What a temptation when writing about Sark to begin: "Once upon a time...."

...A small Island in the channel, little more than a large rock  reaching far under the moving tides, less in area than many of our towns, English by its status as a Crown possession, a little French in language and origin, but Norman above all - with her sister islands, Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney - the last vestige of the ancient Duchy of Normandy.

The tiny port of Sark lies about one hundred miles from Plymouth or Southampton; slightly nearer Weymouth; some fifty from Cherbourg, Granville or St. Malo; barely twenty miles from St. Helier, half that from St. Peter Port.

For an English or French visitor, the land seen from Sark on clear days some leagues to the east is the continent, or France.

For the people of Sark it is Carteret harbour, or Normandy, the old homeland of their former suzerain Dukes to whom they were always loyal.

Carteret is also the name of the best known Seigneur of Sark, who came over in the sixteenth century from his fief of St. Ouen in Jersey and founded the island as we know it today. Yet only a few years before the arrival of Helier de Carteret, the island had been a frequent objective of the expeditions of the English - who held it by the right and the French - who wished to retake it.

This is what Rabelais had to say about it in those days:
"I assure you, this Country is just such another, as formerly I have seen were the Islands of Sark and Herm, between Brittany and England... Islands full of Swaggerers, Rogues, Brigands, Murderers and Assassins... By the death of the wooden ox, I swear they are worse tan Cannibals; they would eat us all up alive...
(Pantagruel, IV, 66,)

From below, Sark appears to be an impregnable fortress, a piece of Cornwall with its vast caverns, protected by rocks, strong tides and steep cliffs.

From the air, it looks like an inviting, peaceful stretch of countryside. It is not surprising that this great rock with its sharp contrasts should have attracted both lovers of tranquility or meditation and those looking for an aerie - those who through Sark's long history time and again seized the islands, expelled the occupants or slit their throats.

At the beginning of the stone age, Jersey was inhabited. Originally, it was attached to the mainland; it did not become an island until the equinoctial tide of 709 A.D. that submerged the intervening land. Bone fragments of a "Neanderthal Jerseyman" were found in the cave at St. Brelade.

Nothing of the kind has been found on Sark. Apparently it was an island in those days, and even if the idea had occurred to them it is unlikely that the boatmen of the early stone age could have navigated the rock-strewn waterways of that part of the channel.

On the other hand, Reverend Cachemaille, who was the minister of Sark, reports that at the last century the island boasted several cromlechs,- since used in the construction of walls and houses-perhaps souvenirs left behind by the druids of Scissy  forest before it was submerged by the tidal wave that separated Jersey from the Cotentin peninsula.

Coins, probably dating from the passage of the Celts of Armorica fleeing before the Roman invader at the time of the birth of Christ, were found near the windmill.

Few traces are left of the Gallo-Roman period, apart from the reference in the Antonine  Itinerary to the island Sargia - probably Sark. The name occurs again as insula Sargiensis in connection with St. Magloire in the Acta Sanctorum.

Sark seems to have been uninhabited at the beginning of the middle ages. At least there is no mention of it in the chronicles. But perhaps it population of pirates and wreckers was too busily engaged in other matters to write down its exploits for posterity.

The Cotentin Islands were under the jurisdiction of the Gallo Roman province of Coutances, and after the advent of Christianity formed part of the Diocese of Coutances.

In the sixteenth century, Sark was to discover her religious vocation.

For many years, in fact for as long as the raiders from the north were good enough to spare her, the island enjoyed considerable renowned among the Christian population of the Channel Islands and the Cotentin peninsula because of  St Magloire.

In 565, a Seigneur of Jersey, Count Lois Escon fell gravely ill and was miraculously cured by the Monk Magloire, a saintly man of Wales and nephew of St. Sampson.

As rewarded the Count on his recovery authorized the monk to undertake the spiritual conquest of the archipelago in the Channel.

Magloire embarked for Sark, where he landed with 62 disciples.

Did he find the island uninhabited or did he have to perform another miracle to expel the pirate occupants from the caves?

He built an oratory, cleared the land and sowed wheat. To grid the wheat he constructed a water mill and small dam.

The mill is no more, but a stream flowed not far from the present la Moinerie (monastery) and contained by I'Ecluse (mill dam) falls in cascades down to the strand still known as le Port du Moulin (mill- Haven).

St Magloire died towards the end of the century, but sons of noblemen continued to come to Sark from England and Neustria to study theology.

In 850, the Breton "King" Nominoe promised some neighboring Monks land on which to build a monastery, on condition that they brought back to Lehon the relics of a famous saint able to save the King's soul.

So our monks set forth for Sark piously to steal the relics of the Saint.

Legend has it that Magloire was so eager to face the last judgement on the banks of the River Rance that he lent a hand in his own kidnapping by reducing the weight of his sarcopagus.

To bring the raid to a successful conclusion, a miraculous gust of wind drove the pursuers back to their island, allowing the abductors to continue unmolested on their way to St. Malo.

For the incredulous who see no miracle in this, let me add the following: a few years earlier a brand of plunderers from the Kingdom of the Denmark, and pagans to boot, had already made an attempt on the coffin of St Magloire.

They were not after relics, but through long experience of robbing sepulchres in Ireland and Scotland were expecting to make finds easier to dispose of than holy relics.

Scarcely had the top of the sarcophagus been raised when the seven robbers standing next to it were blinded, and miraculously a dispute broke out among the other robbers, ending with them all killing each other.

And so Sark the time was spent in learning, tilling the soil and praying.

In flight from the Saxon invasion the Celts of Britain paused on their way to Armorica.

With the ninth century, increasing numbers of Vikings in their long boats appeared off the islands.

The pirates from the north were seeking a base to use for their activities: Sark with its caverns and inaccessible cliffs seemed ideal. They adopted it.

The islands became a lair of Norse warriors and a starting point for their expeditions.

Sark was Norman in fact before it became Norman by law in the middle of the tenth century.

At St. Clair-sur-Epte, Rollo the Dane was granted the fief of Normandy by Charles the Simple. Twenty years later his son, William Long Sword, second Duke of Normandy, put down the rebellious Bretons and added the Cotentin Peninsula and the island to his Duchy.

At last the archipelago was Norman and the Dukes of Normandy had power to grant fiefs there.
 

In Sark the priory of St. Magloire first belonged to the Abbot of Mont St Michel, then to the Abbot of Montebourg. A charter, drawn up in Latin on the Island in 1196 by Richard de Vernon, Seigneur of a large fief in Normandy, confirmed the Abbot of Montebourg as owner of the priory.

But the island remained under the secular authority of the Bishop of Coutances.

Curiously enough it was not until five centuries later, in 1568 that Sark was to leave the fold of the Bishop of Coutances to be taken in by the Bishop of Winchester. In point of fact, the Reformation had removed England from papal authority nearly 40 years before.

For 350 years, Sark islanders had owed allegiance to a Duke in England and had been under the spiritual authority of a Bishop in France.

Temporal authority was in the hands of the seigneurs, vassals of the Duke of Normandy, himself a vassal of the King of France.

But in 1066, William the Conqueror confused the issue when he landed at Hastings, defeated the Anglo-Saxons, killed their King Harold, then took his place. So the Duke of Normandy became King of England.

That is why the people of Sark are not altogether joking when they say that England was conquered by their forefathers. In his Roman de Rou, Master Wace, the jersey poet, reports that a certain Mauger de Carteret fought bravely at Hastings...

In the years that followed, the crown of England and the coronet of Normandy were sometimes on the same head, sometimes on different heads. The Kings of France were far from pleased. As for the hermit in the Priory of St. Magloire on Sark, he still came under the Abbot of Montebourg.

In 1204, King John, Duke of Normandy, had his nephew, Arthur of Brittany assassinated. Public opinion condemned him.

Philippe Auguste, King of France, seized his chance: he made his vassal John appear before his peers. Normandy was confiscated, and to make doubly sure, it was taken by force of arms. Bad King John's troops were defeated at Chateau Gaillard.

Continental Normandy was French once more.

The peace treaty made no mention of the Channel Islands. Perhaps Philippe Auguste did not give a thought to these few islands...in those days France was no seafaring nation.

In any event, mention or no mention, the islands remained loyal. For the seigneurs of the archipelago, to bend the knee to the King of France would have been to betray King John, their Duke, to whom they had sworn fealty.

Again and again the French tried to recapture the islands, that part of the former Duchy which had slipped through their fingers.

But the islands had ceased to be French; they had become Anglo-Normans.

Not only did they refuse to co-operate, but they took up arms in defence.

Sark was occupied on behalf of King John by an unfrocked monk from Picardy known as Eustance the monk (some chronicles mention two unfrocked brothers Eustance), an expert sailor, good strategist big-hearted pirate, in fact a sort of Robin Hood of the seas.

In 1206 the island was English. A few years later it was once again French, and the man at the top was the same Eustace the Monk.

In the course of three centuries was in turn abandoned and recaptured by one group after another-English, Scottish, French, not counting pirates of every hue.

An old Latin manuscript belonging to Sir Philip de Carteret, and cited by the Reverend Cachemaille, depicted the Sark islanders of the fourteenth century as a gang of wreckers; lighting misleading fires on the seashore, they engaged in the well-known occupation for which the islands of Ushant, Scilly and Sein were notorious.

But in the reign of Edward 111, the crew of the vessel from Sussex succeeded in dislodging the nest of pirates with a new version of the Trojan horse, except that the horse was a coffin packed full of arms.

In 1549, a Frenchman Captain Bruel, was in Brittany at the head of a brand of soldiers of fortune, no easy command. The plans of the King of France and the urgent need to relieve Brittany of the unwanted presence of that troop led to the launching of an expedition.

Bruel, his relation Buron, and several hundred of their mercenaries landed on Sark.

They built three small forts, then grew bored, languished and in the end deserted.

Four years later, a Flemish corsair, Crole, in the pay of Charles V, relieved their boredom by capturing Captain Bruel's remaining ruffians.

Few traces remain of those four years of the French occupation the ruins of the forts, perhaps the names Clos Bourel (formely Clos a Bruel) and the Burons, the rocks in front of La Baie de la Motte.

However there is little to prove any of this. In 1560 the island was once again uninhabited.

A Frenchman, the Count of Glatigny, requested the King of France to grant him Sark as a fief.

Charles 1X, who was ten years old at the time, ruling with Catherine de Medici as regent, granted him the island, all the more willingly since it was not his to give.

But hardly had M.de Glatigny and his tenants begun to clear the land when a new war broke out between England and her neighbour, and the new settlers upped sticks and departed.

Twelve years later, precisely ten centuries after the arrival in Sark of St Magloire, Helier de Carteret , Seigneur of St. Ouen on the Island of Jersey made a peaceful landing on Sark-once more uninhabited. His wife, Margaret accompanied him, together with forty companions, jerseymen for the most part; but there were also a few Guernseymen, Englishmen and even Normans from France. The tale is told that in those days a boat bringing the children of the first tenants was wrecked on the rocks known as the Paternosters. Off the Jersey coast, as off many others, on certain days before the onset of bad weather a moaning sound can be heard. Jerseymen call this "le cri de la mer", and it is said to be the anguished cry of the children drowning.

... By the letters patent of 1565, Queen Elizabeth granted the Island of Sark to St Helier de Carteret.

Seigneur of his fief haubert against payment of a yearly rente of fifty sols tournois, he was responsible for maintaining a colony of forty farmer-soldiers to settle the island and provide for its defence.

The "Quarantaine" still exist today. On the island roads one some times comes across a Guille, Hamon, Le Feuvre or de Carteret. The great great grandfathers of their grandfathers were Helier's companions.

A great deal has changed on the island since 1565, but while in other places expeditions to the moon are organized, Sark is still a fief haubert-probly the only one in the world.

In 1957, Queen Elizabeth came to the island and was paid hommage by la Dame in old Norman: "Ma Souveraine Dame, je vous rends homage lige et vous sera foyale et loyale contre tous.

A Seneschal, appointed by the Seigneur, presides over the court of the Chefs Plaids (Chief Pleas).

The court meets a minimum of three times a year, at Christmas,
Easter and Michaelmas.

In the Senior School, little altered for the occasion, the Seigneur (or a deputy), the Seneschal, the Prevot, the Greffier and the Treasurer, the Constables and the Vingtenier, the Tenants of the Quarantaine in turn take their place and in addition, since 1922, twelve elected Deputies of the People.

Matters are decided by simple majority vote.

The Seigneur has the power of veto, but as a result of the most recent reform of the Constitution (1951) to all intents and purposes this right has been reduced to little more than a symbol. The Seneschal heads the court. He can inflict a maximum penalty of three livres tournois or three days imprisonment.

The accused have the right of appeal to the Royal court of Guernsey.

The Seigneur cannot dismiss the Seneschal he has himself appointed.

This ensures strict dispensation of the justice, and it occurred less than a century ago that a particular irascible Seigneur was brought before his own court several times to answer for his excesses, and judged guilty.

Sark, in fact, never experienced the extreme aspects of feudalism. At no time were there serfs on the island. All the tenants were liege-men.

When Helier came from Jersey he divided the land into forty holdings which he granted to his companions for an annual rente.

In return, the tenants undertook to cultivate the land and build a farm, in case of the need to furnish a man-at-arms with muskets, powder and shot, for the defence of the island, to pay the tithe and other feudal taxes, such as the poulage (house tax), to carry out corve'e duties on the island roads, only to sell with the Seigneur's permission, without dismembering the tenement and on payment of a conge, or levy.

The right of primogeniture is strictly observed to this day. With the tenement, the eldest male child inherits a vote in Chief Pleas, and since the last century, the family pew in the church. In the absence of an heir the land reverts to the Seigneur.

The right of retrait lignager has been retained from old Norman common law a kind of pre-emption that can be exercised by a member of the family of the former lease-holder up to 40 days after conclusion of the sale.

The Seigneurs of Sark still exercise the ancient feudal privilege of owning a pigeon house, or dovecot.

When the fief was sold in 1730, the Seigniorial abode was transferred from the old Manoir to la Maison de la Perronerie, and the new Dame, Susanne Le Pelley, wasted no time in building a pigeon house.

As for the unpopular corvee duties, they abolished in 1951 and replaced by a levy.

An old custom, dating from the time of the firt Duke Rollo, is still alive in Channel Islands: to raise the "Clameur de Haro" with slight variations in the form from one island to another.

By raising the clameur, any man considering himself wronged by the act of another, brings such action to an immediate standstill and at the same time sets in motion legal proceedings that will come before the Seneschal court.

In Sark, he must bare his head and before witnesses cry out:
"Haro, haro, haro! Au nom de Dieu et de la Reine, laissez ce travail...

Since the sixteenth century, three different families of Seigneurs have owned the Fief: the de Carteret family, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the Le Pelley family until the mid-nineteenth centuy; and the Collings family who are still in possession.

The Seigneurs' way of life, constantly in touch with the out side followed the trend of the richer islands, Jersey and Guernsey, later of  England and the rest of the world.

But until recent times, the life of the people of Sark has changed but little from one century to the next. The tenants plough the land, grow wheat cabbages or beans.

They raise sheep on the cotils (cliff-top land), cows and pigs,
chickens and ducks.

In fine weather they put out to sea and always bring in a catch of various types of conger, vrack-fish or mackerel.

In the lobster pots they trap spider crabs and lobsters.
In October, before the onset of the bad weather, they haul up all the boats and turn to minor occupations until spring comes round.
In bygone days they used to card the lambs 'wool then men and women gathered round candlelight to knit jerseys and stockings; dry the conger on poles at L' eperquerie; collect driftwood and harvest the vraic (seaweed).

They constructed barrels , those "seagoing packages" of yore, in which was transported the greater part of the cargo, both routine traffic and contraband.
Sark had its corsairs-the malicious would say pirates-and with the rare island captains who preyed on merchant vessels they were probably the only ones ever to make a fortune.

At the beginning of the last century, the Seigneur, Le Palley, gave permission to open the silver mine, then brought shares in the venture.

Some 250 Cornish miners landed on little Sark and the former sheep runs became a hive of activity

One shaft was sunk to a depth of 300 feet below sea-level. But the mine responded poorly to hopes placed in it. Financial difficulties arose.

In spring 1839, the seigneur was drowned in a wreck off la Pointe du Nez.

His brother, Ernest Le Pelley, inherited the Seigniory. In the face of ever more pressing financial problems, he was obliged to mortgage his feif for a loan of £4,000.

Bad luck persisted: a boatload of ore was lost in the Little Russel. Next, the sea flooded the deepest galleries. The mine was abandoned, the sheep regained possession of the cotils.
Two years later Ernest Le Pelley died having lost his all.

In 1852, Dame Marie Allaire, the daughter of a Guernsey corsair, widow of Thomas Collings, foreclosed on the mortage and bought the feif of Sark for £6,000.  Mrs Sybil Hathaway, the present Dame de Sercq, is her great granddaughter.

The part-time smugglers and knitters, coopers and corsairs are no more. Nor are there any silver prospectors.

A few tenants farm the land. From spring to autumn a handful of fisherman keep the hotels supplied. There is some stock raising, particularly breeding horses to draw the wagonettes and victorias in the summer to the delight of the tourists.

There is not one tarmac road on the island, but several fine gravel roads.

There is not a single car, but more and more tractors are making an appearance.

The tenements have retained their picturesque names: la Moinerie, la Genetie`re, le Grand Beaureguard, La Friponnerie, la Ville Roussel de bas, la Pipeterie, la Donnellerie...

Many of their old granite houses are still lived in, but the last thatch roof, at le Fort, near I`Eperqurie, has just been replaced by corrugated iron.

The Falle, Drillot, Carre, Perree, Baker, de Carteret, Hamon address each other in Jersey patois directly derived from the parish of St. Ouen, and probably no other than the old Norman that was spoken on the continental Normandy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

For how much longer?

As a stranger to the Island one hesitates to voice an opinion, to make any forecasts. One is loath to make any suggestions.
Sark is first and foremost the affair of the people of Sark.  But may one at least express the wish that the Sark islanders stand fast: hope that they will not let the tide sweep their island towards what the rather smug twentieth century calls the civilization of the year 2,000.