According to James Sharpe, the Isle of Man in the seventeenth century was ‘geographically marginal, culturally isolated, and economically backward’,Footnote 1 amply justifying for many the perception of it as a periphery. To a significant extent, this was due to the language barrier: for the majority of people, their first language was Manx rather than English. In spite of recent scholarly interest in the way Protestant reform deployed Celtic languages,Footnote 2 Manx has attracted relatively little comment, probably because of its limited geographical range; thus, the language has also been peripheral in terms of scholarly attention.Footnote 3
This article draws on research for my forthcoming book on the course of Protestant reform on the Isle of Man. It argues that the language barrier did much to shape that course by limiting the Manx church’s participation in developments which defined the reforming Church of England, and hindering attempts by later seventeenth-century bishops, especially Isaac Barrow (1663–71), to foster such participation.Footnote 4 Language difference thus ensured the Manx church’s continuing peripheral status within the Church of England. This worked in three ways. First, the lack of printed editions of the Bible and the Prayer Book in Manx hindered the formation on the island of Christian laity from whom might be drawn candidates for ordination. Second, the need for Manx-speakers, coupled with the poverty of almost all the seventeen parish livings,Footnote 5 severely limited the possibility of attracting parochial clergy from elsewhere, or, if non-Manx speakers took up positions on the island, rendered their ministry less effective. Third, the limited education available to local ordinands and the consequent persistence of traditional localized patterns of recruitment meant that they were insufficiently equipped to engage with wider ecclesiastical issues and trends.
The Island’s Political and Ecclesiastical Status
By way of background, some comment on the Isle of Man’s distinctive political and ecclesiastical status will be helpful. Since 1406, it had been ruled by the Stanley family of Lancashire. Whilst they owed allegiance to the English crown, and had found it politic to gradually abandon the title ‘King of Man’ in favour of ‘Lord of Man’, the change made no practical difference and for the most part they continued to rule autonomously.Footnote 6 Many civil appointments were made from Lancashire families in the service of the Stanleys, including most of the governors, who effectively ruled the island in the absence of the lord.
The island tended to be of interest to London only when strategic defence considerations (or later, economic ones) were in view. This explains why, when a succession dispute broke out within the Stanley family after the death of the fifth earl in 1594, Elizabeth I took the charge of the island into her own hands, lest there be no chain of command to deal with enemy threats.Footnote 7 Indeed, there had been fears in the 1570s that it could serve as a staging post to spirit away Mary Queen of Scots and, in the 1580s and 1590s, that it could be used either to get priests away from Lancashire or into England, or by Spaniards against England, or as a base for ‘piracy’. The island was seen as ‘infected’ with papists, and there was a recurrent fear of its invasion from Ireland or the Western Isles of Scotland.Footnote 8 Direct rule therefore lasted until the resolution of the succession dispute in 1609.
Political peripherality was reflected in ecclesiastical matters. In the twelfth century, the diocese of Sodor had included most of the Western Isles of Scotland,Footnote 9 but by the sixteenth, the Western Isles had come under Scottish jurisdiction and the diocese had shrunk to comprise only the Isle of Man. It had been neglected by a succession of jurisdictions, partly because of its remoteness. The diocese appears to have been placed under York in 1458, but the lack of clarity in official sources regarding who occupied the see during the first half of the sixteenth century indicates how tenuous the link with the wider church actually was. The see was formally incorporated into the province of Canterbury in 1541, as an afterthought in the act incorporating the diocese of Chester, before being returned the following year to the jurisdiction of York.Footnote 10 But successive archbishops took very little interest, and ‘any attempt to treat Sodor and Man as comprised in the province of York for any effective purpose other than the consecration of the bishops seems quickly to have lapsed’.Footnote 11 The diocese appears only in one or two references in provincial act books and intermittent records of attendance at convocation (when Manx delegates were usually represented by proctors). York’s jurisdiction in appeals from the Manx church courts was acknowledged only vaguely, and such appeals were very rare indeed, in part because they were discouraged by the Stanleys.Footnote 12
In effect, the Manx church was ruled by the lord of Man. A ruling of 1541 had confirmed his status as ‘Metropolitan and & Chiefe of holy church’.Footnote 13 This was directed against the bishop and clergy, who were seen as infringing on the lord’s ecclesiastical prerogatives, but it may also have had in view any potential claim from Henry VIII. The ruling was confirmed in 1610.Footnote 14 Except during the period of direct rule by the English crown (which saw one significant appointment in 1605, of John Phillips as bishop), the Stanleys as lords of Man possessed the power of nominating candidates for the episcopal see, and thirteen of the island’s seventeen livings were also in their gift. Reflecting the situation with civil appointments, the body of domestic chaplains and incumbents of livings in the family’s gift provided a number of personnel for higher clergy appointments, including at least five of the nine archdeacons appointed during this period and five of the eleven bishops.
As governors of the Manx church, the Stanleys walked a tightrope, needing to keep on the right side of the English monarchy, but (mostly) being reluctant to adopt new religious opinions. The third earl, Edward (r. 1521–72) went no further in reform than acceding to the dissolution of the island’s monastic establishments in 1540. In 1549, he voted against the Act of Uniformity which enforced the use in England of the new Book of Common Prayer. By 1559, he was willing to accept the Elizabethan revision and to assist in its enforcement in the diocese of Chester, although he turned a blind eye to many traditional practices, and, in 1570, as well as sheltering two Roman Catholic priests, he forbade his chaplains in Lancashire to use the English book.Footnote 15
The last bishop to appear in Catholic succession lists was Thomas Stanley, who belonged to another branch of the family. He had been appointed in 1555 (that is, under Mary I, when the English church once again came under Roman jurisdiction) and held office until his death in 1569.Footnote 16 Only from the 1570s do the first parish clergy with Protestant sympathies appear; this may be due to the lack of extant records before that point, but it is worth noting that one John Stephenson, vicar of Maughold for a few years after the death of his father (also John) in 1576, was said to have been the last Roman Catholic priest in the parish.Footnote 17
The Lack of Printed Manx Texts
The importance of the preached and written word to Protestant thinking, reflecting belief in the supreme authority of Scripture in matters of faith and practice, makes it appropriate to consider the absence of printed Manx texts and its impact on the course of reform. According to Erkki Kouri, writing on Protestant reform in Scandinavia, ‘The principle that the Word of God had to be preached to people in their mother tongue, and that they should be given the opportunity to read it in the vernacular, helped to create and nourish new written languages in remote and obscure parts of Europe.’Footnote 18 Moreover, the easiest way of making vernacular texts widely available was through printing. Even where the majority of the population could not read, Bob Scribner has suggested, printing was able to create a group of opinion-formers who could spread new ideas by oral means, notably through preaching and the discussion of what was preached or of texts read aloud in group settings.Footnote 19
However, Felicity Heal argues that the Isle of Man offers a counter-example to the theory that print culture was central in disseminating Protestantism: here, she writes, change was achieved entirely orally.Footnote 20 This needs nuancing, as we shall see, but holds true in terms of the lack of printed texts. Reform on the Isle of Man was carried out in the absence of published vernacular religious material and did not result in the production of such material until the eighteenth century. Only then did agencies exist with the funds to sponsor the publication of works for which the market was extremely limited; only then, too, had education resulted in a growth in popular literacy. It has been estimated that the island’s population in 1600 was about 7,000,Footnote 21 and, on the basis of surviving parish registers, Dickinson calculates the figure during the decade 1665–74 at 10,464.Footnote 22 Most had Manx as their first language, and many outside the commercial centres were monoglot. Until the Prayer Book was translated in 1610, there were no documents of any kind in Manx; all we have are brief quotations in the proceedings of church courts, often of insults or slanders for which the speakers had been presented. The earliest oral composition is the ‘Manx Traditionary Ballad’, which may have been composed early in the sixteenth century, although no manuscripts of it are known before the eighteenth.Footnote 23 Unlike Irish and Scots Gaelic (to which Manx is closely related), there was thus no literary form of the language; in consequence, Manx did not share in the common literary register of the other two languages.Footnote 24
By 1570, the English Bible and the Book of Common Prayer had become fixtures in the worship of the established church in England, but the lack of records for preceding decades means that we do not know whether they had been introduced on the Isle of Man. The legislation mandating them applied to the island, but the royal visitation of 1559 which imposed use of the English Prayer Book does not appear to have extended to the Isle of Man,Footnote 25 perhaps because it was ruled by the earls of Derby. In any case, it would have been characteristic of Earl Edward to stall on, or even attempt to obstruct, its application. Given his religious outlook, along with the fact that the last bishop whose appointment was recognized by Rome remained in office until 1569, it may be surmised that worship had continued to be conducted according to traditional Latin rites. Clergy, who were mostly Manx-speakers, presumably offered extempore translation of appropriate parts of the liturgy into Manx and, in a few locations, English – primarily those connected with island government: the parish church of Malew and the garrison chapels at Castle Rushen in Castletown, and Peel. This was certainly the practice by the middle third of the seventeenth century, but we lack evidence to confirm what happened before then. It is possible that, as sometimes happened in Ireland, individual clergy might continue to celebrate Catholic rites alongside occasional use of the Book of Common Prayer in English or Latin, with translation into Manx.Footnote 26
When translation was undertaken, it was of the Prayer Book rather than, as in Wales and Scotland, the Bible.Footnote 27 The 1604 edition of the Prayer Book was translated by Bishop Phillips in 1610, with the help of Hugh Cannell (d. 1670), vicar of Kirk Michael. Phillips had been appointed by James VI/I in 1605, and was the third successive Welsh bishop in the diocese after John Meyrick (1576–99) and George Lloyd (1600–5). These three bishops would have brought with them an approach which stressed the importance of vernacular religious provision: the leaders of the Elizabethan church in Wales were convinced that if reform was to take root and the nation be united in religious matters, it was necessary to use Welsh, even if the crown’s long-term aim might be its replacement by English.Footnote 28 Phillips is said to have learned Manx sufficiently well to preach in it, and the records portray him as a bishop who was strongly committed to fulfilling his ministry, if not always as diplomatic or as thick-skinned as the post called for.Footnote 29 Nevertheless, his translation was not too well received. One of the two vicars-general, William Norris, could only read the odd word; his colleague William Crowe could read part of it, but thought that few other clergy would be able to do so because it was ‘spelled with vowells wherewith none of them are acquainted’. They also denied having been consulted about the possibility of printing it, which Phillips said had been his intention, although the limited market would have made it an unattractive economic proposition to any printer.Footnote 30
Why did the translation meet such a cool reception? The Manx historian A. W. Moore (1853–1909) suggested that it was due to jealousy of Phillips as an incomer,Footnote 31 but jealousy does not appear to have been a characteristic reaction of locally born clergy to the appointment of outsiders to higher office during this period. Another possibility might have been clerical reluctance to change the way they conducted worship.Footnote 32 However, clergy were unlikely to be rejecting the principle of translation, since they already practised this extempore. Neither is it likely that Manx-born clergy were basing their opposition on a belief that Manx was not a fitting language for divine worship. Moreover, since much of the content of the Prayer Book would have been familiar, it is unlikely that lack of familiarity with Protestant understandings of key theological concepts was a major issue. Part of the problem may have been that, naturally enough in an oral culture, clergy were used to a verbal approach rather than a written one: traditional Catholic practice involved providing basic instruction in the vernacular, including the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Creed, as well as translating the epistles and gospels of the liturgy.Footnote 33 On this reading, they may have seen little need for the constraint imposed by a written translation. More recently, and more cogently, it has been argued that the problem was the orthography, as implied by the comments of the vicars-general above. Since Manx did not yet have a systematized orthography, Phillips appears to have devised his own orthographical system; for those who had learnt to read and write through the medium of English (as local clergy would have done), rather than his native Welsh, the result may have been too different for them to recognize.Footnote 34 For a partial parallel, we may cite the Salesbury translation of the New Testament into Welsh (1567), which was criticized by contemporaries for its idiosyncratic orthography (closer to English and French) that made it impossible for the great majority of readers to understand it.Footnote 35 This said, whilst it is usually considered that Phillips’s orthography was influenced by Welsh, it should be noted that he had held appointments in Yorkshire from 1579 onwards, and so it is possible that other linguistic influences were at work.Footnote 36
In spite of the cool reception accorded to the translated Prayer Book, copies appear to have been made and used in worship. The Manx National Heritage Library has a well-used manuscript dating to the late 1620s, with subsequent emendations, possibly from the parish of Malew, in which the seat of government at Castle Rushen was located.Footnote 37 I have also discovered a fragment from the rubric for the visitation of the sick, which survived because someone had used it to record a debt; the rubric does not appear in the extant copy of the whole Prayer Book, and this fragment may have come from a different document or possibly a different copy of the book.Footnote 38 Regular use of the Prayer Book would have ceased after regime change late in 1651 brought the island more into line with English policies. Nevertheless, clandestine use appears to have continued: according to Moore, one clergyman, John Cosnahan (1580–1656) at Santan, had people coming ‘from all parts of the Island to have their children baptised during the period 1650–6 as he is said to have been the only clergyman who dared to baptise in accordance with the rites of the Established Church’.Footnote 39 If nothing else, this indicates that there was widespread conformity to Church of England rites by this period, although whether Protestant teaching had been internalized cannot be determined.
By 1663, the newly installed Bishop Barrow displayed no awareness of the translation’s existence; he did, however, express disapproval of the practice of translating the liturgy extempore on the grounds that the clergy understood neither the English language nor the text of Scripture.Footnote 40 This would seem to confirm that the Phillips translation had fallen out of regular use and not been restored after 1660; after a new edition of the Prayer Book appeared in 1662, it was also out of date. By the end of the seventeenth century, William Sacheverell, governor of the island from 1693 to 1696, described the Phillips translation as ‘scarce intelligible by the Clergy themselves, who Translate it off of hand more to the Understanding of the People’, an apparent instance of a translation itself needing to be translated.Footnote 41 All the same, parts of it would appear in print subsequently. Bishop Wilson may have drawn on Phillips’s translation of the catechism in his bilingual Coyrle Sodjey (literally, ‘Further Instruction’; English title, Principles and Duties of Christianity), which was the first book to be published in Manx, in 1707. Phillips’s translation of the Psalms, lightly revised, was incorporated into the Manx translation of the Bible published between 1767 and 1772.Footnote 42
It has been asserted that Phillips also translated the Bible into Manx with Cannell’s help. The first to claim this was James Chaloner, writing in 1653, although his work was not published until 1656. Chaloner also stated that the translation was not printed because of Phillips’s death.Footnote 43 In an order increasing the now elderly Cannell’s stipend in 1658, Chaloner (by then the island’s governor) referred to him as one of the island’s first preachers, who had taught the Manx to read the Scriptures in their own tongue, and who assisted Phillips in translating the Bible.Footnote 44 Yet in spite of these contemporary references, such a translation has never come to light. The portions of Scripture appointed to be read in worship – that is, the Sunday Epistles and Gospels, and those biblical verses that were integrated into the liturgy – were translated as part of the Prayer Book, as was the Psalter,Footnote 45 and it is possible that this was what was being referred to. In the absence of further evidence, the possibility that the claim is true cannot be ruled out, but there are no references to such a work’s existence in extant diocesan records.
Publication of both texts came much later. The Manx Prayer Book was not published until 1765, in a new translation reflecting the 1662 Book of Common Prayer; this was two centuries later than the appearance of the Book of Common Order in Scottish Gaelic (1567)Footnote 46 or Welsh (1567),Footnote 47 and over 150 years later than for the Book of Common Prayer in Irish (by 1608).Footnote 48 The complete Manx Bible was only published as one volume in 1775.Footnote 49 The timeline was similar in Scotland: although a version in classical Scottish Gaelic had appeared as early as 1603, the New Testament in a more popular register of the language was not published until 1767, with the whole Bible following in 1801.Footnote 50 This contrasts with the appearance in English during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of several editions of the Prayer Book, as well as various translations of the Bible and a number of authoritative doctrinal statements.Footnote 51 Clearly, the English authorities in church and state did not see a Manx Bible and Prayer Book as priorities, although since the island’s strategic military position was recognized, and there were recurring fears that it could be used as a staging post by Catholic missionaries, one would have expected encouragement for anything which might contribute to making the populace more tractable.
Other factors retarding translation and publication may have included belief in the superiority of English. Archbishop Neile, reporting on the state of the diocese in 1634, commented that ‘the late Bp [Phillips] translated our Coṁon Prayer Booke; but how faithfully, I know not’, and opined that it would be better for the local populace to learn English.Footnote 52 Bishop Barrow, who in the 1660s did much to shape the development of the island’s religious and educational institutions, expressed the same view.Footnote 53 Soon after becoming bishop, he produced a report on the state of his diocese, concluding that the people were loose living because they were ‘without any true sense of religion’. Their ministers were ‘very ignorant, and wholly illiterate’. Believing that the state of the people was down to the lack of means for Christian instruction, and the clergy ill-equipped, Barrow concluded that the problems could only be resolved through education, in English rather than Manx, so that the laity could be fortified against ungodliness and sectarianism by reading the Bible, the Prayer Book and other devotional works. However, to educate the people, it was necessary to begin with the clergy. As there was nothing printed or written in Manx, the clergy officiated ‘by an extempor[ar]y translation of the English Liturgye into the Manks language, and soe allsoe of the holy Scriptures’. Barrow disapproved of this practice, as we have seen.Footnote 54 All this would have fitted with the eighth earl’s conviction that Manx was the language of rebellion, which needed to be replaced through re-education.Footnote 55 Barrow worked to establish a system of English-medium petty schools in the parishes, supplemented by restoring the grammar schools in the towns. He also laid much of the groundwork for the establishment of an academic institution in the Isle of Man for the training of clergy.Footnote 56
Where clergy did not use the Phillips translation (and there is very little evidence regarding the extent of its dissemination or use), their practice of extempore translation meant that oral transmission remained primary. There is some limited evidence of the importation of English Bibles, Testaments and primers from the late seventeenth century,Footnote 57 but their readership must have been limited, perhaps being found primarily among the merchant community and the growing number of schools. In the parish of Malew (which included the island’s capital, Castletown), merchants were bequeathing copies of the (English) Bible and Prayer Book in their wills from the beginning of the seventeenth century; this may indicate that they were among the early adopters of reform, but there is no evidence that they engaged in any kind of propagation of these ideas.
For the majority who were unable to understand English, then, Scripture continued to be accessible only as clergy offered extempore translations of the service and the Scripture readings, or preached in Manx. In most parishes, sermons were probably infrequent, certainly before the changes which ensued from 1651 onwards, since only a minority of clergy were considered sufficiently educated to be licensed to preach. Non-preaching clergy in the Church of England were supposed to read one of the sermons in the two Books of Homilies, but it is not clear how widely this rule was observed on the island: Moore asserts that these were not introduced until the time of Bishop Parr (1635–44), and none appeared in printed translation until after 1820.Footnote 58 Even where clergy were licensed to preach, there were a fair number of complaints that they did not.Footnote 59 The Reformation expectation of being able to profit by hearing the word penetrated local minds,Footnote 60 but often went unfulfilled until the end of the seventeenth century. The earliest extant documents in Manx apart from the Prayer Book are sermons from 1696 onwards,Footnote 61 but the limited number and range of items published in Manx during the following half-century (which were all religious in nature) contrasts with the volume of liturgical texts, sermons, and works of theology and church practice available in English by that point.Footnote 62
For many, English was in any case no substitute for Manx in worship. Growing antagonism was shown towards the use of English, and some laity refused to attend English services, especially when these began to increase in frequency from the late seventeenth century. William Gill, presented in 1678 for non-attendance in Lezayre, asserted that ‘he would not stay in the church whilst Mr ffox read in English, for he would as soon sitt upon ye side of Skyhill as be in ye church when he did not undrstand w[ha]t was spoken’.Footnote 63 A number of people were presented in the adjoining parishes of German and Patrick in 1685 for creating a disturbance while Samuel Wattleworth was preaching in English, even though he ‘also did preach in Manks & read both lessons yt day in Manks besides ye prayers of ye Church with ye Epistle & Gospell’ and ‘every other Sunday preacheth in Manks with much satisfaction’.Footnote 64
The lack of written and preached vernacular material must also have hindered the formation of a critical mass of laity who could share in creating a climate in which religious change received informed consideration. This is similar to Wales, for which Glanmor Williams has contended that ‘[t]he Reformation as a body of doctrine and belief could not come of age for most people until the eighteenth century had made many of them literate’.Footnote 65 Whilst the educated middling merchant classes in urban areas formed the demographic group which in many parts of Europe was usually first to accept and spread the new Protestant convictions, it is likely that such a class only began to appear on the island during the late seventeenth century, and its emergence may well be connected with the growing use of English as well as the beginnings of a degree of urbanization. An increase from the 1670s in bequests of personal copies of the Bible may be related to Barrow’s efforts to extend educational provision.Footnote 66
The slowness of the seventeenth-century church to produce standard editions of the Bible and the Prayer Book in Manx may have weakened the church’s position in the minds of the populace. Baptist Levinz, bishop from 1684 to 1693, was apprehensive about the impact of one Roman Catholic missionary who was Manx and spoke the language:
one of ye Jesuits yt is to come heer is a native of this place, of a good family & interest heer, tho hee has been out of his country ever since his youth & bred up in one of ye Jesuits Colleges abroad, this person having our language is ye man I most fear.Footnote 67
We do not know who this was, but whether Levinz’s fears were justified or not, he recognized that language was an issue which affected the church’s hold on the people. Had there been a mission by Manx-speaking Roman Catholics, they might have seen considerable success, given the attachment of many local people to traditional customs and practices.Footnote 68
The Language Barrier and Clerical Recruitment
It was not only the case that the lack of material in Manx impoverished the formation of local candidates for ordination. The need for Manx-speakers, coupled with the poverty of local livings, hindered clerical recruitment from off the island. Incumbents were expected to be bilingual and, as we have seen, there were complaints when they did not preach or conduct worship in Manx. Yet it was rare for incoming clergy to learn Manx well enough to preach in it; Phillips was an exception, and unusual among the bishops of this period in recognizing the importance of using Manx.
The difficulty of attracting educated clergy from elsewhere meant that during the period under review, up to three-quarters of clergy may have been born on the island, and about a sixth were sons of clergy serving there.Footnote 69 Formal training for ministry, however, was largely unknown on the island until after the Restoration. From 1580, clergy in England were expected to be graduates of one of the universities, and by 1640, three-quarters of clergy in most areas of England met this requirement.Footnote 70 In contrast, on the Isle of Man, the proportion was about a tenth: the bishops and archdeacons, as well as a few other clergy from elsewhere, some of whom had held previous appointments in the gift of the Stanleys. None of the island’s university-educated clergy during this period was Manx-born.
Clerical education was restricted by the lack of local provision and by the lack of fluency of many in English. Manx candidates for ordination could not afford to go to England or Ireland for education, and no real attempt was made to give them access to theological reading matter until Thomas Fairfax as lord of Man had a library sent over in 1659.Footnote 71 By and large, new priests learned on the job, as they had done for centuries. As noted above, around a sixth were sons of priests; others had been parish clerks or schoolmasters. My research has identified at least eleven who appear to have served as parish clerks before ordination, all between 1577 and 1665; between 1593 and 1685, about fourteen served as schoolmasters prior to ordination; two of these held both offices.
There is a further dimension to be taken into account: whilst it was rare for parochial clergy to be appointed from outside the diocese, it was even rarer for bishops or archdeacons to be appointed from within it, arguably because the Stanleys were looking elsewhere for appointees. There had been no Manx-born bishop since William Russell in the mid-fourteenth century, and in 1703 Samuel Wattleworth became the first Manx archdeacon since the fifteenth century.Footnote 72 Moreover, the poverty of the diocese forced bishops to hold it in conjunction with other church offices, and they and the archdeacons were frequently non-resident, for geographical and economic as well as cultural reasons. Indeed, Tynwald concerns led to attempts to legislate against non-residence (not restricted to clergy) in 1541 and 1696.Footnote 73 Non-residence was the subject of complaint at other points also. The result was a lack of strong bonds between the local, non-graduate parochial clergy, unable for economic reasons to benefit from the training and publications available in English, and non-local, often non-resident, graduate higher officials (although local clergy were appointed to middle-ranking ecclesiastical offices, such as registrar or vicar-general).
There appear to have been two consequences of this division. First was the lack of stable mechanisms for making and communicating decisions and ensuring that due action was taken, because key figures were absent. Decisions were often put off until the bishop or archdeacon should visit the island, or were made conditional upon the ordinary’s pleasure.Footnote 74 Second was arguably a tension between the new ideals voiced by higher clergy from elsewhere, especially after 1660, which advocated a measure of distancing between the priest and his flock as a professional set apart by education and calling,Footnote 75 and the realities of a body of parochial clergy who were drawn from the local populace and still mostly formed in the traditional mould. Change in this respect was some decades behind England and Wales.
The impact of new English patterns of recruitment and training was thus unavoidably hindered.Footnote 76 Few of the parochial clergy were able exponents of Protestant doctrine. The earliest clergy to do that in England were usually well educated, and we have seen that there were very few of those on the island. Clergy probably did hold increasingly ‘Protestant’ views, but the great majority lacked the ability or the intellectual training to do much beyond rehash what they had received, and they had no printed Manx texts to which they could direct the attention of their hearers. We saw earlier that it was Barrow who, in the late 1660s, first made a systematic attempt to improve clerical education, as part of a package which addressed the problems of clerical poverty, ignorance and contemptibility in the eyes of the populace, and lay ignorance. Apart from sending a few promising students to Trinity College, Dublin, he engaged in financial dealing and political lobbying to secure funding for an academic institution on the island, which by the end of the century had begun to feed ordinands into the church.Footnote 77
Conclusion
We have seen how the language barrier meant that there could be only a limited amount of the cross-fertilization provided in the Church of England more generally by the spread of new ideas and new approaches to the conduct of worship. This was exacerbated by the non-residence of key drivers of change, notably most of the bishops. Again, the failure of new approaches to make headway was compounded by poverty. Even when parishes wanted to introduce the latest ‘ornaments’ in worship, they could not afford to do so; out of thousands of wills from this period, I have found no bequests for such purposes.
This article demonstrates that the use of Manx combined with poverty, political status and remoteness reinforced the island’s peripheral status by hindering its participation in the intellectual life of the Church of England and the mediation of the fruits of that life to the local populace. It also places the history of the island’s church during this period into the wider setting of the history of the Church of England as a whole, but also relates it to developments in the life of the churches of the other surrounding nations. Further research might usefully continue tracing into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the use of Manx in religious life, and compare what happened on the Isle of Man with the course of Protestant reform in other island communities, especially other societies whose first language was not that of their rulers in church and state.
