It has been suggested that the Clameur de Haro should be included among the civic customs peculiar to the Channel Islands. (See [p.p. 59-77]), so, as Sir Edgar MacCulloch had not mentioned it in his MSS. I have ventured to include a short description of it in the Appendix.
The “Clameur de Haro,” abolished in Normandy, A.D., 1583, is, perhaps, the most ancient and curious legal survival in the Channel Islands.
Should a Channel Islander consider his estate to be injured, or his rights to be infringed, by the action of another, in the presence of two witnesses he kneels on the ground and says:—
“Haro! Haro! Haro! à l’aide mon Prince! on me fait tort!” and he then repeats the Lord’s Prayer in French.
This formula, which is tantamount to an injunction to stay proceedings, causes all obnoxious practices to be suspended until the case has been tried in Court, when the party who is found to be in the wrong is condemned to a fine and a “Regard de Château,” which, in former times, meant a night’s imprisonment. All “Clameurs,” according to an ordonnance of October 1st, 1599, have to be registered at the Greffe within twenty-four hours, on penalty of being “convict en sa clameur,” and, should no proceedings be taken within a year of the clameur, it is considered to have lapsed.
An order of Queen Elizabeth relative to Guernsey, given at Richmond, October 9th, 1580, decides that “yt shall not be lawfull to appeale in anie cause criminell, or of correction, nor from the execution of anie order taken in their Courte of Chief Pleas, nor in cries of Haro.”[338]
One of the most important occasions on which this prerogative was used happened in the year 1850, when it was in contemplation to demolish the ancient fortifications of Castle Cornet, but the late Mr. Martin F. Tupper, who was then on a visit to Guernsey, had recourse to this form of appeal, and saved the oldest parts of the fortress from demolition. An extraordinary instance of a “Clameur” took place in the Church of Sark on the 14th of December, 1755. A great dispute had arisen between Dame Elizabeth Etienne, widow of Mr. Daniel Le Pelley, Seigneur of Sark, and the ecclesiastical authorities of Guernsey, as to in whose gift was the living of the Church of Sark. She appointed a Mr. Jean Févot to the Church, and when Mr. Pierre Levrier, who had been appointed by the Dean of Guernsey to this post, arrived in Sark to perform the service, he found Mr. Févot in the pulpit. He then and there, in the words of various scandalized eye-witnesses, “interjetta une Clameur de Haro, environ les deux heures d’après-midi, dans le tems qu’il avoit commencé à lire le service Divin.”[339] This of course led to many disputes, and for over a year Dame Le Pelley locked up the Church of Sark, and allowed no one to enter it. Finally, after much litigation, and threats of major excommunication from the Guernsey Ecclesiastical Court, the Bishop of Winchester intervened, Pierre Levrier was forcibly ejected from the island, and, in 1757, Mr. Cayeux Deschamps was given the living.
Four cases of “Clameurs” were registered between the years 1880-90, and an instance occurred as recently as 1902.
There has been much controversy as to the origin of the word “Haro.” Terrien, (Coutûme de Normandie, Edition 1684, p. 104), ascribes it to Rollo, Duke of Normandy, Ha-Ro, and says “La seule prononciation de son nom, même après tant de siècles a cette vertu, qu’elle engage ceux contre lesquels on s’en sert à cesser leurs entreprises et atenter rien au-de-là.” Laurence Carey, in his essay on the Laws and Customs of the Island, and all the other old writers say likewise, but modern philologists, such as Le Héricher and George Métivier have disputed this theory, and have resolved the word “Haro” into a “cri de charge,” which has survived as such in the English “Hurrah.” Froissart employs it frequently as the sound of combat: “Le Haro commença à monter,” and, in the description of the battle of Bouvines, won from the Germans and English in 1214, by Guillaume Guiart, who died in 1306 we find:—