This is the first comprehensive modern account of the history of the Isle of Man, through the years between the establishment of the Stanley lordship early in the fifteenth century and the Revestment of 1830 by which the Island's lordship was returned to the English crown.

Focusing on political and constitutional aspects, the book traces developments through the successive lordships of the Stanley Earls of Derby, Thomas Fairfax and the Dukes of Atholl and highlights the evolution of the Isle of Man's distinctive constitution. It includes coverage of the succession dispute within the Stanley family in the period 1594 to 1610 between the sixth Earl of Derby and the widowed countess of his elder brother, the fifth Earl, who had died with daughters but no son. It also covers the troubled civil war period when the seventh Earl of Derby raised troops to fight for the king despite the pro-Parliamentarian sympathies of the bulk of the population and the extensive smuggling activities of the population in the eighteenth century which prompted the British crown to reassert its rule. Throughout the book emphasises the distinctiveness of the Manx experience, connected to, but different from the history of England, Scotland and Ireland.