Five years later, at Lord Derby's urging, Wilson accepted promotion to the vacant bishopric of Sodor and Man.

His personal piety expressed itself in energetic charitable activity and he often intervened to shield his flock from the demands of the state authorities.

The influence of Archdeacon Michael Heweton (died 1709), a prebendary of St Patrick's Cathedral,[3] turned his thoughts from medicine to the church.

[3] He left Ireland on 10 February 1687 to become curate to his uncle Sherlock in the chapelry of Newchurch Kenyon at the parish of Winwick.

He was ordained priest by Nicholas Stratford on 20 October 1689 and remained in charge of Newchurch with a salary of £30 until the end of August 1692.

[2] Wilson gave up his parish duties to concentrate on the education of the Earl's heir apparent, continuing in that role for five years.

Stowall suggests that Wilson became more highly valued by the 9th Earl after giving him strong counsel against his indebtedness and reminding him of the potential for financial crisis arising out of any change in government.

[3] In June 1693 he was offered by Lord Derby the valuable rectory of Badsworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, but refused it, having made a resolution against non-residence.

[3] On 27 November 1696 Lord Derby offered him the bishopric of Sodor and Man, vacant since the death of Baptist Levinz, and insisted on his taking it.

[3] The background to the insistent offer was a complaint made to William III by the Archbishop of York, John Sharp about the length of the vacancy; the previous and largely absentee incumbent Baptist Levinz had died in 1693.

[2] He had been on the Island for less than two months when he had before him the petition of Christopher Hampton of Kirk Braddan, whose wife had been condemned to seven years' penal servitude for lamb stealing, and who asked the bishop's licence for a second marriage in consideration of his "motherless children."

[2] A public library was established by Wilson at Castletown in 1706 and, from that year, by help of the trustees of the "academic fund" and by benefactions from Lady Elizabeth.

[2] Wilson was centrally involved in another needed improvement to the Island other than the construction of libraries and chapels and the dissemination of contemporary farming methods.

Land tenure issues were a major source of instability for tenants on the Island, which had not yet made a clean break from more ancient feudal traditions.

The act provided tenants with rights to sell and pass on their land, subject only to continued fixed rents and alienation fees being paid to the Stanley family.

Without attempting to disturb these, with the single exception of abolishing commutation of penance by fine, Wilson drew a set of ten Ecclesiastical Constitutions which were subscribed by the clergy in a convocation at Bishopscourt on 3 February 1704 and ratified by the governor of the Isle of Man and council the next day.

[2] Improved discipline worked smoothly till 1718, when it came into collision with the Earl's civil authorities, owing in part to the reduction of revenue through Wilson's practice of mitigating fines in the spiritual court.

On his declining, George I promised to meet his expenses from the privy purse, a pledge which the king's death left unfulfilled.

Wilson issued a pastoral letter to his clergy, bidding them excommunicate the "agents and abettors" of "such-like blasphemous books".

Lord Derby now claimed, on 5 October 1725, that the act of Henry VIII, placing Man in the province of York, abrogated all insular laws in matters spiritual.

The immediate result was that Horton refused to carry out a recent decision of the House of Keys, granting soldiers to execute orders of the ecclesiastical court.

[2] On 1 February 1736 the tenth Lord Derby died and the lordship of Man passed to James Murray, 2nd Duke of Atholl.

The intricate suit about impropriations (to all of which Atholl had a legal claim) jeopardised for a time the temporalities of the church, and was not settled till 7 July 1757 after Wilson's death.

In 1737, with the aid of Sir Joseph Jekyll, Wilson and his son were able to recover certain deeds securing to the clergy an equivalent for their tithe.

The extreme difficulty of obtaining suitable candidates for the miserably poor paying benefices led Wilson to get leave from the archbishop of York to ordain before the canonical age.

The vacant and somewhat shadowy office was tendered to Wilson, with liberty to employ his son as substitute, Zinzendorf sending him a seal-ring.

He had a strong objection, mentioned in his will, to interments within churches, and was buried (11 March) at the east end of Kirk Michael churchyard, where a square marble monument marks his grave.

[2] Wilson acted with the single aim of the moral and religious improvement of his people was recognised by them, and his strictness, joined with his self-denying charities, drew to him the affectionate veneration of those to whom he dedicated his work.

To the extent that any controversy arises, as a later biographer remarks, it is "centred on his championing of ecclesiastical supervision of individual and family life, a function that was increasingly questioned in the eighteenth century".

[3] A century after he lived, he was described by John Henry Newman as being "a burning and shining light", and several of his writings were republished in Tracts for the Times.