4 Faraday, Corrcspotdence of Lietct.-Col. Philips. 



the social life in the Isle of Man is found in Colonel 

 Richard Townley's Journal in the Isle of Man. 

 Colonel Townley, who was a member of the well-known 

 Lancashire family of that name, lived at Belfield Hall, 

 and was in 1752 High Sheriff of the county. He married, 

 first, Miss Ann Weston, of Liverpool, second, Mary, the 

 daughter of Mr. James Penny, of Penny Bridge. He says 

 that in the Isle of Man the people o'i the higher classes 

 were, in the main, civil and attentive to strangers, while 

 the ladies were "exceedingly affable, civil, and polite; 

 very sprightly in conversation, and uncommonly neat and 

 smart in their dress." He adds that many of the Manx 

 women were very pretty and some very accomplished. 

 The middle class people, " when they are sober and cool, 

 are decentl}' civil." The lowest class, however, were 

 "rude, ungovernable, and uncivilized, far beyond the 

 common people in any country " he had had occasion to 

 visit. This, however, applied only to Douglas, the 

 country people being " as civil and obsequious as could be 

 wished." That Manxmen at this time suffered from a 

 confirmed laziness and were grossly intemperate, is an 

 opinion echoed by nearly every contemporary writer on 

 the Island. The houses in which the majority of the 

 people lived were of the most wretched description, being 

 one-roomed hovels constructed of sods, the walls six or 

 seven feet high, the one window only about a foot square, 

 the chimney a clay-daubed barrel, and the roof rudely 

 thatched. The clergy, though in the main they seem to 

 have been well-educated men, were almost equally poor, 

 the usual yearly income among them being only some 

 fifty or sixty pounds. 



Much of the interest in the following letters arises 

 from the curious relations then existing between the Isle 

 of Man and the countries surrounding it. As a place 



