The historiographical inheritance left by Moore, which has dominated the twentieth century, was as we saw one which looked to the Isle of Man as an island with primarily Irish connections. It viewed the period covered by this volume, from the establishment of Stanley lordship until the Revestment, as one in which English political and governmental control became progressively more intense, and saw with an embarrassed silence a lack of the type of resistance which Moore and his colleagues believed was characteristic of ‘Celtic’ societies, particularly in Ireland. While the structures of Manx autonomy around Tynwald and the House of Keys might have remained, there was little he could find to celebrate in its activity, paralleled in an apparent paucity of Celtic folk survivals. This was even true in the years of the wars of the seventeenth century. The recovery which Moore and his peers attempted to sponsor therefore felt all the more urgent and even desperate.

Yet this was a picture painted on the basis of a limited palette of evidence: as we also saw, Moore's frustrations included the limited efforts of the learned societies of his time in putting primary source material into print and making it accessible for study. The work of the past couple of decades, and particularly of the projects which have borne fruit in this volume and its companion, have added to and qualified those accounts to a considerable degree.

INTRODUCTION

It is inevitable that this chapter can only give an overview of the cultural life of the Isle of Man during the period. Reflecting economic and political changes, and through language, literature, the arts and entertainment, it offers glimpses into the developing ideas and beliefs of both the Manx and the incomers, and the growing awareness of the Island's history and unique identity. While the early part of the period draws mainly on primary documents such as the presentments, later histories and commentaries, mainly by visitors to the Island such as Waldron, Feltham and Robertson, provide interesting insights. Newspaper reports, diaries and other manuscripts are important sources and contributors to this chapter have also made good use of up-to-date research by scholars in a wide number of disciplines.

The evidence for Manx cultural activities during this period is uneven. Apart from accounts in diaries and journals, the early centuries reveal little factual information outside of the Stanley/Derby household. During the late 1700s, newspaper reports detail some of the more formal events or give occasional descriptions of the more unusual happenings, such as the circuses that visited the Island. Artworks that survive are those of personal, social and political value to the owners. The output of the bulk of the population seems to be invisible. Each of the following sections provides an introduction to the subject and will hopefully stimulate new research.

Adalbert Stifter reminded readers in “Wiener Salonscenen” (Viennese Salon Scenes), the final installment of Wien und die Wiener in Bildern aus dem Leben (Vienna and the Viennese in Sketches from Life, 1841–44), that his roots were in rural Upper Bohemia: “Ich glaube dem Leser schon gesagt zu haben, daß ich so glücklich war, meine Kindheit nicht in den Mauern der großen Stadt verlebt zu haben” (HKG 9,1:444; I believe I have already told the reader that I was so fortunate not to have spent my childhood behind the walls of the big city). He explained that writing about the city was not that much different from writing about life in the countryside: “es ist hier, wie überall: die Einseitigkeit gebiert den Ekel, und die Vielseitigkeit die Harmonie” (HKG 9,1:439; it is here as it is everywhere: one-sidedness breeds disgust, and diversity [breeds] harmony). Stifter thought that it could be boring at a Viennese salon, and that there could be plenty of “Koth, Steine und Morast” (HKG 9,1:439; filth, stones, and morass) in an Alpine landscape). Despite his claims to the contrary, the opinion persists that he was more interested in rural than in urban life and that it would be a mistake to claim otherwise. This observation was cemented long ago for a variety of reasons: autobiographical remarks found in his letters and fiction; a narrative focus on nature; a publication history and scholarship privileging realist fiction over administrative correspondence and cultural criticism; an emphasis on single rather than collective authorship; and little scholarly consideration for mid-nineteenth-century city life and leisure.

One of the many plots woven through Karl Mundstock'sepic Helle Nächteinvolves Gerda, a young woman whose villagewas burned by the Nazis during their retreat fromthe Red Army. She was evacuated to Dresden justbefore the Allied firebombing and fell in with acharismatic smuggler named Harry. At the age ofsixteen, she was sent to the steel mills of theMaxhütte in Riesa by a juvenile court. Now, in thesummer of 1950, she finds herself in the woodedlandscape near Fürstenberg, work¬ing at theconstruction site for the Eisenhüttenkombinat-Ost.Meanwhile, in Görlitz, caught up in the heroicrhetoric of socialist construction, two young FDJfunctionaries, Jürgen and Günther – known as“Stempel- Günther,”or Rubber-Stamp-Günther, due to his rigorousobservance of bureaucratic procedurality – lay downtheir pens and depart on “the Red Bug,” a 1922 Evansmotorcycle, for the EKO site, the prestige projectof the GDR's first Five-Year Plan. They arrive bynight to find the Red October youth brigade fellingtrees by moonlight.

An important strand of Christian thought dating at least to St Augustine held the idea that God revealed himself to mankind through the ‘book of nature’ and Scripture. This doctrine of God's ‘two books’ was very popular in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant countries, although the only profession of faith that explicitly included it in its confession was the Dutch Reformed Church. During the seventeenth century, this doctrine was still discussed mainly against an Aristotelian backdrop, but it became increasingly controversial and not univocal. Within the Scholastic tradition, theology and philosophy had different objects and methods, which should not be transposed to another. In Comments on a Certain Broadsheet (1648), Descartes sought to trace explicit boundaries between natural philosophy and theology: while faith was needed ‘to believe incarnation, trinity etc. […] Natural reason may be used to investigate questions having to do with faith, such as the existence of God and the distinction between the human soul and the body’. To Descartes, theology was not the end of natural philosophy, but the beginning, in that he grounded ‘the reliability of clear and distinct ideas, the existence of the material world, and the constancy of the laws of nature in the existence of a perfect and immutable being’. For this reason, Cartesian physics convinced many contemporaries that the understanding of nature was a way to celebrate God, and, as a consequence, the argument from design deriving from ‘Cicero, Seneca, Pliny, and Galen acquired new impulse’.

BISHOPS OF SODOR AND MAN – 1405–1830

John Sprotton c.1392–1410

Richard Payl / Pully 1410–33 (Payl and Pully may represent two separate individuals)

John Burwais 1433–c.1455

Thomas Burton 1455–58

Thomas Kirkham 1458–78

Richard Oldham 1483–85

Huan Blackleach 1487–1509

Hugh Hesketh 1513–c.1523

John Howden 1523–c.1540–42

Henry Man 1546–55

Thomas Stanley 1555–69

Vacant 1569–70

John Salesbury 1570–73

Vacant 1573–76

John Meryck 1576–99

George Lloyd 1599–1604

John Phillips 1604–33

William Foster 1633–35

Richard Parre 1635–44

Vacant 1644–61

Samuel Rutter 1661–63

Isaac Barrow 1663–71

Henry Bridgman 1671–82

John Lake 1682–84

Baptista Levinz 1684–93

Vacant 1693–98

Thomas Wilson 1698–1755

Mark Hildesley 1755–72

Richard Richmond 1773–80

George Mason 1780–84

Claudius Crigan 1784–1813

Vacant 1813–14

George Murray 1814–27

William Ward 1827–38

Introduction

This anonymous manuscript, written in 1637 or 1638, draws upon Scripture, legal theory and Reformed political thought to defend resistance to tyrants. The author argues that inferior magistrates (especially the three Estates of the Scottish Parliament) have a duty to resist superiors who threaten kirk and commonwealth.1 The manuscript is signifcant for two key reasons. First, it was written before the outbreak of the Bishops’ Wars (1639–1640) or the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1642–1653). As a result, it predates standard printed works of Scottish political theory, such as Alexander Henderson's ‘Instructions for Defensive Arms’ (1639) or Samuel Rutherford's Lex, Rex; Or, the law and the prince (1644). It is thus one of the earliest defences of resistance to King Charles I (1600–1649) authored in Scotland. Second, this manuscript is also one of the frst English translations of the famous French Huguenot resistance tract Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos (1579). The author paraphrases (but does not directly reference) large portions of the Vindiciae, follows its organisational structure, draws upon similar biblical and historical examples, and extensively compares French and Scottish forms of governance. For these reasons, this manuscript ofers critical insights into early Covenanting ideas about resistance while demonstrating the transnational intellectual context of seventeenth-century Scottish political thought.

For centuries, readers of medieval romances, satires, and anonymous lyrics in Latin, French, and English attributed to Walter Map a vast corpus of literature that he almost certainly did not write. As we have seen, his longest piece of writing did not circulate widely among medieval audiences (De nugis curialium; hence, De nugis). His most successful piece of writing – indeed, one of the most widely copied texts in late-medieval Europe – circulated commonly under names other than his own (Dissuasio Valerii ad Rufinum). If Map found humorously vexing some confusion between his compositions and such authorities as St. Jerome and Valerius Maximus, one can only imagine him succumbing to virtual hysterics upon learning that he himself had been summoned as an authorizing force for the entirety of the French Lancelot- Grail Cycle, a large quantity of satirical Anglo-Latin poetry, and the textual production of any number of persons living in England or France after the death of Henry II so unfortunate as to have composed while being named Walter. In Chapter 3, I showed how Map thought subtly about the possible consequences of fairy offspring acting out the most mundane aspects of quotidian experience. Fittingly, the many dubious heirs of his own authority still lingering within the surviving textual record pay tribute, with uncanny accuracy, to his own authorial fascinations. Bodley 851 itself reflects Walter's own obsession with what is manifest yet marvelous, with those lingering human and archival authorities at once inescapable, revealing, informative, and false.