Notwithstanding Bishop Wilson's severity, his tyranny, his undue pride
in the authority of the Church, and his morbid jealousy of the powers
of the State, his rule was a wise and just one, and he was a spiritual
statesman, who needed not to be ashamed. He raised the tone of life in
the Isle of Man, made it possible to accept a man's _yea_ and _nay_,
even in those perilous issues of life where the weakness and meanness
of poor humanity reveals itself in lies and subterfuges. This he did by
making false swearing a terror. One ancient ordeal of swearing he set
his face against, but another he encouraged, and often practised, let me
describe both.
In the old days, when a man died intestate, leaving no record of his
debts, a creditor might establish a claim by going with the Bishop to
the grave of the dead man at midnight, stretching himself on it with
face towards heaven and a Bible on his breast, and then saying solemnly,
"I swear that So-and-so, who lies buried here, died in my debt by so
much." After that the debt was allowed. What warning the Bishop first
pronounced I do not know, but the scene is a vivid one, even if we think
of the creditor as swearing truly, and a startling and terrible one if
we think of him as about to swear to what is false. The dark night, the
dark figures moving in it, the churchyard, the debtor's grave, the sham
creditor, who had been loud in his protests under the light of the inn
of the village, now quaking and trembling as the Bishop's warning comes
out of the gloom, then stammering, and breaking down, and finally, with
ghostly visions of a dead hand clutching at him from the grave, starting
up, shrieking, and flying away. It is a nightmare. Let us not remember
it when the candles are put out.
This ordeal was in force until the seventeenth century, but Bishop
Wilson judged it un-Christian, and never practised it. The old Roman
canon law of Purgation, a similar ordeal, he used not rarely. It was
designed to meet cases of slander in which there was no direct and
positive evidence. If a good woman had been accused of unchastity in
that vague way of rumour which is always more damaging and devilish than
open accusation, she might of her own free choice, or by compulsion of
the Bishop, put to silence her false accusers by appearing in church,
with witnesses ready to take oath that they believed her, and there
swearing at the altar that common fame and suspicion had wronged her. If
a man doubted her word he had to challenge it, or keep silence for ever
after. The severest censures of the Church were passed upon those who
dared to repeat an unproved accusation after the oaths of Purgation and
Compurgation had been taken unchallenged. It is a fine, honest ordeal,
very old, good for the right, only bad for the wrong, giving strength to
the weak and humbling the mighty. But it would be folly and mummery in
our day. The Church has lost its powers over life and limb, and no one
capable of defaming a pure woman would care a brass penny about the
Church's excommunication. Yet a woman's good name is the silver thread
that runs through the pearl chain of her virtues. Pity that nowadays it
can be so easily snapped. Conversation at five o'clock tea is enough to
do that. The ordeal of compulsory Purgation was abolished in Man as late
as 1737.