That vengeance still will guilt pursue,
Their dismal fate may teach.
[230] Editor’s Note.—I have also met with an account of the destruction of the Tower of Castle Cornet by lightning in 1672, in some old MSS. dated 1719, where the visitation is ascribed to the sins of the people!
[231] Editor’s Note.—On the slope of the hill rising to the south of Perelle Bay there is also a spot called “La Bataille,” and about a quarter of a mile further inland another spot called “L’Assaut.” This probably refers to some other conflict.—From J. de Garis, Esq.
The Recapture of Sark.
At the beginning of the present century, when little more was known of the Norman Islands than their names, it might have been necessary, in speaking of Sark, to describe where it is situated. Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, Sark, and Man, were always associated together in Acts of Parliament and in school books for teaching children geography; and while there were many who believed the five to form but one group, there were many others who would have been very much puzzled to point out on the map the precise situation of any one of them. Now, thanks to the incessant intercourse with England by means of steam, and the attractions the islands present as resorts for tourists and excursionists, they are as well known as most watering places on the English coast.
Sark, though the smallest of the group, is by many considered the most beautiful of the Channel Islands, and, certainly in point of rock and cliff scenery, combined with the ever-varying effects of sea and sky, there are few lines of coast, of the same extent, that can compare with it. So precipitous are the shores on all sides, that there are very few spots where a landing can be effected, and in former days it would not have been difficult to repel an invader, merely by rolling down stones from the heights.
Of the history of Sark but little is known. St. Maglorius, a Briton from South Wales, who succeeded his kinsman, St. Samson, Bishop of Dol, about the year 565, in that see, gave up a few years afterwards his pastoral charge to his successor, St. Budoc, and retired to end his days in meditation and prayer in Sark, where he established a convent and college for training young men as missionaries to the neighbouring nations. As a priory, dependent probably on some one or other of the large monasteries in Normandy, this convent was still in existence in the reign of Edward III., but the wars between this monarch and the French king, seem to have been the cause of the monks withdrawing themselves entirely from the island about the year 1349. After the departure of the monks, Sark appears to have become the resort of pirates, who did so much injury to the trade of the Channel, that, in 1356, a vessel belonging to the port of Rye was fitted out by the merchants of that town and of Winchelsea to endeavour to expel this band of marauders. This they succeeded in doing, and are said to have effected an entry into the island by means of a stratagem, which Sir Walter Raleigh, sometime Governor of Jersey, where he may be supposed to have gained his information, relates as having occurred in the reign of Queen Mary, and attributes to the crew of a Flemish ship.
We copy Sir Walter Raleigh’s account of the re-taking of Sark, from his History of the World, Part I., Book IV., chapter XI., p. 18, but must premise by saying that he is incorrect in stating that Sark had been surprised by the French in the reign of Queen Mary. It was in the year 1549, during the reign of her brother Edward VI., that the French, being at war with England, and finding the island uninhabited, landed four hundred men and took possession of it. The anonymous author of Les Chroniques de Jersey, written apparently in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in noticing the recapture of Sark by Flemings, says nothing of the stratagem, but simply that, guided by some Guernseymen, they landed at night and overpowered the French garrison, which, at that time, was very much reduced in numbers.