Documents, Le Hurel
From a wonderful cache of documents from Le Hurel in St Saviour's, donated by Esther Hatton in 2014.
Legal
Lords of Manors
Fiefs and their Seigneurs. From Guerin's Almanack, 1890, in the Library's News Cuttings on Guernsey IV, p. 79, Staff.
Our old house in Berthelot Street
Notes from Dr Hoskin's MSS. The de Rozel, Lihou, and Knapp families.
Old house in Berthelot Street: legal documents
MSS of Dr Hoskins, notes on his old house in Berthelot Street, transcribed by Edith Carey.
Rental of Andre Monamy, Jurat, 25 January 1564
Notes taken by Edith Carey from the De Guérin MSS and the Lee MSS.
Mariage encombre
A wife had a year and a day after the death of her husband to claim the Writ de Mariage Encombré, which enabled her to allege that her husband had sold or alienated all or part of her personal property, without her consent.
William Dobree, bankrupt, 1754
November the 2nd 1754 ex parte John de Sausmarez, Henry Brock, Matthew de Sausmarez: In the matter of William Dobrée a bankrupt. From Reports of cases argued and determined in the High Court of Chancery: in the time of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. [1736-1754], Volume 1. William's debts would today be in the region of, at the minimum, ten million pounds, but as he was in effect a banker, the amount could feasibly be multiplied by ten.
Jacques Le Batard
The Gazette de L'Isle de Guernesey, of which the Priaulx Library has copies to view, published an unusual announcement in July of 1795. The newspaper reproduced in its entirety the sentence passed in the Royal Court upon a Frenchman from St Germain in Normandy, called Jacques Le Batard. The results of criminal trials were not normally published in the early Gazettes. Why this one? The sketch of the pillory and cage in 1795 are from the Lukis memoirs in Edith Carey's Scrapbooks in the Library.
A fast worker: Ozanne versus Peddle, February 1837
An appeal to the Royal Court. From the Comet, February 16, 1837.
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.