Library Book Collection

The Family of Major-General John Gaspard Le Marchant

'I am determined to rise to the head of my profession and nothing but death will stop me.' J. Gaspard Le Marchant was born into one of the most influential and possibly the wealthiest family in Guernsey. His was one of the most illustrious careers in the history of the the British Army, in which he single-mindedly founded the Royal Military College and revolutionised the training of officers. Highly esteemed by Wellington, he died a glorious if unnecessary death in 1812 at the Battle of Salamanca, following which a monument to him was erected in St Paul's Cathedral at public expense.

Hirzel Frederick de Lisle and Mary Carey, Pre-nuptial agreement, 1832

From the De Lisle family file in the Library (No. 9). 'Articles of agreement made in the Island of Guernsey, on the Sixth day of October, In the year of our Lord 1832, by and between Hirzel Frederick de Lisle Esquire, son of the late Hirzel De Lisle Esquire, of the said Island, of the one part, Mary Carey, Spinster, daughter of John Carey Esquire, son of John, of the said Island, of the second part, and the said John Carey Esquire, of the third part. Bear witness.' The illustration is of Hirzel de Lisle's house, Hirzelbourne, now Swissville. The woodcut is by Dr Thomas Bellamy and was published in 1843 in his Pictorial Directory and Stranger's Guide to Guernsey.

Nicolas De Garis, conscientious objector, 1805

By H D Olivier, from The Guernsey Free Churchman, March 1932, p. 23. 'Not honesty in the abstract but Honest is my name. And I want the kind of person I am to match what I am called.' The portrait is of a sympathizer, Etienne Gibert, Rector of St Andrew, the frontispiece of his biography, published in Toulouse in 1889, by Daniel Benoît, Les Frères Gibert, du désert et du refuge. This book includes the life of his brother Louis, also a Protestant minister, who emigrated to South Carolina. 

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