It may be as well to give here a copy of the pedigree of Mauger, of Jobourg, in Normandy.
“Extrait de la Généalogie de la Famille du Mauger à Jobourg en Normandie au Cap La Hague.
“Le Duc de Normandie, nommé Guillaume le Conquérant, éleva son cousin d’Evreux, nommé Mauger, à l’Archevêché de Rouen en la troisième année de son règne en Normandie. Le Seigneur Archevêque, menant une vie non conforme à sa dignité, attira sur lui la haine du Duc, son bienfaiteur, qui le fit reléguer a l’île de Greneseye; il prit terre en ce lieu avec son frère Gautier Mauger, sur la côte et paroisse de St. Martin, et après avoir passé quelques années en ce lieu il péri au ras de Bartleur, après avoir prédit sa mort. Son frère Gautier eut plusieurs fils naturels, dont deux nommés Léopold et Théodore: Léopold épousa Pauline de Carteret, fille et seule héritière de Samuel de Carteret, Ecuyer, Seigneur du Castel, et Théodore ne maria point, et laissa deux fils et une fille naturels, l’un nommé Paul, l’autre nommé Rodolphe, et la fille nommée Cléotilde. Les deux fils furent mariés; l’un épousa Sandirez Lampeirier ou Lampereur de Jersey, et Rodolphe épousa Marie Careye de Greneseye. Paul eut plusieurs fils, dont deux nommé Alexandre et Gautier, comme son premier père, lequel fut chassé de l’île de Jersey, avec deux des fils de Rodolphe qu’il avait eus de Marie Careye; les autres enfans sortis de Rodolphe furent à Greneseye, demeurant sur l’héritage de leur mère en l’année 1399. Gautier fit plusieurs acquêts à Jobourg à la Hague, où il établit sa demeure, après avoir quitté Jersey, et fut marié à une des filles de Pierre de Mary, Seigneur de Jobourg, en l’année 1418. Gautier engendra Toussaint et Jacques, le dernier repassa à Greneseye pour prendre possession d’un héritage par succession, et Toussaint resta à Jobourg; de Toussaint naquit Fabien; de Fabien naquit Chaille; et Chaille engendra Pierre; de Pierre Chaille, qui vivoit encore en 1570; à l’egard de Léopold, qui avait epousé Pauline de Carteret, nous n’avons point, pour le present, de connaissance de sa généalogie.
“Les Armoiries des Mauger (descendant de Guillaume le Conquérant, Duc de Normandie) sont une ancre et des roses au dessus du dit ancre. Tiré de la Heraudrie, et approuvé du dit Duc.”[229]
[228] Editor’s Note.—And at the Assizes held in Guernsey in 1319, a “Rauf Mauger” appears among the landowners of St. Martin’s parish. The same name—“Rauf Mauger”—appears in the Extent of 1331; “Richard Mauger” in a Perchage of Blanchelande, (undated, but made before 1364). In 1364 another “Rauf Mauger” appears among the Jurymen of St. Martin’s summoned to adjudicate on the rights of the Abbot of Blanchelande; and a Richard Mauger, of St. Martin’s parish, is mentioned in the “Bille de Partage” of Denis Le Marchant in 1393.
[229] Editor’s Note.—The obvious inaccuracy of this pedigree can be judged by only nine generations being given to supply the interval of 515 years, 1055-1570. Thirty-three and a quarter years are generally allowed for a generation, so that to give any appearance of probability, at least sixteen generations would have to be accounted for.
The Ballad of Ivon de Galles.
Before the invention of printing, oral tradition was almost the only way in which the people—generally ignorant of writing or reading—could transmit the recollection of facts and circumstances which they deemed worthy of being remembered; and it was soon discovered that versification afforded a very strong aid to memory. Hence arose that species of metrical tale which we call a ballad. These ballads, passing from mouth to mouth, soon became corrupted. Whole verses were sometimes omitted, by which the thread of the story was lost or rendered obscure, and others were supplied by borrowing from the work of another bard, or by the invention of the reciter. Nevertheless, in the historical ballads, facts and details were often preserved which had escaped the notice of the more regular chroniclers.
Whether, in former days, Guernsey could boast of any number of these metrical histories, it is now impossible to say. Unless we include in this category, a sort of “complainte,” written in 1552 by the Roman Catholic priests, whom the progress of the doctrines of the Reformation had driven out of their cures, the ballad of “Ivon de Galles, ou la descente des Aragousais,” is the only one which has come down to us.[230] Many copies of it have been preserved, differing but slightly from each other in the main, although there are one or two verbal differences of some importance. Most of the copies conclude with the twentieth verse, but some have a second part, consisting of six stanzas, and purporting to give an account of Ivon’s adventures after he left Guernsey, and the subsequent melancholy fate of himself and his fleet. As this account is quite different from what has come down to us in history, it is probably the work of some later bard, who wished to make the story more complete than he found it, and by a sort of poetical justice to punish Ivon and his followers for the evil they had inflicted on the island.