The Earl was dead.
Even after that, knowing the worst, she still refused. She held the island now for her King. Then treachery came to the help of the enemy. William Christian, the Receiver-General of the Earl, won over the garrison, and surrendered the island to the Parliamentarian fleet, which completely surrounded the coasts.
These Christians had long occupied high positions under the rulers of Man, being deemsters and controllers of special departments of public government. But already more than once the Earl had had good grounds for displeasure and mistrust against them. He had some time before deprived Edward Christian of authority in favour of one Captain Greenhaigh; (though he had not withdrawn his countenance from the family of Christian), who, in the meantime, had died. When Lord Derby left Man to go to the assistance of Charles II. he confided the forces of the island to William Christian, this unfaithful Edward’s son. Never was confidence more misplaced. William Christian allowed himself to be corrupted; he admitted the Parliamentary troops into the island at dead of night, and daybreak found Lady Derby and her children prisoners in Castle Rushen. For two months she was detained prisoner in the island; then they let her go free, in a forlorn quest of justice from Cromwell. “She who had brought to this country fifty thousand pounds sterling had not so much as a morsel of bread to eat, and was indebted for all to her friends, almost as unfortunate as herself.”
This William Christian is a great hero with Manxmen. Iliam Dhône, or “Fair-haired William,” is the subject of a long and doleful ballad, which is still popular in the island. Eleven years later, when the King had his own again, and the murdered Earl’s son Edward was once more the Lord of Man, a day of retribution came to William Dhône. He was tried for that day’s work of giving up the Isle of Man to the Parliamentarians, and shot for a traitor on Hango Hill. The young Earl met with great blame for his part in this act. There were extenuating circumstances for William Christian’s actions. The trial was a mock proceeding. A tale goes that a pardon was sent him on the day before the one fixed for his execution, and that it was laid hands on, and intercepted by an enemy, being afterwards found in the foot of an old woman’s stocking.
“Protect,”
runs the ballad,
“every mortal from enmity foul,
For thy fate, William Dhône, sickens our soul.”
Audi alteram bartem. The Christians and those they represented of the Manx people had had grievances against certain high-handed doings of the late Earl, but, the tale all told, sympathy for fair-haired William’s fate is not easy to muster; and if it be true that the Countess of Derby had a share in hastening his end, it is not necessary to be blind to the fact that she would, if she could have compassed it, have visited similar lynch-law justice on those “court-martial” judges who condemned her husband to the block. In her virtues and in her failings—sins, if so they were—there was nothing small about Charlotte of Derby when great crises hung over her.
These past, she was just again the ordinary grande dame of her time. The daily round and common task of existence pleased her well enough. Henceforth the remaining years of her life were devoted to two primary ends—the placing in life of her children, and the recovery of her money and lawful possessions. For this last, her fortunes ran side by side with those of the exiled King and of many another devoted Royalist family; but they were at their lowest ebb on the days succeeding Worcester fight. Steady, but so gradual as to be for long imperceptible, was the inflow of the tide; and only the passing years really marked the turn of national affairs.