The accession of Charles II

10th June 2015
Sir Peter Lely, Henry de Vic, © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.
From the Notebook of Pierre Le Roy, edited by Rev. George Lee. In the picture is the redoubtable Sir Henry de Vic, whose influence with Charles II was instrumental in winning back the king's favour for the island after the Civil War. The portrait belongs to the Ashmolean Museum, who have kindly allowed us to reproduce it here. [WA.B.II.722 Sir Peter Lely, Sir Henry de Vic, Chancellor of the Order of the Garter, Black oiled chalk, heightened with white, on blue-grey paper, © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.]

Henry Turner and the Dreyfus Affair

1st June 2015
Henry Turner 1899, Dreyfus Scrapbook. Priaulx Library Collection
'Turner may have been a showman, a lover of publicity and maybe an eccentric in some respects. At the same time he had courage, generosity, a sense of kindness and a remorseless hatred for what he considered to be injustice. He was comparatively wealthy, and much of his riches was spent on the less fortunate. We could do with such a man in Guernsey today.' [Guernsey Evening Press, March 9, 1957.] [By Dinah Bott]

Cabbage

26th May 2015
Jersey cabbage stlaks from The Channel Islands by Lesser Columbus, 1894
F F Dally, in his Essay on the Agriculture of the Channel Islands, Barbet, 1860, in Channel Islands pamphlets X in the Library. The photograph is from The Channel Islands, by 'Lesser Columbus,' Southampton: London & South Western  Railway Company, 1895.

John Shipp, 1798

22nd May 2015
John Shipp, Memoirs &c, London: T Fisher Unwin, 1890, Priaulx Library Collection
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.)

Bad times: a Day of Prayer, May 1611

21st May 2015
Storms and drought, famine and barrenness, illness and illegality: an Extraordinary Meeting of Guernsey's Colloque, held 24 May 1611, in the presence of the Lieutenant, the ministers, and an elder representing each parish, to arrange a special day of fasting, prayer and humiliation. Such fasting days were, in fact, a quite common occurrence, and continued to be organized by the Church in conjunction with the secular authorities in times of trouble until relatively recently.

Book of General Orders, Anglo-Spanish Legion, 1836/7

18th May 2015
Gaspard Le Marchant as Governor of Nova Scotia. Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. R9266-2996 Peter Winkworth Collection of Canadiana
The Friends of the Priaulx Library generously contributed the money needed to buy this Order Book at a local auction. The Anglo-Spanish Legion was a voluntary force of the British Army, raised specifically to aid the Spanish during the Carlist Civil Wars of the 1830s. The Library is very grateful to all those who contributed towards the Friends' donation of this important material.

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