In 1408 the chaplain was Dom Toulley, who obtained an order from the Royal Court prohibiting any one from trespassing on the road leading to the chapel, it being reserved exclusively for persons attending divine service, or sick people visiting the fountain, the small coin left as an offering at the well being doubtless a perquisite belonging to the chaplain.
This chapel was originally endowed with some lands or rents, probably with the territory still known as Le Fief de la Chapelle, which is one of the many dependencies of the Fief Le Comte.
After the Reformation St. George became in some way the property of the de Jersey family,[82] and by the marriage of Marie de Jersey, an heiress, to Jacques Guille, which took place about the middle of the seventeenth century, it passed into the possession of the latter family, by whom it is still held. This Marie de Jersey made a gift of the chapel to the inhabitants of the Castel in about 1675 to serve as a school house. A more convenient building was erected in 1736 on the site of an old mill, and endowed with nine quarters of wheat rente by Marie de Sausmarez, widow of Mr. William Le Marchant, and the chapel ceased to be used as a school house. Bickerings as to rights of way across the estate, under the pretence that there was a thoroughfare leading to a public building, ensued, even after the removal of the school; so finally Mr. Guille ordered the chapel to be demolished, and only a few ruins are now left.
The Chapel of “Our Lady Mares”—Notre Dame des Marais—is thus mentioned in the Extente of Edward III., “Nostre Sire le Roy n’a rien des vacations des eglises et chapelles, fors la Chapelle de Nostre Dame des Maresqs qui vaut XXX lbts en laquelle iceluy Roy doit présenter en tems de la vacation, et l’Evesque de Coutance en a l’institution.” The chaplain then in possession, 1331, was Robert de Hadis.[83]
The other churches and chapels were not at this time in the gift of the Crown, but belonged to alien monasteries, Marmoutiers, Mont St. Michel, and Blanchelande. The chapel itself was, there is very little doubt, situated within the precincts of Le Château des Marais, now better known as Ivy Castle, and the Livres de Perchage of the Town parish of the time of Elizabeth and James I. mention certain fields in the vicinity as belonging to it.
The Hospice and Chapel of St. Julien was situated at the bottom of the Truchot, in the district called Le Bosq, close to the sea-shore. There are many “St. Julians” in the calendar, one of them being considered the special patron of travellers. In the title of his Legende MS. Bodleian, 1596, fol. 4, he is called “St. Julian the Gode herberjoue.” It ends thus:—
“Therefore, yet to this day, thei that over lond wende
Thei biddeth Saint Julian anon that gode herborw he hem sende.”
Chaucer had the familiar attribute of St. Julian before him when he described his “Francklyn” or country gentleman:—
“An householder, and that a grete, was he: