Pierre Mollet Fund

Pierre Mollet Junior lived at Les Landes, and was married to Elizabeth Mauger. His will of September 15th, 1882, of which we now have a beautifully printed copy, sets out his monetary legacies to private individuals, and specifies that ‘the sum of £3 per annum is to be paid during the first 12 years by his Executors and Trustees towards printing and distributing a book published in 1867, entitled ‘Warning given to Protestants’ by a Guernsey Protestant. The Guernsey Protestant in question was Pierre Mollet himself. There is a copy of it in French in the Library.

The rest of his money, £196, 10 shillings and sevenpence, and a few rentes, was to be used to set up the fund, known as the ‘Bien de Monsieur Pierre Mollet des Landes.’ After the first twelve years £80 was to be distributed annually to his relatives: in 1894, when the first distribution was made, 276 relatives got 6 shillings and ninepence each. Twenty-one years after his death, a sum of between £150 and £200 was to be used to erect a Chapel or other building on land formerly belonging to Jean Hubert, where the Trustees might administer the Fund and the Bible might be studied. The result was the Mollet Memorial at Les Landes, erected in 1903 at a cost of £272. After 30 years a Council was to be formed by the Trustees to help administer the Fund, which was to be used to help ‘advance the Kingdom of God on earth’. The Council consisted of a lay member of the Anglican Church and three Ministers, one Wesleyan, one Calvinist and one Baptist, who were to select worthy islanders, personally assessed at no more than 40 quarters of rent, to receive help from the Fund; but they must be genuine. He wanted no ‘hypocrites, traditionalists, or people who just paid lip-service.’

The archive consists of Pierre’s will, rentes, account books and letters, as well as documentation from a successful court case brought by Mollet concerning the legal situation of Les Landes in relation to L’Ancresse Common.

The Mollet family is well represented in our collection; we have material from Charles Mollet, the wealthy fruit-grower of Woodlands, and an earlier Pierre Mollet’s two very interesting Notebooks. All this material is available to be viewed at the Library on request.