member of the corporation until 1604, when he was dismissed for saying that Mr. Damett and Mr. Wheeler, two aldermen who then represented the borough, 'had behaved themselves in parliament like sheep, and were both dunces.' Thereafter he appears to have devoted himself to the compilation of a history of the borough. In 1612 he obtained leave to go to the Hutch and peruse and copy records for forty days. Finding that many of the documents were missing and the remainder uncared for, he persuaded the corporation to appoint a committee to inquire into the matter. Their labours are recorded in a book containing a repertory of the documents, which was engrossed by Manship and delivered to the corporation, in whose possession it still remains, though almost every document enumerated in it is now destroyed or lost. Manship appears to have regained the favour of the corporation, for he was appointed to ride to London about a license to 'transport herrings in stranger-bottoms,' and to endeavour to get the 'fishers of the town discharged from buoys and lights.' In 1614, when Sir Theophilus Finch and George Hardware were returned to parliament for the borough, Manship acted as their solicitor, with a salary of forty shillings per week, and in 1616 he was again sent to London to manage the town's business, but on this occasion he was accused of improperly 'borrowing money in the town's name, and fell into disgrace. His 'History of Great Yarmouth,' was completed in 1619, and the corporation voted him a gratuity of 60l., but his expectations of fame and profit were apparently not realised, for he circulated in 1620 a pamphlet wherein, say his enemies, he 'extolled himself and defamed the town,' He afterwards deemed it expedient to apologise. Manship died in 1625 at an advanced age and in great poverty. The corporation granted a small annuity to his widow Joan, daughter of Henry Hill of King's Lynn.
Manship was indebted in some part of his curious history to that compiled by his father. A contemporary copy, with an appendix containing a transcript of the charters made by him, was deposited in the Hutch, but is believed to have ultimately found its way into the library of Dawson Turner. Several other copies are extant, from one of which the book was first published, under the editorship of C. J. Palmer, in 1854. A catalogue of the charters of Great Yarmouth, compiled by Manship in 1612, is in the British Museum, Addit, MS. 23737.
[Palmer's Perlustration of Great Yarmouth, i. 116-18; Rye's Norfolk Topography (Index Soc.)]
MANSON, DAVID (1726–1792), school-master, son of John Manson and Agnes Jamieson, was probably born in the parish of Cairncastle, co. Antrim, in 1726. His parents being poor, he began life as a farmer's servantboy, but was allowed by his employer to attend a school kept by the Rev. Robert White in the neighbouring town of Lame. There he made such good progress that in a short time he himself opened a school in his native parish, tradition says in a cowhouse. By-and-by he became tutor to the Shaw family of Ballygally Castle, and later on taught a school in Ballycastle. In 1752 he removed to Belfast, where he started a brewery, and in 1765 announced in the 'Belfast Newsletter' that 'at the request of his customers' he had opened an evening school in his house in Clugston's Entry, where he would teach, 'by way of amusement,' English grammar, reading, and spelling. His school increased, so that in 1760 he removed to larger premises in High Street, and employed three assistants. In 1768 he built a still larger school-house in Donegall Street, where he had fuller scope for developing his system of instruction, 'without the discipline of the rod,' as he described it. For the amusement of his pupils he devised various machines, one a primitive kind of velocipede. To carry out his ideals of education he wrote and published a number of school-books, which long enjoyed a high reputation in the north of Ireland and elsewhere. These were 'Manson's Spelling Book;' an 'English Dictionary,' Belfast, 1762; a 'New Primer,' Belfast, 1762; a 'Pronouncing Dictionary,' Belfast, 1774. He also published a small treatise in which he urged hand-loom weavers, of whom there were then many in Ireland, to live in the country, where they could relieve their sedentary task by cultivating the soil, appending directions as to the most profitable methods of doing so. He invented an improved machine for spinning yarn. In 1775 he was among the seatholaers in the First Presbyterian Church, Belfast, and in 1779 he was admitted a freeman of the borough (Town Book of Belfast, p. 300). He died on 2 March 1792 at Lillyput, a house which he had built near Belfast, and was buried at night by torch-light, in the churchyard at the foot of High Street, the graves in which have all long since been levelled. Manson married a Miss Lynn of Ballycastle, but had no children. An oil-painting of him hangs in the board-room of the Royal Academical Institution, Belfast.
[Ulster Biog. Sketches, 2nd ser. by Classon Porter; Belfast Newsletter, 1755, 1760, 1768; Benn's History of Belfast.]
