CHAPTER XV.

LATER HISTORY, FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST TO THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WARS.

FOR the reign of the Conqueror and the three which succeeded it, we may say, in a rough way, that the allegiance of the Islands alternated; being English under William the First, Norman under Rufus, English under Henry the First, and Norman again under Stephen. This was because the conflicts between the duchy and the kingdom still went on. The Norman barons who had failed to find large estates in England, who were not prepared to Anglicize themselves, who possibly may have looked upon England as the English of Henry the Second's time looked upon Ireland (i.e. as a rude country and an uncertain possession), held, that on the demise of the father, the duchy

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and the kingdom were separate, and that the former went to the eldest son, the chivalrous but impolitic Robert. Upon this they acted, and, until Robert, after the death of Rufus, was defeated by his surviving brother, Henry I., at Tinchebray, it was with the duchy that the islands went. But the field of Tinchebray, followed by the abandonment on the part of Robert of his rights with his captivity and absolute dependence on the King of England made them English. Then came the reign of Stephen, with his equivocal title: a title which held better in Normandy than in England, and made the islands during his reign, Norman. They could have been no losers by this; inasmuch as Stephen's reign gave us, in England, the maximum of either mis-government or anarchy.

With Henry II., the allegiance reverted to its original courseoriginal, at least, so far as the battle of Hastings was its origin; and the sovereign of the islands was, as the successor of William I. and Henry I., King of England and Duke of Normandy besides. He was also Duke of Guienne, or Aquitania; and this domain, combined with that of Normandy, made him a greater power in France than the French king himself. It also kept up the importance of the Channel Islands, even after the loss of Normandy.

Under a king like Richard I., who, out of his eleven years of rule, passed less than as many months in England, little is to be found in even the chronicles of London and York, much less in those of St. Helier's and St. Peter's Port.

But, with John, an important era begins. The key to John's prominence in island history lies in the chronic state of hostility which lay between him and Philip Augustus. It lies, too, in the fact of its being in his reign that, over and above the division between England and Normandy, Normandy was divided against itself. There was the Normandy of the Seine and there was the Normandy of the open sea. There was the Normandy of Rouen and the Normandy of St. Peter's and St. Helier's. There was the

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agricultural Normandy and there was the maritime Normandy. There was, to use a classical term of distinction, the Normandy of the Perea and the Normandy of the Islands. There were the relations of the continent to Venice and the relations of Venice to the continent. And the difference was real. In the reign of King John, the history of the two divisions separates itself into two parts, even as, in the seventh century, the history of Venice separates itself from that of the opposite coast of Italy. Continental Normandy was reduced by Philip Augustus. Insular Normandy was retained by John. The former took the first step in the way towards becoming French; the latter, the first towards becoming English. Whatever John did in the way of evil, he, at least (unless we choose to say that the islands held him), held the islands for England.

No one can have attended to the tendencies of the modern school of what is called history-too often the narrative of events which never happened-without having a certain conviction that, before many years are over, some eloquent expositor of some hitherto unknown records will do for John what has been done for Henry VIII. and others; i.e., will (to use a coarse expression) whitewash him. There will be an error of fame; and the barons who won Magna Charta will be the villains of the transaction. John will (after Henry) be the greatest king who has ruled over England; and the facts of his having given a Lord Mayor to London and a constitution to Guernsey will make him the founder of the municipal liberties of Great Britain. Such a history will, doubtless, be written; and it ought to be written in the Islands. To insular Normandy the Constitution of John is simply what the Magna Charta is in England; save and except that, instead of being extorted from the sovereign, it was given by him.

Of this insular Magna Charta, however, there is no original deed. To what there is, there is no seal. It bears the name of John in its heading only. Like Melchisedec, it has neither father

nor mother. There is a copy, which seems to have come of itself; a copy which delivers a series of clauses of a miscellaneous character. It has many elements of suspicion against it as an original document, and it is by native writers that they have been pointed out. A critical investigation of its claim to authenticity by Mr. Haviland, is the basis of the present remarks; so that it is not from the quiver of a stranger that the arrows are shot. However, the facts in the adverse criticism have been verified, and they are unfavourable to the authenticity of the document. The credit, however, on John's side, remains the same. Though the Constitution of King John in Guernsey, may be embodied in only a secondary record, it represents something; just like the apocryphal laws of Edward the Confessor in England. His reign, too, is an epoch. It represents the division between the two Normandies.

We may separate, then, the history of the document from the history of the islands and the history of the constitution: remembering that, whatever else happened, there happened in the reign of John the division of Normandy against itself. One of the unequivocal facts connected with this period is the absolute cessation of the Judges-in-Eyre of Normandy visiting the island for the administration of the laws of the duchy. The old practice was for two knights, resident in the island, to administer ordinary justice, but, at stated periods, to be assisted, superseded, or overruled by two visitant judges from Normandy. The function of these latter was now superseded by that of resident jurats. What else belongs to the constitution of John will be noticed in the sequel.

Still, the link that bound the islands to Normandy was not wholly severed even during the reign of John. One strong bond of union still remained; so strong, that it was the end of the sixteenth century before it wholly disappeared. This was the connexion between the islands and the diocese of Coutances. The clergy seem to have been pre-eminently continental in

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respect to their politics and feelings, and the canon of Blancheland was one of the first who suffered for being so. He went over to the enemy, and his tithes and revenues were seized and applied to general purposes (especially the defence of the island); with the exception of a fraction, which was reserved as an endowment for the dean. Edward III. appropriated the temporal right of the priory of Mount St. Michael, and presented William de Caillard to the curacy of our Lady of St. Mary of the Castle, from which the Bishop of Coutances himself ejected him, and inducted John Viquet, a Norman. The king, upon this, ejected the Norman: nor was he the first of his name who had done the like. A similar act had been done in Jersey by his grandfather.

If the king failed to fill up a vacancy within six months, the bishop appointed; but this was, in practice, only under sufferance. When a Robert Lyset was nominated to the rectory of St. Peter's, the bishop refused to induct him on the plea that the presentation on the part of the king was made after it had lapsed. Upon this, the king sent a peremptory order commanding him to either induct his nominee or forfeit his temporalities within the islands. In one, and perhaps more than one, instance the pope himself appointed.

The real authority of the bishop was exercised by a surrogate, who united the functions of dean, archdeacon, and chancellor. The priors formed another disaffected body of ecclesiastics. How much property belonging to the religious establishments of the island lay in Normandy is unknown. It is only certain that a great deal of the property in the island was appropriated to religious establishments in Normandy. This carried with it the residence in the islands of a large body of aliens. Disaffected throughout, they were finally banished by Henry V., on the plea of their being little better than spies and traitors. degrees, then, rather than by any sudden snap that ccclesiastic was unloosed.

It was by

the bond