Thomas Wilson's grave is at the east end of St. Michael and All Angels churchyard in the village of Kirk Michael. The grave is topped by a simple rectangular monument of black marble, possibly from the quarry at Poolvash near Castletown. The monument is is inscribed as follows:
THIS MONUMENT WAS ERECTED BY HIS SON
THOMAS WILLSON D.D. A NATIVE OF THIS PARISH
WHO IN OBEDIENCE TO THE EXPRESS COMMANDS OF
HIS WORTHY FATHER DECLINES GIVING HIM
THE CHARACTER HE SO JUSTLY DESERVED
LET THIS ISLAND SPEAK THE REST
and
SLEEPING IN JESUS
HERE LYETH THE BODY OF
THOMAS WILSON D.D.
LORD BISHOP OF THIS ISLE
WHO DIED MARCH THE 7TH 1755 AGED 93
AND IN THE 58TH YEAR OF HIS CONSECRATION
Wilson sent a quantity of Poolvash black marble to the Dean and Chapter of St. Pual's in London and it ithis stone which was used for the steps up to the two main doorways of that Cathedral.
Thomas Wilson was first and foremost a Church and Educational Reformer but he was also an Historian and wrote a History of the Isle of Man' which was published in Gifson's (2nd) edit. of Camden's Britannia, 1722. fol.vol.ii.
"The author of the ‘Christian Year,’ Keble in his ‘Life of Bishop Wilson,’ states that ‘Since the days of St. Brandon more than sixty Bishops in succession have occupied the see of the Isle of Man. Of that long list no name stands forth more prominently than that of Thomas Wilson’ and that ‘if simplicity and pathetic earnestness and watchful sympathy will all men, tempered by an unfailing vein of practical common sense, do yet in any degree characterise the teaching and devotion – especially the household devotion – of our clergy and laity; if veneration for the Universal Church and unreserved faith in the Bible do yet in any degree prevail in our popular theology – to Bishop Wilson more than to any single divine of later days, with the single exception of his great contemporary, Bishop Butler, are these good effects owing.’"
And the preface to the 1838 edition of Sacra Privata (one of the literary works of Thomas Wilson, first published posthumously in 1781), John Henry Newman writes of Wilson as follows:
“A burning and shining light was Bishop Wilson; he seemed like the Baptist in an evil time, as if a beacon lighted on his small island to show what his Lord and Saviour could do in spite of man; how when a nation had fallen into the enemies’ hands he could preach to it even off its own shares, and be nigh at hand when they would fain leave him not so much as to set his foot on. The English soil, indeed, had its own witnesses and teachers at the time, but none at once so exalted in station and so saintly in character, so active and so tried in his lifetime, and so influential in his works, as Bishop Wilson.”
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