18th century

John Shipp, 1798

22nd May 2015
Memoirs of the extraordinary military career of John Shipp, late a lieut. in His Majesty's 87th regiment. Shipp (1784-1834) twice won a commission from the ranks before the age of thirty-two, and his memoirs were extremely popular, being published in four editions. He writes about his time at Guernsey as a young man in Chapter III.  He was fourteen or so, and lead fifer in the 22nd Cheshire Regiment of Foot at the time; the regiment was in the island from 1798 to 1799 (they were inspected here on 14 August 1799.)

The Good Intent, June 1777

A letter from Governor Le Mesurier to Mr Stephens, dated Alderney June 7 1777. Benjamin Franklin and John Adams considered Guernsey men as 'artful enemies.' The French, however, called the Channel Islands 'nids de guêpes'—'wasps' nests,' used in the sense they were a trap, a hornet's nest that one should not kick ...

Mutiny in St Peter's, 1704

From the Library's militia collection. A transcript by Edith Carey of a letter in French from a worried Lieutenant-Bailiff, Eléazar Le Marchant, to the absent Lieut.-Governor, Sir Edmund Andros, (here translated), and a contemporary copy of a petition concerning the same mutiny from William De Lisle in the St Peter's militia, to the Privy Council. Complicated family ties and nepotism, and a reflection of the bitter factional resentment felt towards Edmund Andros.

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