The Deemster

by Sir Hall Caine

The Bishop had kept close to Bishop's Court. Turning night into day, and day into night, or knowing no times and seasons, he had been seen to wander at all hours up and down the glen. If any passed him as he crossed the road from the glen back to the house he had seemed not to see. His gray hair had grown snowy white, his tall figure drooped heavily from his shoulders, and his gait had lost all its spring. Stricken suddenly into great age, he had wandered about mumbling to himself, or else quite silent. The chapel on his episcopal demesne he had closed from the time of the death of Ewan, his chaplain. Thus had he borne himself shut out from the world, until the primrose had come and gone, and the cuckoo had begun to call. Then as suddenly he underwent a change. Opening the chapel at Bishop's Court he conducted service there every Sunday afternoon. The good souls of the parish declared that never before had he preached with such strength and fervor, though the face over the pulpit looked ten long years older than on the Christmas morning when the 'longshoremen brought up their dreadful burden from the Mooragh. Convocation was kept on Whit-Tuesday as before, and the Bishop spoke with calm and grave power. His clergy said he had gathered strength from solitude, and fortitude from many days spent alone, as in the wilderness, with his Maker. Here and there a wise one among his people said it might look better of him to take the beam out of his own eye than to be so very zealous in pointing out the motes in the eyes of others. The world did not stand still, though public interest was in suspense, and now and again some girl was presented for incontinence or some man for drunkenness. Then it was noticed that the censures of the Church had begun to fall on the evil-doer with a great tenderness, and this set the wise ones whispering afresh that some one was busy at sweeping the path to his own door, and also that the black ox never trod on his own hoof.

The day of the trial came in May. It was to be a day of doom, but the sun shone with its own indifference to the big little affairs of men. The spring had been a dry one, and over the drought came heat. From every corner of the island the people trooped off under the broiling sun to Castletown. The Court of General Jail Delivery was held in Castle Rushen, in the open square that formed the gateway to the prison chapel, under the clear sky, without shelter from any weather. There the narrow space allotted to spectators was thronged with hot faces under beavers, mutches, and sun-bonnets. The passages from the castle gate on the quay were also thronged by crowds who could not see, but tried to hear. From the lancet windows of the castle that overlooked the gateway eager faces peered out, and on the lead flat above the iron staircase and over the great clock-tower were companies of people of both sexes, who looked down and even listened when they could. The windows of the houses around the castle gate were thrown up for spectators who sat on the sills. In the rigging of the brigs and luggers that lay in the harbor, close under the castle walls, sailors had perched themselves to look on, and crack jokes and smoke. Nearly the whole floor of the market-place was thronged, but under the cross, where none could see or hear, an old woman had set up ninepins, tipped with huge balls of toffee, and a score of tipsy fellows were busy with them amid much laughter and noise. A line of older men, with their hands in their pockets, were propped against the castle wall; and a young woman from Ballasalla, reputed to be a prophetess, was standing on the steps of the cross, and calling on the careless to take note that, while they cursed and swore and forgot their Maker, six men not twenty yards away were on the brink of their graves.

The judges were the Governor of the island (who was robed), the Clerk of the Rolls, the two Deemsters (who wore wigs and gowns), the Water Bailiff, the Bishop, the Archdeacon, the Vicars-General, and the twenty-four Keys. All these sat on a raised platform of planks. The senior and presiding Deemster (Thorkell Mylrea), who was the mouthpiece of the court, was elevated on a central dais.

Thorkell was warm, eager, and even agitated. When the Bishop took his seat, amid a low murmur of the spectators, his manner was calm, and his quiet eyes seemed not to look into the faces about him.

The prisoners were brought in from the cell that opened to the left of the gateway. They looked haggard and worn, but were not wanting in composure. Dan, towering above the rest in his great stature, held his head low; his cheeks were ashy, but his lips were firm. By his side, half clinging to his garments, was the lad Davy, and at the other end of the line was old Quilleash, with resolution on his weather-beaten face. Crennell and Corkell were less at ease, but Teare's firm-set figure and hard-drawn mouth showed the dogged determination of a man who meant that day to sell his life dear. Sixty-eight men were present, summoned from the seventeen parishes of the island to compose a jury of twelve to be selected by the prisoners. Over all was the burning sun of a hot day in May.

When the officer of the court had made the presentment, and was going on to ask the prisoners to plead, the proceedings were suddenly interrupted. The steward of the spiritual barony of the Bishop, now sole baron of the island, rose to a point of law. One of the six prisoners who were indicted for felony was a tenant of the Bishop's barony, and as such was entitled to trial not by the civil powers of the island, but by a jury of his barony, presided over by the proper president of his barony. The prisoner in question was Daniel Mylrea, and for him the steward claimed the privilege of a remand until he could be brought up for trial before the court of the lord of the barony under which he lived.

This claim created a profound sensation in the court. Dan himself raised his eyes, and his face had a look of pain. When asked by the Deemster if the claim was put forward by his wish or sanction he simply shook his head. The steward paid no attention to this repudiation. "This court," he said, "holds no jurisdiction over a tenant of the Bishop's barony;" and forthwith he put in a document showing that Daniel Mylrea was tenant of a farm on the episcopal demesne, situate partly in Kirk Ballaugh and partly in Kirk Michael.

The Deemster knew full well that he was powerless. Nevertheless he made a rigid examination of the prisoner's lease, and, finding the document flawless, he put the point of law to the twenty-four Keys with every hampering difficulty. But the court was satisfied as to the claim, and allowed it. "The prisoner, Daniel Mylrea, stands remanded for trial at the court of his barony," said the Deemster, in a tone of vexation; "and at that trial," he added, with evident relish, "the president of the barony shall be, as by law appointed, assisted by a Deemster."

Dan was removed, his name was struck out of the indictment, and the trial of the five fishermen was proceeded with. They pleaded "Not guilty." The Attorney-General prosecuted, stating the facts so far as they concerned the remaining prisoners, and reflecting at the evidence against the prisoner who was remanded. He touched on the evidence of the sailcloth, and then on the mystery attaching to a certain bundle of clothes, belts, and daggers that had been found in the prison at Peel Castle. At this reference the steward of the barony objected, as also against the depositions that inculpated Dan. The witnesses were fewer than at the Deemster's inquest, and they had nothing to say that directly criminated the fishermen. Brief and uninteresting the trial turned out to be with the chief prisoner withdrawn, and throughout the proceedings the Deemster's vexation was betrayed by his thin, sharp, testy voice. Some efforts were made to prove that Dan's disappearance from Peel Castle had been brought about by the Bishop; but the steward of the barony guarded so zealously the privileges of the ecclesiastical courts that nothing less than an open and unseemly rupture between the powers of Church and State seemed imminent when the Deemster, losing composure, was for pressing the irrelevant inquiry. Moreover, the Keys, who sat as arbiters of points of law and to "pass" the verdict of the jury, were clearly against the Deemster.

The trial did not last an hour. When the jury was ready to return a verdict, the Deemster asked in Manx, as by ancient usage, "Vod y fer-carree soie?" (May the Man of the Chancel [the Bishop] sit?). And the foreman answered "Fod" (He may); the ecclesiastics remained in their seats; a verdict of "Not guilty" was returned, and straightway the five fishermen were acquitted.