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. Parliamentary differences, jealousies of political parties, sectarian bitterness, which it pleased them to call religious opinion, were all seething to the great issue. The powerful mind of Cromwell was not for ever to be proof against myriad influences. If he desired the Crown, he dared not accept it: as he dared not do many things which appealed to his own inclinations.