Talk:Noble and royal titles of the Isle of Man

Offices
Bishop, mayor, chairmen, governors etc. are offices and not 'titles of nobility'. Mauls 13:26, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually bishop is a tite of nobility. However, I write to say that neither King and Lord, in this context, are titles of nobility. These are royal titles —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.36.109.221 (talk) 02:26, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Disputed
The current (3 June 2012) version of this article is little more than a bare list. It is almost unreferenced, and I have tagged it as disputed, because a) some of its inclusions seem perverse; b) I have been unable to find any references in reliable sources to support most of it.

The perverse inclusions are: King of Mann and of the Isles and King of Mann. These are royal titles rather than nobility, and the nobility are commonly regarded as being those in a social class below that of monarchy. If suitable references can be found to justify their description as nobility, then I will happily support their inclusion; but otherwise they should be removed.

I have no special access to any scholarly sources, but haven googling, and so far I been unable to find any references in reliable sources which explicitly use the term "noble" or "nobility" in respect of the Isle of Man. The closest I can find is except from an 18th century book, which refers to the "the Nobility of the Isles". However, the period in question is that of the Kingdom of the Isles, so the nobility concerned are those of a much wider area which included the Western Isles of Scotland; the source does not list any of this nobility as being from the Isle of Man.

The section labelled "Barons" is also problematic. The only ref to justify the existence of this section is http://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/people/glossary.htm (whose status a reliable source for historical data looks questionable), and list appears to be taken from there. However, that page does include the words "noble" or "nobility". What it actually says is that "Baronies were effectively different civil jurisdictions each having their own civil courts"


 * The article Baroness of Douglas contains no references to support the use of the term "noble" or "nobility", and the term "Baroness of Douglas" is unfound in JSTOR, Google Books, and Google Scholar, which is why I have proposed renaming the article (see Talk:Baroness of Douglas, where I have links demonstrating the lack of sources).
 * The Abbot of Bangor Abbey and the Abbot of Furness Abbey are not even in the Isle of Man. Nor is the Prior of St. Bees (Cumbria) or the Prior of St. Bead (Copeland). Did those remain aprt of Manx governance after defeat of the Kingdom of the Isles?  Where are the sources which call them nobility of the Isle of Man?
 * The list includes the Abbot of on Rushen Abbey, but the article Rushen Abbey does not mention the Abbot, nor does it mention any civil powers, nor any rank or title.
 * The Lord Bishop is the Bishop of Sodor and Man; I see no references to justify describing him as a noble.

As far as I can see, the only source to justify the existence of this page is http://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/people/glossary.htm ... but it is headlined "Offices of the Manx Civil and Church Establishments". The depiction of all of this as "nobility" is based at best on a synthesis of various sources, and an inference that the title "Baron" means nobility ... but no refs have been produced to justify that inference in the context of a civil structure which differs significantly from that of Britain or continental Europe.

Unless sources are found which explicitly labelling all this as "nobility", then the best solutions that I can see are either to:
 * 1) delete this page, without prejudice to re-creating it is suitable sources are produced
 * 2) incorporate this material in a "governance" sub-section of History of the Isle of Man. However, since the only source for it is http://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/people -- an page which doesn't even mention which dates it refers to -- deletion seems preferable.

Note that since I started drafting these comments a few days ago, the disputed tag was removed, and some other minor changes made to this article in a series of edits since I started drafting these comments. None of those changes signficantly address my concerns my concerns, except that the page has been moved from Noble titles of the Isle of Man to Noble and royal titles of the Isle of Man. That justifies the inclusion of the royal titles, but does solve the central problem, of describing all this as "nobility" without sources to back up that claim, so I will now restore the disputed tag.-- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:19, 5 June 2012 (UTC)


 * One thing which I should have stressed more strongly above is that this article appears to conflate the Kingdom of the Isles with the Isle of Man. I claim no expertise in this period of history, but I am concerned that the article as it stands does not distinguish between the period of the Kingdom of the Isles, and the later periods of Scottish and English dominance. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:33, 5 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Note: this discussion also impacts on List of baronies in the Peerages of the British Isles, which appears to be basically a copy of the "Barons" section of ths is article. I have therefore tagged List of baronies in the Peerages of the British Isles as disputed section, and posted at Talk:List of baronies in the Peerages of the British Isles to suggest that discussion be centralisied here. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:52, 5 June 2012 (UTC)