Montville MSS
5th November 2025
Edith Carey's transcription of papers lent her by Major Hubert Walters of Montville. Begun January 2 1907.
Legal
Inventory of Dame Marie Vaudin
1st August 2025
Inventory of the Papers, Title Deeds and Documents relative to the succession of the late Dame Marie Vodin and of her husband, Aaron Guillaume. [In Staff (bottom shelf) Box No. 1].
Guernsey's Oldest Charter discovered at Exeter
9th October 2024
A document from when Guernsey had a Vicomte, and was still part of the Duchy of Normandy. From the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette of 4 January 1922
Andros MSS
27th July 2023
Staff collection, volume XVI (Shelf 40)
The Kingdom of Congers
11th February 2022
From An Account of the Island of Jersey, with An Appendix of Records &c. (1694), to which are added, Notes and Illustrations, by the Reverend Edward Durell, MA, Rector of St Saviour, Jersey. Jersey: Richard Giffard, 1837.
Samuel Hocart and Port Grat
21st August 2020
A rapport from a collection of legal documents with reference to the Hocart family, particularly Samuel Hocart of Les Vardes.
Relative disadvantages, 1709
31st August 2016
An Act of the Privy Council concerning jurats, defining a quorum. In 1709, so many of the jurats had had to stand down in a case concerning prizes awarded to the Marlborough privateer that none had been left to judge the case. They had been stood down because they were related to either the plaintiffs or the defendants. This transcription comes from a MS notebook, Lists of privateers and prizes, in the Library collection.
A ship's captain is taken hostage, April 1748
4th February 2016
‘April 1748. A prize, with wine and brandy, and a ransomer of £1000, taken by the Hanover privateer of Guernsey,’ reported in The Gentleman's Magazine, 1748. Ransoming captured prizes was a practice favoured by Guernsey privateers in the earlier years of privateering, often with an eye to selling on a valuable cargo, but frowned upon by the British authorities, who preferred prizes to be brought into port to be officially 'condemned.' When challenged upon the reason for their not having followed the authorized procedure, the Guernseymen would often answer that at the time they had been prevented by 'a contrary wind.'
Mauds and Jordans
14th January 2016
Two similar and unpleasant cases from the first half of the 14th century, one in the time of Edward I, the second under Edward II. Original documents in Latin. The illustration is of a French girl of the period, from Mercuri and Bonnard's Costumes Historiques des XIIe-XVe siècles, Paris: A Lévy fils, 1860, I, p. 78, in the Library Collection.
Thomas Le Marchant on torture
6th January 2016
In Guernsey the authorities could, if they wished, make use of the jehennet, or 'Jenny,' better known as ... the rack. It appears, however, that they preferred strappado. The illustration is from Fox's Book of Martyrs, revised John Malham: London, Thomas Kelly, 1814, in the Library Collection.