Many of my American friends have never heard of the Isle of
Man, and most of my English friends have only a passing acquaintance with it.
To be sure, none of my acquaintances has been able to explain exactly what a “crown
dependency” is. To shed some light on the matter, I decided to delve into the history
of the Isle of Man today. I started by doing my own research, using my typical
reliable sources, to wit: the internet, persons I met on trains and buses, and
hotel service staff, most of whom have been on the isle at least three weeks
and still speak with eastern European accents. As always, my thorough research means
that everything hereafter is mostly true, or at least partly true, except for
the stuff I’ve made up.
Geographically, the Isle of Man is part of the British Isles
(as is Ireland), and for that reason the Manx consider themselves British (but
the Irish don’t, except possibly those in Northern Ireland). Politically, the Isle
of Man is not a part of Britain -- it is not a part of the UK. Nor is the Isle of Man a member of the European
Union. As a result, the Manx did not get to vote on Brexit.
The odd relationship between the Isle of Man and the UK
apparently started in year 1405 when King Henry IV of England gave the Isle to Sir
John Stanley, under condition that each successive lord pledge
fealty to the English monarch and present each new monarch with two peregrine
falcons at coronation. That historically feudal arrangement meant that each
successive monarch of England became the Lord of Man (even if the monarch is a
female, like Queen Elizabeth II). Although the Isle of Man isn’t owned by the
UK, it is subservient to its feudal overlord – the king or queen of England. This
may be an oversimplification, but one that explains “crown dependency” rather
than UK dependency or UK territory; further, since the UK doesn’t “own” the
Isle of Man, the Isle is self-governing with its own parliament.
To make sense of all of this (or at least of some of this),
I went to Castletown, the former capital of the Isle of Man to tour Castle
Rushen, where all of this started. Castle Rushen bills itself as one of the
best preserved medieval castles in Europe (i.e., dating from pre-16th
century). The castle was designed to defend the isle from marauders like the
French or Spanish who would have liked nothing better than to wrest the isle
away from a supporter of the English king and use it themselves as a base from
which to attack England. So the English king helped defend the castle, setting
the precedent that the English king will defend the Isle of Man -- and he did, at least until the
English civil war, when the parliamentarians under Cromwell seized the castle.
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| Castletown Harbour |
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| Castle Rushen |
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| Replica of Lord's dinner |
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| Historic Lords of Man |
That brings us to the Isle of Man parliament, called the
Tynwald. After touring the castle, I toured the historic House of Keys – the parliamentary
building dating from the mid-1800s. The Isle of Man parliament is much older;
it is the longest continuously serving parliament in the world, dating back to
the Viking era in the 900s. As a parliament, it made the laws, but in the early
years the parliamentarians weren’t democratically elected, and disagreements
were not infrequently settled with swords and knives. But at least they got
things done, unlike some of our more congenial institutions today.
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| Historic House of Keys |
The next few hundred years get fuzzy, but I suppose it would
have been hard for Cromwell’s parliamentarians and the Tynwald parliamentarians
to disagree publicly, so life went on. In 1932, the Isle of Man parliament
adopted as the isle's official coat of arms a depiction of three armored legs flared
like a pinwheel. The image has its source in Nordic heraldry centuries old, and
was accompanied by a Manx motto, a very loose translation of which is “Whichever
way you throw me I will stand.” Nobody in England apparently objected, so there
you have it – a self-governing crown dependency.
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| War Memorial in foreground; Castle Rushen in background |
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| Isle of Man flag |
