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© F.Coakley , 2026
[from A.M Harrision's Descriptive List of Insular Societies]
This society, recorded only in the Cumberland Pacquet of 19 April and 6 September, 1791, and with no expressed agenda but a perceived general commitment to the welfare of the Isle of Man, is rooted in the Manx politics of the late 1700's. Operating, unlike the optimistic Manx Society of the 1760s, in a situation of struggle for political control under the Crown between the House of Keys and the re-emerging post-Revestment Atholl interest in the person of the 4th Duke of Atholl, (later in 1793 to be made Governor of the Island until 1830), the group attempted to encourage action for Manx interests in Parliament and in economic development at home.
The influential committee, led by the President, William Barton Tenison, an incomer member of a well-known Irish family, Norris Moore, and John F.Crellin, later MHK, High Bailiff and Deemster, Vice-Presidents, and Thomas Stowell, later Clerk of the Rolls, Secretary, deliberately sought publicity outside the Island for their cause, publishing the first entry, a vote of thanks to the House of Keys for their opposition to measures introduced in Parliament for the Atholl interests, in both the London Chronicle and the Cumberland Pacquet..
They also took a particularly personal interest in their campaigns, promising in August 'to appear, at their next meeting, clad in MANX MANUFACTURE, in the hope of inducing the inhabitants of the Island in general to follow the example; and to bring the manufactures of the Island into general use and fashion.'
A closely-focused Manx patriotic society of tantalisingly short record.
Newspapers, Cumberland Pacquet 19 April 1791 and 6 September 1791 ut supra
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