Children

The Yellow Dress

A surprising dark side to life at the Town Hospital is hinted at in this Royal Court case. Unmarried local girls who became pregnant and who sought help at the Hospital, although treated kindly, were nevertheless put under a great deal of pressure to disclose the name of the father, so that he would be responsible for the child's maintenance and not the parish, but the threat extended to this girl is another thing entirely and seems to have terrified her. It should be noted that the Star newspaper chose not to mention the dress and represented the trial somewhat differently.

Rene Le Porc de la Porte de Vezins, 1590

Francois de la Noue from the BNF via Wikipedia Commons
A well-known tale of intrigue in Renaissance Brittany, in one of its earliest and near-contemporary versions, from The Monthly Illustrated Journal (Guernsey Magazine), February, 1873. The Editor describes this as 'a free translation of an interesting account of a disputed identification case, which occurred in the latter part of the 16th century, and in which Guernsey figures; it is taken from a work entitled La Vie de François, Seigneur de la Nouë, kindly lent to us by Mr Thomas Lenfestey, des Fontaines, for the purpose.' The illustration below is a detail from Sydney's Arcadia, published by Ponsonby in 1589, in the Library collection; the portrait above is of François de la Nouë, dit Bras-de-fer, from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

A Herm tragedy: the drowning of the teenaged Walter St John, August 1597

Inscription from memorial at Lydiard Tregoze courtesy of Lydiard Tregoze house
An inquest into the death of the eldest son of Sir John St John, of Lydiard Tregoze, in Wiltshire, and his young tutor, who died trying to rescue his charge. They were swept away by the current, probably off Belvoir Bay, 18 August, 1597. Walter St John was under the protection of the Governor, Sir Thomas Leighton, and living at Castle Cornet. It is extremely unusual for evidence in a case like this to survive; this was retained because Walter's family connections meant an account of the inquest had to be sent to Chancery. The French text is given in the Second Report of the Commissioners into Criminal Law in the Channel Islands of 1848.

Chefs Plaids, Jugements, Ordonnances &c, 16-19th centuries

Bound MSS, staff E. Metal fastening engraved: 'LF 1773.' Contact the Library for further details. The material falls into several sections: the first, detailed below, is in two hands and lists in rough date order Acts of the Royal Court in which the judgment passed down is of some legal interest; the last Act noted is from 1719. Then follows an interesting set of documents covering the Civil War period and the reign of James II, some of which are Lord Hatton correspondence and may be unpublished. Finally a later hand has transcribed Acts relating to the Militia; the last of these dates from 1769. The back of the volume was reversed and charters and other early Acts and Ordonnances have been transcribed.

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