A Brief Description and Historical Notices of the Island of Jersey

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER THE THIRD. Military 1 HE military command in Jersey is invested in the Governor and his appointment proceeds from the King. During the ages in which the Island was under the sovereignty of the earlier kings of France, the governors were called Comites, or Counts; the lapse of two hundred years seems to have altered the title, and changed it to that of Dux or Duke, which was bestowed upon Amwarith who bore the chief authority under Charlemagne. When Jersey and the neighbouring Islands were connected with Normandy, under the Dukedom of Rollo, they were usually subject to the command of one governor, who held them as Bailly, Warden, or Keeper, and occasionally under other denominations. And we are informed by Selden, in his Mare Clausum, that an ancient manuscript records their having been, in the reign of Henry the sixth, possessed, together with the Isle of Wight, by the Earl of Warwick, as king of the Islands. This united command continued until the reign of Henry the Seventh, when Jersey received a separate Governor, who was then, and subsequently, stiled Captain; but an order in Council in the year 1618 definitively fixed the appellation which is now retained. The patents of appointment have sometimes specified the tenure as being merely daring the pleasure of the king; the government has at other times been granted for as long as the possessor should conduct himself well; it has also been conferred for life; and occasionally two persons have been jointly invested with this authority. The governor now receives, as the emolument of his situation, the whole of the revenue derived from the insular domain of the crown; paying out of it a few small salaries to tome of the civil officers, and to those he appoints as his receivers. This revenue was formerly ...