Complete works of hall c.., p.685
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 685
KING ORRY
Early in the sixth century Man became subject to the kings and princes of Wales, who ruled from Anglesea. There were twelve of them in succession, and the last of them fell in the tenth century. We know next to nothing about them but their names. Then came the Vikings. The young bloods of Scandinavia had newly established their Norse kingdom in Iceland, and were huckstering and sea roving about the Baltic and among the British Isles. They had been to the Orkneys and Shetlands, and Faroes, perhaps to Ireland, certainly to the coast of Cumberland, making Scandinavian settlements everywhere. So they came to Mon early in the tenth century, led by one Orry, or Gorree. Some say this man was nothing but a common sea-rover. Others say he was a son of the Danish or Norwegian monarch. It does not matter much. Orry had a better claim to regard than that of the son of a great king. He was himself a great man. The story of his first landing is a stirring thing. It was night, a clear, brilliant, starry night, all the dark heavens lit up. Orry’s ships were at anchor behind him; and with his men he had touched the beach, when down came the Celts to face him, and to challenge him. They demanded to know where he came from. Then the red-haired sea-warrior pointed to the milky way going off towards the North. “That is the way of my country,” he answered. The Celts went down like one man in awe before him. He was their born king. It is what the actors call a fine moment. Still, nobody has ever told us how Orry and the Celts understood one another, speaking different tongues. Let us not ask.
King Orry had come to stay, and sea-warriors do not usually bring their women over tempestuous seas. So the Norsemen married the Celtic women, and from that union came the Manx people. Thus the Manxman to begin with was half Norse, half Celt. He is much the same still. Manxmen usually marry Manx women, and when they do not, they often marry Cumberland women. As the Norseman settled in Cumberland as well as in Man the race is not seriously affected either way. So the Manxman, such as he is, taken all the centuries through, is thoroughbred.
Now what King Orry did in the Isle of Man was the greatest work that ever was done there. He established our Constitution. It was on the model of the Constitution just established in Iceland. The government was representative and patriarchal. The Manx people being sea-folk, living by the sea, a race of fishermen and sea-rovers, he divided the island into six ship-shires, now called Sheadings. Each ship-shire elected four men to an assemblage of law-makers. This assemblage, equivalent to the Icelandic Logretta, was called the House of Keys. There is no saying what the word means. Prof. Rhys thinks it is derived from the Manx name Kiare-as-Feed, meaning the four-and-twenty. Train says the representatives were called Taxiaxi, signifying pledges or hostages, and consequently were styled Keys. Vigfusson’s theory was that Keys is from the Norse word Keise, or chosen men. The common Manx notion, the idea familiar to my own boyhood, is, that the twenty-four members of the House of Keys are the twenty-four material keys whereby the closed doors of the law are unlocked. But besides the sea-folk of the ship-shires King Orry remembered the Church. He found it on the island at his coming, left it where he found it, and gave it a voice in the government. He established a Tynwald Court, equivalent to the Icelandic All Moot, where Church and State sat together. Then he appointed two law-men, called Deemsters, one for the north and the other for the south. These were equivalent to his Icelandic Légsegumadur, speaker of the law and judge of all offences. Finally, he caused to be built an artificial Mount of Laws, similar in its features to the Icelandic Logberg at Thingvellir. Such was the machinery of the Norse Constitution which King Orry established in Man. The working of it was very simple. The House of Keys, the people’s delegates, discussed all questions of interest to the people, and sent up its desires to the Tynwald Court. This assembly of people and Church in joint session assented, and the desires of the people became Acts of Tynwald. These Acts were submitted to the King. Having obtained the King’s sanction they were promulgated on the Tynwald Hill on the national day in the presence of the nation. The scene of that promulgation of the laws was stirring and impressive. Let me describe it.
THE TYNWALD
Perhaps there were two Tynwald Hills in King Orry’s time, but I shall assume that there was one only. It stood somewhere about midway in the island. In the heart of a wide range of hill and dale, with a long valley to the south, a hill to the north, a table-land to the east, and to the west the broad Irish Sea. Not, of course, a place to be compared with the grand and gloomy valley of the Logberg, where in a vast amphitheatre of dark hills and great jokulls tipped with snow, with deep chasms and yawning black pits, one’s heart stands still. But the place of the Manx Tynwald was an impressive spot. The Hill itself was a circular mount cut into broad steps, the apex being only a few feet in diameter. About it was a flat grass plot. Near it, just a hundred and forty yards away, connected with the mount by a beaten path, was a chapel. All around was bare and solitary, perhaps as bleak and stark as the lonely plains of Thingvellir.
Such was the scene. Hither came the King and his people on Tynwald Day. It fell on the 24th of June, the first of the seven days of the Icelandic gathering of the Althing. What occurred in Iceland occurred also in Man. The King with his Keys and his clergy gathered in the chapel. Thence they passed in procession to the law-rock. On the top round of the Tynwald the King sat on a chair and faced to the east. His sword was held before him, point upwards. His barons and beneficed men, his deemsters, knights, esquires, coroners, and yeomen, stood on the lower steps of the mount. On the grass plot beyond the people were gathered in crowds. Then the work of the day began. The coroners proclaimed a warning. No man should make disturbance at Tynwald on pain of death. Then the Acts of Tynwald were read or recited aloud by the deemsters; first in the language of the laws, and next in the language of the people. After other formalities the procession of the King returned to the chapel, where the laws were signed and attested, and so the annual Tynwald ended.
Now this primitive ceremonial, begun by King Orry early in the tenth century, is observed to this day. On Midsummer-day of this year of grace a ceremony similar in all its essentials will be observed by the present Governor, his Keys, clergy, deemsters, coroners, and people, on or near the same spot. It is the old Icelandic ordinance, but it has gone from Iceland. The year 1800 saw the last of it on the lava law-rock of Thingvellir. It is gone from every other Norse kingdom founded by the old sea-rovers among the Western Isles. Manxmen alone have held on to it. Shall we also let it go? Shall we laugh at it as a bit of mummery that is useless in an age of books and newspapers, and foolish and pompous in days of frock-coats and chimney-pot hats? I think not. We cannot afford to lose it. Remember, it is the last visible sign of our independence as a nation. It is our hand-grasp with the past. Our little nation is the only Norse nation now on earth that can shake hands with the days of the Sagas, and the Sea-Kings. Then let him who will laugh at our primitive ceremonial. It is the badge of our ancient liberty, and we need not envy the man who can look on it unmoved.
THE LOST SAGA
Of King Orry himself we learn very little. He was not only the first of our kings, but also the greatest. We may be sure of that; first, by what we know; and next, by what we do not know. He was a conqueror, and yet we do not learn that he ever attempted to curtail the liberties of his subjects. He found us free men, and did not try to make us slaves. On the contrary, he gave us a representative Constitution, which has lasted a thousand years. We might call him our Manx King Alfred, if the indirections of history did not rather tempt us to christen him our Manx King Lear. His Saga has never been written, or else it is lost. Would that we could recover it! Oh, that imagination had the authority of history to vitalise the old man and his times! I seem to see him as he lived. There are hints of his character in his laws, that are as stage directions, telling of the entrances and exits of his people, though the drama of their day is gone. For example, in that preliminary warning of the coroner at Tynwald, there is a clause which says that none shall “bawl or quarrel or lye or lounge or sit.” Do you not see what that implies? Again, there is another clause which forbids any man, “on paine of life and lyme,” to make disturbance or stir in the time of Tynwald, or any murmur or rising in the king’s presence. Can you not read between the lines of that edict? Once more, no inquest of a deemster, no judge or jury, was necessary to the death-sentence of a man who rose against the king or his governor on his seat on Tynwald. Nobody can miss the meaning of that. Once again, it was a common right of the people to present petitions at Tynwald, a common privilege of persons unjustly punished to appeal against judgment, and a common prerogative of outlaws to ask at the foot of the Tynwald Mount on Tynwald Day for the removal of their outlawry. All these old rights and regulations came from Iceland, and by the help of the Sagas it needs no special imagination to make the scenes of their action live again. I seem to see King Orry sitting on his chair on the Tynwald with his face towards the east. He has long given up sea-roving.
His long red hair is become grey or white. But the old lion has the muscles and fiery eye of the warrior still. His deemsters and barons are about him, and his people are on the sward below. They are free men; they mean to have their rights, both from him and from each other. Disputes run high, there are loud voices, mighty oaths, sometimes blows, fights, and terrific hurly-burlies. Then old Orry comes down with a great voice and a sword, and ploughs a way through the fighters and scatters them. No man dare lift his hand on the king. Peace is restored, and the king goes back to his seat.
Then up from the valley comes a woe-begone man in tatters, grim and gaunt and dirty, a famished and hunted wolf. He is an outlaw, has killed a man, is pursued in a blood-feud, and asks for relief of his outlawry. And so on and so on, a scene of rugged, lusty passions, hate and revenge, but also love and brotherhood; drinking, laughing, swearing, fighting, savage vices but also savage virtues, noble contempt of death, and magnificent self-sacrifice.
The chapter is lost, but we know what it must have been. King Orry was its hero. Our Manx Alfred, our Manx Arthur, our Manx Lear. Then room for him among our heroes! he must stand high.
THE MANX MACBETH
The line of Orry came to an end at the beginning of the eleventh century. Scotland was then under the sway of the tyrant Macbeth, and, oddly enough, a parallel tragedy to that of Duncan and his kinsman was being enacted in Man. A son of Harold the Black, of Iceland, Goddard Crovan, a mighty soldier, conquered the island and took the crown by treachery, coming first as a guest of the Manx king. Treachery breeds treachery, duplicity is a bad seed to sow for loyalty, and the Manx people were divided in their allegiance. About twenty years after Crovan’s conquest the people of the south of the island took up arms against the people of the north, and the story goes that, when victory wavered, the women of the north rushed out to the help of their husbands, and so won the fight. For that day’s work, the northern wives were given the right to half of all their husband’s goods immovable, while the wives of the south had only a third. The last of the line of Goddard Crovan died in 1265, and so ended the dynasty of the Norsemen in Man. They had been three hundred years there. They found us a people of the race and language of the people of Ireland, and they left us Manxmen. They were our only true Manx kings, and when they fell, our independence as a nation ceased.
THE MANX GLO’STER
Then the first pretender to the throne was one Ivar, a murderer, a sort of Richard III., not all bad, but nearly all; said to possess virtues enough to save the island and vices enough to ruin it. The island was surrendered to Scotland by treaty with Norway. The Manx hated the Scotch. They knew them as a race of pirates. Some three centuries later there was one Cutlar MacCullock, whose name was a terror, so merciless were his ravages. Over the cradles of their infants the Manx mothers sang this song: —
God keep the good corn, the sheep and the bullocks,
From Satan, from sin and from Cutlar MacCullock.
Bad as Ivar was, the Scotch threatened to be worse.
So the Manx, fearing that their kingdom might become a part of the kingdom of Scotland, supported Ivar. They were beaten. Ivar was a brave tiger, and died fighting.
SCOTCH AND ENGLISH DOMINION
Man was conquered, and the King of Scotland appointed a lieutenant to rule the island. But the Manx loved the Scotch no better as masters than as pirates, and they petitioned the English king, Edward I., to take them under his protection. He came, and the Scotch were driven out. But King Robert Bruce reconquered the island for the Scotch. Yet again the island fell to English dominion. This was in the time of Henry IV. It is a sorry story. Henry gave the island to the Earl of Salisbury. Salisbury sold it to one Sir William le Scroop. A copy of the deed of sale exists. It puts a Manxman’s teeth on edge. “With all the right of being crowned with a golden crown.” Scroop was beheaded by Henry, who confiscated his estate, and gave the island to the Earl of Northumberland. It is a silly inventory, but let us get through with it. Northumberland was banished, and finally Henry made a grant of the island to Sir John de Stanley. This was in 1407. Thus there had been four Kings of Man — not one of whom had, so far as I know, set foot on its soil — three grants of the island, and one miserable sale. Where the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.
THE STANLEY DYNASTY
When the crown came to Sir John Stanley he was in no hurry to put it on. He paid no heed to his Manx subjects, and never saw his Manx kingdom. I dare say he thought the gift horse was something of a white elephant. No wonder if he did, for words could not exaggerate the wretched condition of the island and its people. The houses of the poor were hovels built of sod, with floors of clay, and sooty rafters of briar and straw and dried gorse. The people were hardly better fed than their beasts. So Stanley left the island alone. It will be interesting to mark how different was the mood of his children, and his children’s children. The second Stanley went over to Man and did good work there. He promulgated our laws, and had them written down for the first time — they had hitherto been locked in the breasts of the deemsters in imitation of the practice of the Druids. The line of the Stanleys lasted more than three hundred years. Their rule was 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 £500, 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 other was that a troop of soldiers was kept at free quarterage. I cannot but wish they had bethought them of both a little earlier. They formed an association, and broke into rebellion against the Countess-Dowager within eight days of the Earl’s execution. Perhaps they did not know of the Earl’s death, for news travelled slowly over sea in those days. But at least they knew of his absence. As a Manxman I am not proud of them.
During these eight days Mr. Receiver-General had begun to trim his sails. He had a lively wit, and saw which way things were going. Rumour says he was at the root of the secret association. Be that as it may, he carried the demands of the people to the Countess. She had no choice but to yield. The troops were disbanded. It was a bad victory.
A fortnight before, when her husband lay under his death sentence, the Countess had offered the island in exchange for his life. So now Mr. Receiver-General used this act of love against her. He seized some of the forts, saying the Countess was selling the island to the Parliament. Then the army of the Parliament landed, and Christian straightway delivered the island up to it, protesting that he had taken the forts on its behalf. Some say the Countess was imprisoned in the vaults of the Castle. Others say she had a free pass to England. So ended act one.
