP WILSON'S CENSURES

But Bishop Wilson set about his task with a strong heart, and a resolute
hand. He found himself in a twofold trust. Since the Reformation, the
monasteries and nunneries had been dispersed, and all the baronies had
been broken up, save one, the barony of the Bishop. Thus Bishop Wilson
was the head of the court of his barony. This was a civil court with
power, of jurisdiction over felonies. Its separate criminal control came
to an end in 1777, Such was Bishop Wilson's position as last and sole
Baron of Man. Then as head of the Church he had powers over offences
which were once called offences against common law. Irregular behaviour,
cursing, quarrelling, and drinking, as well as transgressions of the
moral code, adultery, seduction, prostitution, and the like, were
punishable by the Church and the Church courts. The censures of Bishop
Wilson on such offences did not err on the side of clemency. He was
the enemy of sin, and no "gentle foe of sinners." He was a believer
in witchcraft, and for suspicion of commerce with evil spirits and
possession of the evil eye he punished many a blameless old body. For
open and convicted adultery he caused the offenders to stand for an hour
at high fair at each of the market-places of Douglas, Peel, Ramsey, and
Castletown, bearing labels on their breasts calling on all people
to take warning lest they came under the same Church censure. Common
unchastity he punished by exposure in church at full congregation, when
the guilty man or the poor victimised girl stepped up from the west
porch to the altar, covered from neck to heels in a white sheet.
Slanderers and evil speakers he clapped into the Peel, or perhaps the
whipping-stocks, with tongue in a noose of leather, and when after a
lapse of time the gag was removed the liberated tongue was obliged to
denounce itself by saying thrice, clearly, boldly, probably with good
accent and discretion, "False tongue, thou hast lied."

It is perhaps as well that some of us did not live in Bishop Wilson's
time. W