Religion

Canon Anselm Bourde de la Rogerie

3rd October 2017
The obituary of a learned and popular priest, who had spent 50 years in Guernsey. From The Guernsey Press, 16th December 1954. Anslem Bourde de la Rogerie was an erudite man who wrote learned articles on the history of the island. He gathered together invaluable information about Victor Hugo and the time he spent in Guernsey and published it in 1944 as Victor Hugo à Guernesey.

The story of Archbishop Mauger

11th May 2017
By Joseph-Laurent Couppey of Cherbourg, extract from 'Notice sur l'histoire des iles anglaises de Jersey, Guernesey et Aurigny, dans ses rapports avec l'histoire de la Normandie et spécialement du département de la Manche,' published in the Revue anglo-française, Poitiers, 1833, pp. 305-7. [From the French.]

A letter from Quebec, 1817

25th August 2016
'Report from the missions: a letter from Monsieur de Putron, to the Editor. Quebec, January 1, 1817.' From the Magasin Méthodiste, 1818, p. 91, addressed to Jean de Queteville, Methodist pioneer and founder and editor of the magazine. Guernsey began very early to export French-speaking missionaries all over the world; poor Jean de Putron, however, felt let down by his Guernsey accent and inferior French, as spoken in Guernsey.

Michelle and the minister I: the case is presented

8th June 2016
A translation of an inquest conducted over several months in 1593 by the Colloque, or Assembly, of Bailiwick Churches. The Puritan ministers and elders had here to deal with a dreadful scandal. This piece had a genuine villain: Pierre Le Roy, known as du Bouillon, a church minister who had escaped the massacres of 1572. Formerly minister of the parish of Baron, in Calvados, he was now a refugee, in charge of the parishes of St Pierre-du-Bois and Torteval. The inquiry is full of the detail of the life of ordinary Guernsey people, who gave evidence to the assembly. Michelle Palot, a maidservant to Madame du Bouillon, the minister's wife, was the subject of continued harassment by du Bouillon. Having a baby out of wedlock was highly frowned upon, the mother usually having to do public penance and the father, once ascertained, jailed for a couple of weeks, and forced to marry the mother or at least support the child; but when Michelle was questioned by the authorities as to who had fathered her baby, she gave them a most unexpected answer. 

Etienne Gibert to Nicolas Rabey, 1800

28th January 2016
By George Rabey, in The Guernsey Free Churchman, Vol. VI (3) March, p. 27. 'A good 126 years ago now ...' The detail is of Etienne Gibert (1736-1817) amongst the crowd in Matthias Finucane's Market-Place, Guernsey, 1809. He is here aged about 73. For a somewhat less quirky portrait of him see Nicolas De Garis, conscientious objector; there is a third portrait of him, exhibiting considerably more dignitas, in the Library collection.

Jean de Queteville's son

3rd November 2015
Guernsey's first Methodist preacher Jean de Queteville writes about his son Jean in his Magasin Méthodiste of 1818, twenty-five years after the little boy's death. The portrait of de Queteville is from Henri de Jersey's Vie du Rév. Jean de Queteville, avec de nombreux extraits de sa correspondance, et un abrégé de la vie de Madame de Queteville, London: J Mason, and Guernsey: Mademoiselle de Queteville, St Jacques, 1847.

To Madame Andros from Peter de Jerzey, 1662

19th October 2015
A letter transcribed in Andros correspondence, a 19th-century notebook which belonged to Charles Andros. To Madame Andros, en la Court de sa Majesté de la Grand Bretaigne. Peter de Jersey was the minister of the Town Church from 1659 through the Restoration until the turmoil of 1662, when he was replaced by Huguenot refugee Pierre Jannon. Mme Andros was the wife of the prominent royalist Amias Andros. She was Elizabeth Stone; her brother Sir Robert Stone was cupbearer to the Queen of Bohemia and captain of a cavalry troop in Holland. In the early years of the war she left the island for St Malo, but on the way was captured by the parliamentary forces and returned to her enemies in Guernsey. In 1645 she managed to escape from the beseiged Castle Cornet to Jersey, leaving her husband behind; they did not see each other again for nine years.

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