This is an imaginary picture, but no less outrageous things happened
whereof the records remain. A demoralised laity usually co-exists with
a demoralised clergy, and there are some bad stories of the Bishops who
preceded the Reformation. There is one story of a Bishop of that period,
who was a gross drunkard and notorious gambler. He played with his
clergy as long as they had anything to lose, and then he played with a
deemster and lost five hundred pounds himself. Poor little island, that
had two such men for its masters, the one its master in the things of
this world, the other its master in the things of the world to come! If
anything is needful to complete the picture of wretchedness in which
the poor Manx people must have existed then, it is the knowledge of what
manner of man a deemster was in those days, what his powers were, and
how he exercised them.