The Isle of Man, Channel Islands and Statutes of the English Parliament, to 1640: Development and Change in Territorial Extent

Abstract Recent authorities emphasize the longstanding inclusion of the Isle of Man in the territorial extent of English/British parliamentary legislation. This aligns with views of the territorial ambition of ministers of the crown and members of parliament in their operation of parliament's role in receipt of petitions and especially in the shaping of legislation. While contemporary authorities on Channel Island law, especially those in the islands themselves, are more cautious about the territorial extent of such legislation, it remains, at least by implication, the norm to assert that all of these territories, now Crown Dependencies, could be included by express provision in English/British statute law, and that there might be strong assumptions of inclusion even when they were not expressly named. The evidence for the period before 1640 does not tend to support these arguments. Instead, the Anglo-centric instincts of the English parliament from the mid-fourteenth century to the 1530s are clear. And even in the 1530s and 1540s, in legislation spurred by jurisdictional and administrative imperatives in ecclesiastical matters, as a result of the Break with Rome, there was only tentative and limited change to the territorial extent of English law.