The Mulot, or Guernsey Vole: ours are biggest
From The Zoologist, May 15th 1906, in the Library.
Times Past, by Carel Toms
'In Guernsey, Alderney, Sark, and Herm.' A list of the chapters and personalities in this book, published in 1985; taken from his 'journalistic and photographic efforts of the last 30 years.' Many of these photographs are in the Library's Carel Toms Collection; please inquire for further information.
Indentures
Sample form for Louage d'un apprentif, from the Supplement to Thomas Le Frocq's Nouveau Precepteur, 1818, and actual indenture of 1711 from our collection.
Alderney and Sark, 1838: under a bright sun, there is beauty everywhere
Chamber’s Journal, 1838. 'Both Alderney and Serk enjoy an excellent climate, and on that account a few residents, chiefly retired officers, have fixed their abode in these islands. But the luxuries of life are too scarce to render the small Channel isles ever the chosen abode of the wealthy.' 'It may seem strange to say of any portion of the British dominions, that reading is unknown: such, however, is the case in Alderney.'
Dame Drillot
Mary, shown in the illustration in front of the Drillot's farmhouse, meets her future grandmother-in-law, a Guernsey farmer's widow, Marion Drillot; Marion's costume is described in detail. By Frances Carey Brock, from her moralistic but entertaining novel, Clear shining after rain: a Guernsey story, in the Library collection, published in 1871.
Court terms
A layman's guide to the workings of the Royal Court, from Mauger's Guernsey Almanac, 1823, including the Courts of Chief Pleas, Mobiliary, and Plaids d'Heritage.
Guernsey in America, 1924
From the Guernsey Free Churchman, December 1924 and January 1925.
Militia Drills, early 18th-century
The Library has in its extensive local militia collection a photocopy of what was no doubt a most invaluable document in its time: a suggested drill, and loading instructions for the flintlock musket, written in the early 18th century for the officers of the Guernsey militia by Phillips Loggers.
The French Prayer Book
A letter to the Editor of the Star newspaper from the Guernsey historian Edith Carey, 14 December 1926, concerning the history of the French Prayer Book, published for the islands, the first (unpopular) edition of which exists in only one copy, in the Lambeth Palace Library.
Census data, 1821
From the Gazette de Guernesey, 4th August 1821
The Anglo-Sarnian Alliance: a poem
A poem reproduced in J. Linwood Pitts' Guernsey and its Bailiwick, 1889.
Bail and rents
From the Report of the Royal Commissioners deputed to the Island of Guernsey in 1815, published by J. A. Chevalier and N. Mauger in Guernsey in 1817. This investigation into Guernsey law came about after vociferous complaints to the Crown by non-native residents, or Strangers, about their lack of property and other rights in the island, especially when it came to laws concerning debtors and creditors.