Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received
The Editor
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© F.Coakley , 2026
[from A.M Harrision's Descriptive List of Insular Societies]
The Manx Society attracted 236 subscribers in the first year of its existence, a gratifyingly enthusiastic response to the idea of starting a record society for a very small Island. Starting at the very roots of history, the study of the evidence from which all information is derived, the project would normally have required the interest of a considerable number of locally practising scholars before it could become viable, Fortunately a few incoming practitioners in historical studies, Dr.H.R. Oswald, F.S.A., Dr Olivier, William Harrison, and J.G.Cumming, had acted as a nucleus around which a considerable number of Manxmen, now themselves turning to the history of Peel Castle, gathered.Another potent source of attraction was. the very idea of nationality, a concept which many Manx people had already accepted as their birthright.
The prospectus of the new society promoted this factor in no uncertain manner. 'The Chief of 'the multitude of Isles' satellites to Great Britain and Ireland has local peculiarities of the most interesting and important nature........ Inhabited by an aboriginal tribe of the great Celtic family, with language, institutions, and laws peculiar to itself, never united to Scotland, Ireland or England - to this day a separate realm, independent of the Imperial Parliament, and under its native and aboriginal Legislature, with a singular relation between its church and state, having as Lord Coke says,'such laws the like whereof are not to be found in any other place',... surely this Island has peculiar claims to have the light of catholic publicity at length cast upon all its documents and peculiarities'
The hyperbole of the long prospectus is amazing; 'Marching in the front rank of European progress, the miniature Kingdom of Man preserves with Asiatic immobility the Tynwald government, older far than that throne of the Caesars on which the Popes have placed their chair of St. Peter'
The basic reality of the overstated case was however in itself compelling. 'A society for the publication of all the valuable documents illustrating the past, and promotive of the future of the Manx people, will have claims of no ordinary strength on the patronage of the Nobility, Commons, and Churches of the British Empire and Colonies............ This Society will direct for the first time a combined and powerful influence towards the elucidation of the national records and monuments of Man'.
Before the Society ended, possibly because the targets of its founding generation had been reached and a new direction in scholarship would have to be discovered and pursued, the Island had again been noticed and marked as an interesting study area and the volumes of the Island's one venture in record publication are still essential tools for Manx students today.
M.N.H.L. Records of the Manx Society, A.R.9641;
Isle of Man newspapers, passim
...
A.W. Moore gives a scathing account on of the final years of the society.
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Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received
The Editor |
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