KAP. 4.

the sense that the English Common Law was the law of the Island.
When Sir John Stanley was granted the Isle of Man in 1405, there was
already established a system of law, albeit by oral tradition. We have
seen that in 1523 and again in 1598 the Chief Judges of England held
that the Island was not governed by the laws of England. The Stanleys
and their officials were clearly irritated by the Manx oral legal tradition
— in a language which they did not understand — and at different
times directions were given to the Deemsters to set down in writing —
in English — the customary unwritten laws of the Island.
The Manx statute book begins in 1417. It was then that Sir John
Stanley, the son of the John Stanley to whom the Island was granted by
Henry IV, visited the Island and required the Deemsters and the Keys
to give an explanation of the ancient constitution and laws of the
Island. Deemsters and Keys at meetings of Tynwald, and over the years
these declarations became a corpus of written law.
The Stanleys also established their own courts, presided over by their
own officials. The extant records of the Court of Common Pleas date
from 1496, and those of the Chancery and Exchequer courts from
1578 and 1580 respectively. The proceedings of these courts, and also
of the ecclesiastical courts of the Bishop and his officials, which dealt
with wills and family matters as well as church affairs, were written
down in the English language, and formed precedents for Manx law.
Meanwhile the Deemsters continued to administer the unwritten laws,
known as the “Breast Law”, using the Manx Gaelic language of the
ordinary people. The courts of Common Pleas, of Chancery and of
Exchequer were amalgamated with the Deemsters courts to form the
present High Court in 1884.
The first comprehensive written statement of Manx law was made
by Deemster Parr in his “Abstract of Manx Law” completed in 1713.
Unfortunately it has never been printed. A comprehensive history of
Manx law is still awaited.
During the last two hundred years Manx customary law has to a
large extent gradually been replaced by statute law, which itself has
usually been based on English law. In particular in 1817 a statutory
Criminal Code, subsequently replaced by the great Criminal Code of
1872, introduced English criminal law to the Island. There are now no
customary or common law offences in Manx criminal law. Moreover
whenever Manx customary law is silent and there is no statutory law on
the subject in question, the Manx courts have for many generations
applied English Common Law and equity. The Isle of Man has thus, by
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