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The Jersey Law Review – October 2005

The origins of Guernsey’s parishes and the ownership and maintenance of their ancient church buildings

Darryl Ogier

1       I was recently invited to speculate on the challenging subjects supplying this article’s title.[1] If the outcome does not display the highest academic polish (for example I have been unable to spend time at the National Archives, Kew),[2] the opinion still perhaps deserves circulation at this time, whilst the question of the upkeep of Guernsey’s ancient parish churches remains a live issue, and also in order to stimulate further and fuller research, in respect of all the Channel Islands.

The manorial context [3]

2       In or before the period when Robert I was duke of Normandy (1027-35), the ducal domain in Guernsey was split into two. The easternmost fief, roughly covering the area of the modern parishes of St Andrew, St Martin, St Sampson, Forest, Torteval, and St Peter Port, was enjoyed by Nigel I, vicomte of the Cotentin, although the duke retained certain interests in the land, including melage, a grain tax. The vicomtes of the Cotentin made grants out of their Guernsey fief, including cessions to individuals of shares in the tithes of the churches, and also to the college of canons (later monastery) of St Sauveur le Vicomte. (It is important to state at the outset that for members of the laity to own rights to tithes and other church property, including church buildings, was by no means unusual in this period).

3       In 1047, Nigel II, vicomte of the Cotentin, rebelled against the duke, and his Guernsey possessions, amongst others, were confiscated. Out of these, Duke William II (the Conqueror), at a date between c. 1052 and 1058, granted to the abbey of St Martin de Marmoutier (Touraine) the church of St Peter Port, and all that appertained to it, as also the churches of St Andrew, St Martin, St Sampson, Forest, and Torteval, together with the tithes of crops and animals of all. The charter effecting this also provided that the priests of the churches should be subject to the abbot of Marmoutier, and that upon the death or removal of any incumbent, the abbot should have the right to select a successor (i.e. the abbot was given the advowsons of the churches). To this the duke added the tithe of four ploughlands from his own demesne in Guernsey, and a hospes and its revenue, to lodge a monk appointed to oversee the abbot’s interests in the island.[4]

4       At about the same time – we may suppose with little option – Nigel II, the dispossessed vicomte of the Cotentin, confirmed the duke’s grants, save only with regard to gifts he had already made to the canons of St Sauveur le Vicomte. These previous grants he undertook to seek to extinguish. Two charters record Nigel II receiving a countergift of forty and/or thirty-five pounds from the abbey.[5] Following Nigel II’s return to favour, he again, c. 1060, confirmed the duke’s grant, on this occasion more fully, indemnifying Marmoutier in respect of claims by him or his family in connection with the six churches, and also the claims of those persons already holding from him shares in the churches’ tithes. These latter – ten named men and the canons of St Sauveur le Vicomte – Nigel undertook to compensate. He received thirty pounds from the monks of Marmoutier.[6]

5       Between 1073 and 1077, Nigel III confirmed what he stated to be his father’s gift of the six churches to Marmoutier. In acknowledgement he received from the abbey what was called ‘the benefit of the house’ and a satisfactorily good carpet. Duke William II (by now also King William I of England) was present at the completion of this charter, and witnessed it.[7] Henry I in the period 1113-35 similarly confirmed to Marmoutier what he said were the gifts of his father (King William I), namely St Peter Port church, and the mill in its church yard, and the five other churches.[8]

6       Parts of the lay fief had been granted to client families of the Cotentin, and French religious establishments, but the major part remained in the hands of the de Saint Sauveur family until the death without issue of Roger II de Saint Sauveur in late 1137 or early 1138.[9] He died a partisan of Stephen of Blois, and Geoffrey of Anjou was able to seize his fief (as indeed all of Guernsey) after Geoffrey’s conquest of Normandy in 1144.[10] The fief remained in the possession of successive dukes, becoming, as it remains, part of what was to be known as the Fief le Roi. (Henry II of England, under whom Normandy and England were reunited, was the son of Geoffrey of Anjou).

7       On the whole, the abbey of Marmoutier retained possession of the grants made to it in the eleventh century, and certainly remained the patron of the churches (except, in later years, St Martin).[11] How effective the eleventh-century attempts had been to divert the right to receive tithes to the abbey is a matter for speculation: a mid thirteenth-century register records that the abbot of Marmoutier and the rectors that he appointed received only portions of the tithes, varying from parish to parish.[12]

8       To turn to the westernmost of the two fiefs into which Guernsey was divided in the early eleventh century, this had been enjoyed by Anschetil, vicomte of the Bessin. This fief also came to be forfeited, for reasons that are lost, and Duke Robert I granted it, together with the melage and whatever else he had retained for himself from the eastern fief to the abbey of Mont St Michel.[13] This grant did not mention tithes or suggest the presence of parochial organisation, but the existence of such things at or very soon after the making of it may be inferred from a further grant, made by Suppo, abbot of Mont St Michel (1033-48), to Hugh, Bishop of Avranches (1028-60), for his lifetime, of the tithes of half of Guernsey, the church revenues, and a carucate of land there, probably at Pleinmont.[14] Soon after that grant, however – certainly at a date before 1048 – Duke William II restored the western fief, apparently including its ecclesiastical interests, to Ranulf, son of Anschetil, vicomte of the Bessin, and compensated Mont St Michel with the islands of Sark and Alderney.[15]

9       Matters were to become more complicated with regard to the western, Bessin, fief in the following century, when after having been taken from Mont St Michel and restored to the vicomtes of the Bessin, it devolved to Ranulf le Meschin, son of Ranulf I, earl of Chester, who died c. 1129 and was succeeded by his son Ranulf III ‘de Gernon’.[16] Parts of the fief had been subdivided amongst client families of the Bessin,[17] and further, major, alterations took place during the period of the mid twelfth-century occupation of the whole of Guernsey by Geoffrey of Anjou. As stated above, Geoffrey was able to take the Cotentin fief because its lord had been a supporter of Stephen, and he was also able to occupy the Bessin fief (which being retained by the earls of Chester had acquired the name of ‘Fief le Comte’), even though in that case before his death in 1153, Ranulf de Gernon had vacillated, not without military success, between the parties of Stephen and Geoffrey of Anjou.[18]

10     The areas that respectively came to be the Fief St Michel (enjoyed by the abbey of Mont St Michel until the later Middle Ages), and a lessened Fief le Comte and its dependencies (enjoyed by private seigneurs to this day), may both have been carved from the occupied western (Bessin/le Comte) fief in the mid twelfth century. Whether the Fief St Michel may have been split from the Bessin/le Comte fief directly at this time, or whether the abbey may have enjoyed the whole of the Bessin/le Comte fief for a period after its confiscation by Geoffrey of Anjou, only for the monks subsequently to lose again the territory that was to become the modern Fief le Comte and its dependencies, is unclear. Another hypothesis, advanced by AH Ewen, is that the Fief St Michel was created from areas of waste that apparently were not included in the Bessin/le Comte fief, and that this enfeoffment was the one that was mentioned in 1248 as having been carried out at the direction of Ralph de Valemont in the reign of Henry II (1154-89).[19] Whatever the case, Mont St Michel had clearly emerged by the later twelfth century as possessor of a significant fief, amounting to some quarter of the island, and as patron of the parish churches of St Michel du Valle, Ste Marie du Castel, St Saviour, and St Pierre du Bois.

The Parishes

11     As with the island’s early manorial history, aspects of the chronology and causes of the creation of Guernsey’s parishes admit to different explanations. With the coming of christianity, communities constructed churches and chapels, usually amidst the fields where they lived and worked. In an article of 1959,[20] Ewen noted a reference to the Diocese of Coutances (Constantia) of the year 511, and suggested that Christianity had reached the coasts of Normandy ‘probably in the latter half of the fifth century’, and that-

“The probability of this date is further strengthened by the names borne by the parishes in Jersey and Guernsey, as has been emphasised by M. Georges de Manteyer in his paper on Les Origines Chrétiennes (Gap 1924). Here it is pointed out that the rapid expansion of the Church and the constant establishment of new centres of Christian worship during the fifth century induced the Papacy to formulate certain principles for the method of dedicating new churches, and Pope Hilary, who occupied the papal throne from 461- 468 A.D., urged that new churches should be dedicated to the Saviour; John, His precursor; Mary, His mother; Peter, His apostle; or Lawrence, the Deacon. Now the map of Jersey shows that these names are borne by a group of five adjoining parishes in the central and most accessible part of the Island, the area most likely to have been the first to be organised as part of the Christian Church. The coincidence of these five names all concentrated in a single area suggests that these parishes may well have received their names about this period, say 475 A.D., a date in good agreement with the presumed date for the establishment of the Bishopric of Constantia, of whose diocese these parishes would have formed a part, as they did in historical times.”

12     Ewen reports that Manteyer traced coastal occurrences of these dedications between Bordeaux and Cherbourg, indicating the progress of missionary activity.[21] He goes on to note that Guernsey’s ‘three western parishes all bear names which are included in Pope Hilary’s formula, namely St. Saviour’s, St. Peter’s, and St. Mary’s (the Câtel)’, suggesting that these ‘as was the case with the five Jersey Parishes already mentioned, were probably the first part of the Island to be organised as Christian communities’,[22] at ‘about the sixth century A.D.’,[23] although the ‘fixing of actual boundaries between the Parishes would not arise until the question of tithes on the agricultural lands extended to the full extent of the Parish: in earlier times the tithe would be payable only on the arable areas, which were surrounded by areas of waste-land which was often shared between the two Parishes’.[24]

13     In a later article, of 1982, Ewen revised his ideas, asserting that Pope Hilary (who Manteyer calls ‘Hilaire’, and we shall call ‘Hilarus’)[25] in fact ‘issued a letter advising that henceforth all Church dedications should be confined to the Saviour, John His Precursor, Mary His Mother, Peter His Apostle, and Lawrence His Deacon’, and conceding that whilst five contiguous Jersey parishes indeed bear such dedications, and whilst ‘the first four of the dedications proposed by Pope Hilary might have been made at any period, the inclusion of St Laurence in the group strongly suggests that the Jersey group of dedications were made in accordance with the Pope’s recommendations, and justifies the inference that they date from the latter half of the Fifth century’. That ‘Guernsey shows three of the dedications on Pope Hilary’s list’, probably also indicates a fifth-century foundation.[26] Such ideas have not been without influence, and Ewen’s references to Hilarus’ alleged directive, characterised in 1982 as being set out in a letter, have in recent years been drawn upon to argue for an early medieval arrangement of parishes, where the pope’s formula has been referred to as an ‘edict’,[27] and in another work as a ‘ruling’, restricting dedications to those five named in ‘a papal edict’, amounting a ‘Hilary quintet’.[28]

14     The germ of this nascent orthodoxy is not a primary manuscript source – there is none known – but Manteyer’s article. The full title of his book-length study, published at Gap in 1924, is ‘Les Origines Chrétiennes de la deuxième Narbonnaise, des Alpes-Maritimes et de la Viennoise’.[29] In it, the author notes that the diocese of Gap (Hautes Alpes) is remarkable for the number of its ecclesiastical dedications to the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, St Peter, St Laurence, Our Saviour, and St Stephen.[30] These choices, he argues, were considerably influenced by the cults predominating in Rome during the pontificat of Sixtus III (432-440),[31] namely of those names just mentioned, with the exception of St Stephen, and that their cults were introduced in the Alpes Maritimes area through the activities of the monastery of Lérins. Pope Hilarus (461-68) later developed the cult of St Stephen at Rome, associating the name of that saint with those promoted by Sixtus, especially that of the Saviour, and this in turn influenced Leontius, Bishop of Arles (461-75), and Gaulish fashions in church dedications. Pope Simplicius (468-83) took up the cult of St Stephen, but in contrast to the preference of his predecessor, tended not to associate Stephen’s name with that of the Saviour, or directly with other saints. Bishop Caesarius of Arles (503-42), one-time monk at Lérins, in his turn imitated Pope Simplicius in his promotion of St Stephen, a fact that is similarly traceable in the pattern of the church dedications of southeastern Gaul.[32]

15     Therefore, according to Manteyer, it was the promotion of the cults of the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, St Peter, St Laurence, and Our Saviour by Pope Sixtus III in the 430s and ‘40s, and not Pope Hilarus, that first popularised dedications to them. Hilarus, in the 460s, favoured St Stephen besides those promoted by Sixtus, and Pope Simplicius, in the 460s-480s, continued the development of Stephen’s cult. Manteyer suggested that these Roman fashions influenced dedications in south-east Gaul by example and by the promotion of local ecclesiastics, although nowhere does he posit the existence that has been inferred by Channel Island authors of any papal list, letter, recommendation, ruling, or edict, on the subject, whether issued by Hilarus or anyone else.

16     Nowhere either does Manteyer’s 1924 study trace coastal occurrences of these dedications between Bordeaux and Cherbourg indicating the progress of missionary activity, as Ewen’s article of 1959 says that it does. Such activity is however argued for in another article by Manteyer, of 1927, entitled ‘Les Origines Chrétiennes: Lérins et Jersey, bases insulaires des Gaules au V^e siècle’.[33] Here the author states his intention to investigate the possible occurrence of the dedications favoured in south-east Gaul, promoted by Lérins, in coastal island groups resembling that where the monastery is located. This he does, in respect of islands of the Mediterranean basin, the Atlantic coast, the Loire, the Breton peninsula, and Normandy, extending to the Channel Islands, finding indications of the influence of the formulae of Sixtus III, Hilarus, and Simplicius at these locations, and noting the dedications to St Peter and St Saviour in Guernsey, and the suggestive block of five in Jersey, attributing the latter to the possible influence of Faustus, third abbot of Lérins, at the time of his exile, 477-85.[34]

17     Yet there must be many areas that have adjacent parishes with the like dedications, merely by coincidence,[35] some of those neighbours differing greatly in date of foundation. The various Roman cults undoubtedly influenced dedications throughout Christian Europe, and the saints they celebrated were truly popular, but such influence and popularity were hardly restricted to the fifth century, or even the early Medieval period, still less can their selection have been solely a consequence of the evangelistic efforts of the monks of Lérins. Dedications to Our Saviour, his precursor, his mother, St Peter, and the Proto-martyr Stephen, once established, were perhaps obvious choices. Of St Laurence, a saint commemorated by no fewer than five early basilicas at Rome, and named by Ewen in 1982 in evidence of a fifth-century organisation of five of Jersey’s parishes, it should be observed that his feast was marked in the later Middle Ages at Coutances, Rouen, and Rennes cathedrals,[36] amongst other places, and that – though detailed figures for France are not to hand – in Pre-Reformation England, there were some 228 dedications to the saint.[37] Laurence, then, was a popular figure, and no fifth-century south-east Gaulish cult need be inferred to account for his Medieval ubiquity, or his selection as patron of a Jersey parish.

18     Ewen went on in his article of 1959 to observe that the dedications of the churches of the south-eastern parishes of Guernsey (Torteval, properly dedicated to St Mary, Forest, properly dedicated to the Trinity, St Andrew, St Peter Port, and St Martin) may indicate evangelisation by Marmoutier in the early Middle Ages, and that ‘the later [eleventh-century] grant of those parishes to the abbey of Marmoutier may well have been a resumption of a previously established link’.[38] There appears little reason to adduce an early medieval foundation of the churches of Torteval, Forest, St Andrew, St Peter Port, and St Martin from Marmoutier, other than for the reason that – together with St Sampson – these churches came into that abbey’s possession in the eleventh century. This argument is particularly difficult to sustain with regard to the Forest parish, which was anciently and properly dedicated to the Trinity, and Ewen does in fact concede that ‘dedications to the Trinity usually indicate a rather late date of consecration’.[39] These, at least in England, were characteristic of the tenth and eleventh centuries.[40]

19     None of this is to say that some of Guernsey’s church dedications – and maybe certain others, of chapels – definitely were not early medieval, but this should not be taken to be indicative of evangelisation from south-east Gaul, or of the payment of tithes, or anything else necessitating the organisation of ecclesiastical parishes, which is the concern here. Whilst tithes were established in Gaul, at least in the south, in the fifth century, they were far from universally paid, and when so, appear to have been applied to the succour of the poor.[41] The end of that century, and the early sixth, saw a period of innovation and change, with a tendency to payment becoming a legal obligation, with the departure by a direction of the second Council of Mâcon of 585, that tithes should be employed in the relief of the sick, the ransom of captives, and the maintenance of the clergy, and that defaulters should face excommunication, so changing a moral obligation to a legal one.[42] Nonetheless, payment appears to have remained haphazard, and it was only in the eighth century that Pepin the Short and Charlemagne, not least by example, appear to have developed an ethos of obligation.[43] The latter, in 787, introduced a procedure for enforcement, though it is questionable how effective this was.[44] Even when they were paid, bishops often came to divert some tithes to their own uses, and monasteries kept the tithes of their own territories, to the detriment of churches. This was exacerbated in the tenth and eleventh centuries, when the Church came under lay control, and secular magnates enjoyed its revenues. This was also the period of the foundation of many churches by lay people, and as they did this, they impropriated the tithes to their own uses, allowing their appointees, the priests, only a share.[45] It was only the coming of the reform movement in the eleventh century, coinciding with the heyday of the development of the parish system, that led to the gift of the lay-controlled ‘proprietary’ churches to religious houses and the assignment of the impropriated tithes to them,[46] and it was not until the time of the Third Lateran Council, of 1179, that the conveyance of tithes between private persons was declared to be illegal, and the beneficiaries of such transactions enjoined to transfer rights to receipt to the Church.[47]

20     We see something of these phenomena in Guernsey. The parishes of the Cotentin fief (St Andrew, St Martin, St Sampson, Forest, Torteval, and St Peter Port) may have been founded by the de St Sauveur family, as indicated by the family’s disposal of tithes to the canons of St Sauveur le Vicomte and private individuals in the early eleventh century, and the confirmations of the gift by Duke William II of churches that had previously belonged to the family. Ewen noted that Guernsey’s parish boundaries usually extend only as far as the boundary between the Cotentin and Bessin fiefs, and adduced that the parishes predated the fiefs, delimiting the early eleventh-century manorial grants.[48] The opposite is more likely: that the parish boundaries were confined by the boundary between the fiefs, and the Cotentin parishes were created within the bounds of that fief, in connection with the occupation of their Guernsey lands by the de St Sauveur seigneurs. This would date the foundation of the parishes of the Cotentin fief to between the grant to the de St Sauveurs, apparently in the 1020s or ‘30s, and the known existence of their churches, as evidenced by Duke William’s charter of c. 1052-58.

21     As already shown, for a few years in the mid eleventh century the abbey of Mont St Michel possessed the church revenues and tithes of half of Guernsey and, from the later Middle Ages, there is evidence that it owned the lands of the Fief St Michel, the advowsons of the parish churches of St Michel du Valle, Ste Marie du Castel, St Saviour, and St Pierre du Bois, and also the great tithes of all those parishes (except part of those of St Pierre du Bois).[49] A papal bull of 1150 had imprecisely confirmed to the abbey ‘whatever you own in the island called Guernsey’,[50] and the year 1156 saw not only the visit of its abbot to the Channel Islands, but also a detailed confirmation by Pope Adrian IV of Mont St Michel’s possessions there, including ‘... in insula Guernereii quartam partem; in eadem insula ecclesiam Sancti Salvatoris, ecclesiam Sancte Marie de Castro, ecclesiam Sancti Michaelis de Wal, ecclesiam Sancti Petri de Bosco, ecclesiam Sancte Marie de Lishou, capellam Sancti Maglorii et capellam Sancti Georgii …’ (… in the island of Guernsey, the fourth part; in the same island the church of St Saviour, the church of Ste Marie du Castel, the church of St Michel du Valle, the church of St Pierre du Bois, the church [sic] of Ste Marie de Lihou, the chapel of St Magloire, and the chapel of St George …).[51] The western parishes as we know them were called by these names in the mid twelfth century, having very likely – given the earlier interests of Mont St Michel and the analogy of the Cotentin fief – been founded a little more than a century before, within the boundaries of the Bessin fief, possibly by the vicomtes of the Bessin, or possibly by the abbey itself.

22     The evidence therefore points to the establishment in the early eleventh century of Guernsey’s parishes, paying tithes, and generally bounded by the limits of the two fiefs into which Guernsey was divided at that time. This is a conclusion that accords well with the absorption of the island in the same period into the expanding administrative and manorial structures of the Norman duchy, and also with the European trend for the foundation of parishes and the yielding of a share of their revenues to religious needs.

Shared obligations

23     Once parish boundaries were broadly demarcated and their churches established within the Norman ecclesiastical regime, it was necessary to provide for their management and funding. This was a matter both for patrons and parishioners. A parish has been defined as an area with (i) a community of the faithful, (ii) a particular priest to serve it, (iii) some definition of the reciprocal rights and duties of each, and (iv) a suitable church building, suitably equipped for religious life.[52] That by the high Middle Ages communities existed in Guernsey need not be documented, and we have seen that Mont St Michel and Marmoutier (though the latter was to lose out with regard to St Martin) held the advowsons of the parish churches, probably until, as we shall see, the late fourteenth century, so (without recourse to further sources, though these do exist) indicating the presence of priests appointed to the parishes. Church buildings, churchyards, and rectories or vicarages existed, in one form or another, and passing references to equipment indicate that churches must have had as much, indeed they could not have functioned without, for example, fonts and altars. It is the reciprocal rights and duties of the churches’ patrons and parishioners, particularly with regard to the fabric, that need to be explored here.

24     By the thirteenth century it was established in England that the owners of the great tithes were usually responsible for the upkeep of parish church chancels, and the parishioners for the nave, cemetery etc. Churchwardens appear there about the same time.[53] In Medieval Normandy, though, it was quite common for the whole cost to fall on parishioners, or an agreement to be made as to the respective proportions to be paid by them and the patron,[54] and there are fourteenth-century examples providing evidence that similar arrangements had been made in Guernsey.

25     The justices of the assize visiting Guernsey in 1304 heard of the abbot of Marmoutier’s obligations in Guernsey, when representatives of the parishes of St Peter Port, the Forest, St Andrew, St Sampson, Torteval, and St Martin brought to their attention Marmoutier’s liability to contribute one-third of the costs of repairing their churches and replacing other things such as books and vestments within them, on account (the islanders said) of the abbot’s receiving rents and enjoying lands in the parishes. These repairs and replacements had become necessary following the depredations of the French in time of war.[55] (A petition of a few years earlier describes these damages as including the destruction of pyxes, and that images had been thrown down, and chalices stolen).[56] The abbot did not appear before the justices, and Marmoutier’s holdings were taken into the king’s hand pending satisfaction. Doubtless some composition with the Crown was reached, although the allegation was repeated in respect of the churches of St Martin and St Sampson before the justices itinerant who held assizes in Guernsey in 1309, with the representatives of the latter parish claiming that the abbot of Marmoutier, ‘by reason of the tithes that he takes in their parish ought and was wont to maintain … [the manuscript is damaged] part the ornaments of the church and to repair them as often as it was necessary and now for twelve years [?he has not] …’. The justices therefore directed that the abbot should be amerced and required him to do repairs and maintenance in future.[57]

26     The remainder of Guernsey’s churches, namely the four under the patronage of Mont St Michel, were seemingly subject to similar arrangements, and although detailed evidence survives in respect of only two of them, in 1359 it was recorded that the abbey’s daughter house, the priory of St Michel du Valle, expended some twenty-five livres tournois a year on the upkeep of the buildings of the churches, the abbey’s mills in the island, and of the priory itself.[58] In the 1360s, legal proceedings arose between the parishioners of St Michel du Valle and the prior, on the subject of repairs to the parish church. The parishioners, represented by their treasurer (thesaurarius) asserted that the prior should annually attend in the parish church with the parishioners to hear the treasurer present his and the trésor’s accounts, and, if there was necessity, the prior on behalf of the abbey should then pay one-third of the cost of repairs, books, vestments, lights, and so on. The prior said he owed nothing. On 24 December 1368, an agreement was formalised whereby in lieu of this obligation, the prior on behalf of the abbey agreed to pay an annual rente of three quarters of wheat, or to buy an equivalent rente from a third party for the parish’s enjoyment, in order to be quit of all claims.[59] The agreement was confirmed by the chapter of the abbey by a letter of 18 February 1369. The same letter confirmed a similar composition reached between the prior and the parishioners of Ste Marie du Castel, whereby the latter were to receive an annual rente of four livres, ten sous, in order to acquit the prior of similar claims for one-third of the costs of repairs.[60]

27     Financial relations between the parish church of St Michel du Valle and its adjacent priory were the subject of further litigation, in 1382, when the treasurer of the church was actioned by the priory’s prévôt, after the treasurer had had certain of the priory’s goods arrested, on account of the non-payment for three years of the three quarters of wheat rente just referred to -

“… which the treasury of the said church of St Michel du Valle of right takes and levies on the rents, revenues, and emoluments of the said priory, for and by reason of the third part of repairs of the said church, which the reverend father in God and lord abbot of Mont St Michel and convent of the said place must annually make and furnish from the revenues of the said priory …”

28     Following process before the Royal Court, the arrest was lifted, but only after guarantees had been provided by -

“… Jean Champion, receiver of the said priory under the care of Henry Richer, lieutenant of the noble lord Monsieur Hue de Calvyleve, warden of the isles for our said lord the king, and seisin of the said priory by reason that the said abbey and convent are alien, which receiver of the said priory guarantees the said prévôt against the said treasurer, and vouches guarantor the said lieutenant, which lieutenant with the assent, grace, and consent of brother Jean Garyn, presently prior of the said priory, who willingly acknowledges the said rent to be properly and legally due by the said priory, and [charged] on its revenues and emoluments, to the said treasury of the said church by the aforesaid composition…”[61]

29     This reference to the priory being ‘alien’ is to be accounted for by the fact that after King John’s loss of Normandy, in 1204, the Channel Island properties of French ecclesiastical houses (the ‘alien priories’) were regularly ‘taken into the king’s hand’ at times of hostility or even truce between France and England.[62]

30     The three quarters of annual wheat rente were the subject of still further litigation in and about 1432, when the officers of the church of St Michel du Valle sued the representatives of the priory, and, after the evidence of twenty-four parishioners of St Michel du Valle and the four neighbouring parishes had been taken, obtained judgment that the rente was owed by the priory. Unfortunately, the document embodying the facts is severely decayed.[63] In the following century, the rente appears to have been paid by the curé of the parish of St Michel de Valle, supplying the place of the prior, out of the Crown revenues, to the collecteurs of the church, until, by deed of 10 May 1555, the then parson undertook to pay a rente of three écus instead, which sum was still due and payable to the collecteurs by his heirs in 1573, as is testified by a document dated 28 September that year, surviving amongst the muniments of the church of St Michel de Valle.[64]

31     The liability of patrons to contribute towards the upkeep of churches (evidentially in the high Middle Ages to the amount of one-third) thus seems to be confirmed. At St Michel du Valle and Ste Marie du Castel in the 1360s this was commuted for a fixed annual sum. It would not be entirely unreasonable to argue that agreements like those of 1368-9 surviving in respect of St Michel du Valle and Ste Marie du Castel may also have commuted Mont St Michel’s liabilities to a similar annual payment at its other two churches. Such an arrangement is hinted at in a complaint that the parishioners of St Pierre du Bois brought before the Royal Commissioners appointed for Guernsey in 1607, when they asked to ‘…be restored into the possession of three quarters of wheat, yearly rent, which are due unto their treasury, upon the revenue of the Abbot of St Michael of the Valle, the which are now in the Governor’s hands’. To this the Commissioners responded -

“We having examined His Majesty’s officers touching this article, are credibly informed by them that they never knew any such rent paid, or due, to be paid by His Majesty to the treasury of the said parish. Neither can we learn that any man living demanded the same till now; neither is it mentioned upon any books appertaining to the king’s receipts or extents. Moreover, it is confessed by Thomas De Lisle, procuror of the said parish, and divers other aged men of the same, that the said parish hath not been in possession of the said rent these eighty years or thereabouts; for which reason we are of opinion that the said parish hath not good right or title to the said rents.”[65]

32     Perhaps some knowledge of the compositions reached at St Michel du Valle and Ste Marie du Castel survived in seventeenth-century St Pierre du Bois, and the parishioners there drew an incorrect inference, although the silence of the chapter’s letter of 1369 concerning their parish would be difficult to account for.

33     Nor can one reasonably go as far as did the compilers of a report published in a Billet d’État of 1920 to suggest not only that the abbey of Mont St Michel did make arrangements with all four of its churches, but also that the abbeys of Marmoutier and Blanchelande made similar compositions with the parishioners of the other six parishes in the island, whose churches were under their patronage. The committee reporting in 1920 concluded that -

“… a series of disputes came to an end in 1369 with the assignment by the Abbots to the “Treasurers” of the Parish Churches of certain rentes to receive yearly in perpetuity, on condition that they were released from their liability for ever. … [and that] Ever since the year 1369, therefore, the parishioners of the several parishes, having accepted a consideration from the Abbots, have had the sole responsibility for the upkeep of their Churches and Rectories …”[66]

34     To reach such a conclusion must have required a considerable leap of the imagination. The documents of 1368 and 1369 do not refer to any parishes other than those of St Michel du Valle and Ste Marie du Castel, and they cannot have been binding on any others. Nor do the documents refer to the giving and taking of ‘consideration’ in the sense of value for a transfer of title to the church buildings of St Michel du Valle and Ste Marie du Castel, still less in respect of any other parishes: the abbey did not surrender its rights in favour of the parishioners of the two parishes, but rather, by agreement, changed what was an ad hoc payment to a regular annual payment, similar in the way in which a modern agreement might change a variable rate financial commitment to a fixed rate one. There is nothing in the documents to suggest that the abbot of Mont St Michel did not retain after 1368-69 the advowsons of St Michel du Valle and Ste Marie du Castel, let alone of the other two parishes under his patronage, or that the shares of their tithes that the abbey had long owned were in any way diminished in any of the four parishes. And again, there is no evidence at all to support an argument that similar cessions may have occurred at the six parish churches under the abbeys of Marmoutier and Blanchelande.

35     When all three abbeys permanently lost the advowsons, tithes, and their responsibilities, in respect of all the island’s churches, they lost them not to the parishioners, but to the Crown, as must now be described.

The ‘alien priories’ and their departure

36     The records of the assizes held in the Channel Islands in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, met with above, contain further references to the French abbeys’ interests in their Guernsey churches, and also the taking of insular possessions of these ‘alien priories’ ‘into the king’s hand’ from time to time.

37     In 1299, the abbot of Marmoutier was summoned before the justices itinerant in order to answer why the king should not present an incumbent to St Peter Port Church. After some delay and the abbot’s failure to appear, Guernsey’s prévôt was appointed his judicial attorney (as we would now say), and pleaded that the advowson was the abbot’s, and the right of presentation had belonged to him from time immemorial. He conceded, however, that in the circumstances the gift was rightly the king’s, because the properties of the abbot had been ‘in the king’s hand’ at the time of the presentation, which was said to have been made 10 September 1297. A jury confirmed as much, and, on account of the abbot’s failure to present himself before the justices, the whole of the abbot’s lay fief (presumably the hospes and its revenue, granted in the mid eleventh century) was again taken into the king’s hand. The record of the assizes goes on to note that the abbot’s chamberlain eventually did appear, and for the sum of twenty pounds tournois paid to the Crown the abbot was restored in his tenements.[67]

38     At the assizes of 1309, the abbot of Marmoutier was again summoned before the justices, in order to answer a royal claim to the advowsons of certain churches, which were doubtless five of the six granted in the eleventh century (as noted above, the assize roll is damaged), a share of the tithes of St Martin, and the mill near St Peter Port church. The abbot’s attorneys exhibited Duke William’s charter of between c. 1052 and 1058, and argued -

“… that the said abbot and his predecessors … from the time of the said gift always held peacefully the said tenements and advowsons of churches and tithes … the abbot now holds except the advowson of the church of St Martin of Bellosa which a certain abbot of Blanchelande a long while ago usurped from his predecessor. And they say that the mill of the abbot in St Peter Port is within the cemetery of St Peter, and that with other their tenures in the said town are of free alms [de libera elemosina] of the said church and of the said hospice of old and from time immemorial …”.

39     This was put to a jury, which confirmed that the abbots -

“… held the said advowsons of the said five churches together with two parts of the tithes of the church of Bellosa from time immemorial. And that the said mill and the other tenures which the said abbot now holds in this island are in frankalmoign of old [de libera elemosina ab antiquo] belonging to the said churches except a certain large messuage now divided by the abbots of the said house in many parts where their tenants dwell which is of the said hospice contained in the said writing which the abbots likewise held of old.”

The justices thereupon adjourned the question sine die, and no more is heard of it.[68]

40     The abbot of Mont St Michel was similarly summoned before the justices of assize in 1309 to answer for the extensive rights that the abbey claimed in Guernsey, including the advowsons of the four churches. In response, the abbot exhibited the eleventh-century charter of Robert I granting the Bessin fief to the abbey. As already stated, this gift was withdrawn between 1035 and 1048 by Duke William II, and Mont St Michel compensated with Sark and Alderney, only for the abbey to regain part of the territory, apparently in the mid twelfth century, in circumstances that perhaps were as obscure to the fourteenth-century abbot as they are to us. The question was transferred to the court at Westminister, where the abbot was stated to have died. Further in the record of the assizes he is stated to have done fealty to the king at Boulogne for the Guernsey property, and there the matter apparently rested.[69]

41     As with the other alien priories, the interests of Mont St Michel were regularly ‘taken into the king’s hand’ in the fourteenth century. In 1374 in such circumstances these were farmed to Jean Garin, the monk of Mont St Michel and prior of St Michel du Valle who was mentioned above in connection with the dispute of the previous decade.[70] Although this farming of the priory by the Crown to its prior quite matched the practice in like circumstances both in the island and in England,[71] Garin fell out with Guernsey’s warden over the grant.[72] The days of the priory, as indeed of all the alien priories in Guernsey, were in any case numbered. Exactly when they were ‘taken into the king’s hand’ for good is unclear, and it may have been a piecemeal process. Local historians have sometimes referred to English acts confiscating the alien priories’ properties in England, of 1413 and 1414, but these acts did not expressly extend to the Channel Islands,[73] and indeed it seems to be the case that some confiscation in the Islands occurred earlier than that, for by letters patent of 30 November 1396, Richard II had given the wardenship of the Channel Islands to Edward, earl of Rutland, by letters including a provision that the latter was to enjoy the alien priories of Lihou, St Michel de la Refrairie, and Blanchelande, with others in Jersey.[74]

42     Rutland obtained an exemplification of the grant to him from Henry IV on 23 November 1399,[75] though he appears to have lost the wardenship and revenues at his arrest early in 1405.[76] A letter written to the Privy Council by John de Lisle, who following Rutland’s disgrace was appointed warden of Guernsey on 28 May 1405,[77] which seems to date from the same year, refers to the utter ruin that the priory of St Michel du Valle had then fallen into, save for a small chamber containing a little wood, which de Lisle sought permission to use at Castle Cornet.[78] There also exist records of the grant by the king of ‘a little alien cell called “Blancheland”’ to the value of 15 gold crowns, to a private person for life, on 21 April 1405, and a grant of 29 April 1405 to Olivier Le Feyvre of Guernsey of ‘the governance of the schools (escoles)’ in the island.[79] This perhaps refers to what earlier had been a monopoly, or specialism, of the representatives of one or more of the departed alien priories. Rutland, or the Duke of York as he became, in due course returned to favour, and on 5 July 1415, Henry V confirmed him in his insular possessions, including the profits and revenues of the alien priories that he had previously enjoyed.[80] I have not been able to see all the grants to Rutland’s predecessors, and so cannot explore whether John Golafre (warden 1394-96) and Hugh Calverley (warden 1377-93) had also enjoyed any alien priories.[81] It would be interesting to establish whether they did, and if so upon what terms, and then to investigate whether the possession of priories in Guernsey by foreign houses ended at the same time as the expulsion of the monks of Norman houses in England, in 1378.[82]

43     The priories of Notre Dame de Lihou and St Michel du Valle, once daughter houses of Mont St Michel, appear to have continued to exist for some time, in some form – perhaps in little more than name – though under the patronage of wardens or Lords of the Islands, as we have seen in connection both with the grant to Rutland, and the litigation at St Michel du Valle in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. By the early fifteenth century the tithes and other payments once remitted from Guernsey to France had become the property of the king, often to be enjoyed by his warden or a Lord of the Islands, and the advowsons of the churches were vested in the king or such a lord, with appointments to rectories being made at their nomination. We find, for example, the revenues once due to the churches administered by Mont St Michel being collected on behalf of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, Lord of the Islands, by his receiver in Guernsey, 1450-51, and in 1451-52 the same receiver accounting for the revenues of St Sampson’s church, on a vacancy occurring there.[83] Records of nominations of priests to rectories by successive wardens, acting on the king’s behalf, survive from the 1490s, and doubtless were made in earlier days as well (the relevant registers are lost).[84] There were obligations besides, such as providing for the manorial court of the Fief St Michel, most picturesquely with regard to its chevauchée, the duties of the receiver of the Lord of the Islands in that connection being set out in an act of the court dated 9 July 1439,[85] and, as we have seen in the case of the parish church of St Michel du Valle, certain expenditure arose. Suit of Court had to be paid at the Court of Chief Pleas, with HM Procureur responding to remind the Court of the Crown’s appropriation of the ecclesiastical fiefs, and the fiefs themselves had to be administered. (And we may wonder if St Martin de Marmoutier’s libera elemosina tenure comprising the ‘large messuage … divided by the abbots … in many parts where their tenants dwell’ became what is now known as the ‘Franc Fief St Martin’).

44     The right to collect that part of the tithes which had once been collected by the alien priories usually seems to have been farmed by the Crown to private investors, at least by the sixteenth century.[86] A proportion was paid over to Guernsey’s rectors, and we have statistics from 1535 estimating what these amounted to in cash terms,[87] and from the next century there survive details of what fractions these shares actually were.[88] There is no indication, however, that the tithes were or ever had been directly employed in the maintenance of the fabric of church buildings, whether before or after the loss of the alien priories. We now turn to the question of how the church buildings were in fact kept up.

The later upkeep of church property

45     The fourteenth- and fifteenth-century legal actions show parish communities taking the initiative to get both the abbatical patrons of the churches, and their successors as possessors of the properties of the alien priories, to meet their obligations. It is also clear from the records relating to these proceedings that parishioners themselves had some liability – apparently two-thirds – for the costs of the upkeep and maintenance of church buildings, equipment, etc. These things assume the presence of a degree of parochial organisation, and office holding, and indeed a treasurer or ‘thesaurarius’ has been mentioned. Such officers (called in French trésoriers, and later curateurs des trésors) were predecessors to those today called ‘churchwardens’, the custodians of the accumulated parish funds and investments, or trésors, comprising such reserves as rentes and other revenues, often given by the faithful or otherwise acquired for the benefit of the parish. This matches the practices of the parishes of the mainland Norman church, where Léopold Delisle described trésors that existed in the thirteenth century, at which period there also survives reference to a thesaurarius in Alderney.[89]

46     It is not altogether clear what happened about the funding of church property at the Crown’s seizure of the interests of the alien priories, which I have suggested took place in the late fourteenth century. The abbeys could hardly have been expected to continue to make a one-third contribution in respect of the churches, even if they had been diligent in doing so until then, which – given earlier fourteenth-century precedent – seems unlikely to have been the case. Whilst, as shown above, the Crown appears for some time to have continued to pay the rente once due at St Michel du Valle by the abbot of Mont St Michel, there is no evidence of other payments that were made for any length of time by the Crown at other churches, whether one-third of costs or some other sum.

47     Parishioners may in fact have welcomed the greater control over their church buildings that this apparent official neglect enabled. The later Middle Ages witnessed a growth in lay piety, and, particularly, an increase in intercessory institutions such as fraternities, founded and funded by members of the laity, who furnished facilities in parish churches, including their own chapels therein. Works of structural development and extension were also carried out to parish churches, presumably at the exclusive expense of the devout, both as an efficacious means of obtaining posthumous benefit, and expressing pride and identity: the south aisle of St Peter Port Church (dated 1466) and the porch at St Martin (c. 1520) come to mind in the later period.[90] Nor were the churches without secular advantages for the parishes: for example, contracts commonly were completed ‘en audience de paroisse’ until c. 1600, and inhabitants polled in the election of jurats by standing constables at the church doors after services,[91] and even affairs such as a dispute over the ownership of a sheep, might lead to the exhibition of the beast ‘au cimetiere du Catell a la sortie du presche’.[92] Bells were rung to mark the passing of the hours and secular anniversaries,[93] and church buildings even used as stores for artillery and, at St Peter Port, from 1768, fire engines.[94] Parish assemblies customarily were held in the churches or their porches, and indeed it was found necessary to pass the Loi relative au local pour la tenue des assemblées paroissiales, 1889, to allow for meetings to be convened elsewhere.

48     This leads to the subject of the historical role of the douzaines in raising parish funds. Evidence presented to the justices of assize in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries had been given by parish juries of presentment, who were required to ‘come by twelve’,[95] and c.1309, such juries (in Jersey) were referred to as ‘duzeynes’,[96] but whether these juries were parish douzaines, or their predecessors, or something quite separate and impermanent, cannot really be said. There is that coincidence of twelve worthies representing their parishes, and some sort of parochial administration must have been necessary in the Middle Ages. A douzaine appointing a granger of St Peter Port is referred to in a document of 1444,[97] parish constables are recorded by 1481,[98] and the officers of the douzaines, called vingteniers, who collected taxes, by 1543.[99] At least two-thirds of the costs of works to the churches had to be found by parishioners, even in the patronal period, and trésors may sometimes have been insufficient to fund matters in hand, necessitating the collection of other funds, whether by seeking charitable donations or raising parochial taxation, or both. There is no hard evidence of the raising of parish taxes in Guernsey until the post-Reformation period, however, although similar levies had been raised for parish needs in France in the Medieval era.[100]

Restoration and taxation

49     The Presbyterian church that dominated Guernsey’s parishes for a century from the 1560s had little regard for the architectural setting of worship (save for the centrality of preaching) and the churches apparently fell into serious disrepair at that time.[101] Perhaps surprisingly, the older church offices did continue to run in parallel with the new, Presbyterian, ones, and we find in the registers of St Saviour[102] and St Martin’s churches,[103] for example, records of accounts annually presented by the parish’s collecteurs and trésoriers. Nevertheless, trésors were stated to have been depleted in the Presbyterian period, even if not spent on upkeep, and it does appear that one-third of the trésors had been nominally assigned to defence costs, even if this was not fully implemented, c. 1580.[104]

50     On 15 July 1662, Charles II issued a decree notifying the governor of Guernsey of his appointment of a dean for the island, and imposing Anglicanism. The order, which was registered by the Royal Court 7 August 1662, went on to require -

“… because we are given to understand the dozeners of the several parishes in the said island etc. have diverted unto other use certain revenues and rents belonging unto those churches to which they have been given from ancient times for their reparation and maintenance whereby they are fallen into great decay and a great part of them unto a condition nothing suitable with that decency which is required for the due performance of holy duties and service in publique assemblies …”

that the governor should assist the dean in restoring the rents and revenues to their proper purposes, and placing them in the hands of the churchwardens of the parishes ‘for the reparation maintenance and ornement’ of the churches.[105] The project seems to have failed.

51     A few years later, the dean, Jean de Sausmarez raised the issue again, and on 2 April 1674 the Royal Court, after holding a meeting with him, ordered that a parochial tax should be raised to reimburse in part one of the churchwardens of St Peter Port who had spent a considerable sum on repairs to the church etc., and requiring the constables and douzaine of the town within two months to levy a tax on those of the greatest means in the parish. This appears to have been ineffective, and in 1677 de Sausmarez drew royal attention to the fact that the churches ‘want reparation and that the treasures [i.e. trésors] that belong to them for this purpose can not furnish with speed to this present necessity’, and requesting that the Royal Court ‘at the request of the church wardens upon a certificate thereof under seale of the ecclesiastical court shall make an assessment and cause the officers to raise it as they have heretofore used in the like case’.[106] On sight of de Sausmarez’s memorandum, the king wrote to Governor Hatton and the Royal Court on 24 March 1677 noting that monies for necessary works were insufficient, and requiring the Court, upon certificate of the Ecclesiastical Court, and ‘at the request of the churchwardens of the respective churches, [to] make an assessment for that purpose, and [to] take care that the same be levied as heretofore hath been used on the like occasions’.[107] These documents suggest the existence of an established tax regime, although without, unfortunately, revealing its antiquity or otherwise, although it may be noted that in 1608 the douzaine of St Peter Port had financed by taxation the construction of a charnel house, or ossuary, ‘pour conserver les os des morts’, which may be thought to be an ecclesiastical need,[108] and, as suggested above, recourse to taxation may also have been had when necessary in Medieval times.

52     Certainly by the later seventeenth century we clearly see an ecclesiastical rate drawn from parish taxation, though for a long time it was not of necessity annual: as stated in a petition of 1816, ‘For the repairs of parochial churches a separate revenue under the name of “trésor” is appropriated to each of them, and if not sufficient a rate or tax is levied on the parishioners according to their respective incomes …’.[109] Examples of this sort of taxation, as referred to in the order of 1677, and apparently existing in 1674, and quite possibly earlier, are not difficult to find. Thus the constables and douzaine of St Saviour raised a rate on 5 October 1722, under the authority of an act of the Royal Court of the first of that month, to obtain the sum of £370 tournois, ‘pour la reparation du Temple de la ditte paroisse’,[110] and on 15 April and 8 August 1754 those of St Pierre du Bois, duly authorised by act of the Royal Court, set a tax upon parishioners in order, amongst other things, to raise a monument to James Perchard ‘dans l’Eglize de la ditte paroisse’.[111] On 18 August 1777 the douzaine of the Forest, authorised by a similar act, of 9 August 1777, taxed their parishioners in the amount of £600 tournois, ‘pour payer les frais au quell on à été exposé pour les reparations faite a l’Eglise de la ditte paroisse et autres besoins publiques’,[112] and on 30 August 1778, authorised by an act of court of 25 April, the constables and douzaine of St Andrew raised a tax that included a sum for the casting of bells, and on 16 September the same year (also authorised by the act of 25 April) levied a further sum for hanging them.[113]

53     There are copious records of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of parochial taxation being levied to fund not only the maintenance and upkeep of the parish churches like this (and their rectories)[114] but also things such as the billeting of soldiers, defence works, sending island representatives to England, education, and supporting the poor. The taxpayers of St Peter Port were subject to almost annual assessments from the 1720s.[115] It was, perhaps, with the founding and coming into use of the Country Hospital, 1748-64, that rates elsewhere became regular (often six-monthly), namely in the seven parishes that first participated in the hospital’s establishment, and then throughout the country parishes, once the Forest and St Pierre du Bois joined them in 1769 and 1798 respectively.[116] Torteval’s need to build a new parish church c. 1816 also led to recourse to parochial taxation, though in that extraordinary case further monies had to be solicited from other parish funds, the States, and the Crown revenues.[117] Further nineteenth-century examples include the levy of taxes, authorised by acts of the Royal Court, at Ste Marie du Castel on 13 July 1827 ‘tant pour payer les reparations faites a l’Eglise que pour le Presbitaire’, on 1 October 1838 ‘pour renbourser l’argent emprunté par le Tresor, que pour payer les fraix des ouvrages qu’on est a faire au pinacle de l”Eglise…’,[118] and at St Martin, similarly authorised, for things such as ‘les reparations necessaires à l’Eglise pour monter l’orgue’ (levied on 8 July 1848), and on 13 October 1855 for repairing the church and consecrating a new cemetery.[119] Examples could be multiplied, from these and the other parishes.

Conclusions

54     In 1868, the Loi relative à la Taxation Paroissiale regularised the regime under which the ratepayers are responsible for the payment of an ecclesiastical rate for the upkeep of church property. There is no need to bring the history up to the present day – this is treated in the Billet d’État initiating the Guernsey States’ Parochial Ecclesiastical Rates Review Committee[120] – but rather I might offer some tentative conclusions. These are that -

1.      Guernsey’s parishes as we presently know them are broadly creations of the early eleventh century.

2.      Before the expulsion and/or withdrawal of the alien priories, which probably occurred in the late fourteenth century, patrons and parishioners shared the costs of upkeep and maintenance of the parish churches between them, usually in the proportion one-third/two-thirds.

3.      After the exclusion of the alien priories, recourse to patronal funds for a one-third or other contribution could no longer be had, and the full costs of upkeep and maintenance fell to the parishioners. From the seventeenth century, and possibly for a considerable time before (perhaps even in the Middle Ages, when the alien priories still retained their interests), when trésor funds were insufficient, they could be supplemented by parish taxation.

4.      Mindful of the maxims ‘nul seigneur sans titre’ and ‘nul terre sans seigneur’, the strongest claim to the bare legal ownership of the parish churches is the Crown’s, as successor to the alien priories, just as the Crown remains possessor of the advowsons, and was until 1948 the possessor of some tithes,[121] as successor to the alien priories.

55     This is by no means to say that the rights and obligations of parishioners are not significant, probably more significant than those of the Crown as patron, and that the beneficial ownership of the parish churches might be said to vest in the parishioners, at whose expense the church buildings have for so long been maintained. A close analogy might be drawn with those fiefs, including the Fief St Michel and others, which were taken from the alien priories by the Crown at the same time as their churches were confiscated. The tenants of all the island’s fiefs, that is to say the people occupying the properties – the houses, fields etc., which lie on the fiefs – today have rights in respect of those properties that far exceed the rights of the Crown or private seigneurs in their position as manorial landlords. The manorial tenants, as beneficial owners, enjoy these extensive rights, to the extent that they regard themselves as ‘freeholders’ even though this is not strictly correct, and the maintenance of what they occupy is largely down to them, at their own costs. We see something very similar with regard to the ancient parish churches, in the relationship of the Crown to the parishioners.

Darryl Ogier is the author of Reformation and Society in Guernsey (Woodbridge, 1996), History of the Buildings of Guernsey’s Royal Court (Guernsey, 2004), and The Government and Law of Guernsey (Guernsey, 2005).

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