Saint Julian he was in his own contré.”
The rock on which travellers to the island used to land, now the foundation of the harbour, was “La Roche St. Julien,” and probably the hospital, being situated near a landing place, was intended as a refuge for travellers, and therefore dedicated to him. This chapel was founded in the year 1361, the thirty-fifth of the reign of Edward III., at the time when Sir John Maltravers was Governor of the islands. The founder was a certain Petrus de St. Petro, or Pierre de St. Peye, as we find it written in French. Permission was granted him by the Crown to found the said hospital or alms house for a master, brethren and sisters, in a certain spot near Bowes (Le Bosq,—this word was evidently Boués, Bois, a wood, with which the word Bouët is also identical), in the parish of St. Peter Port, and to endow it with twenty vergées of land and eighty quarters of wheat rent, out of which certain dues were to be paid to the King. “La Petite École,” or parish school, which has from time immemorial been situated in this vicinity, was originally connected with St. Julian. It is generally believed that the school was founded in 1513 by Thomas Le Marchant and Jannette Thelry, his wife.
At the Reformation the chapel and hospital were suppressed, and its revenues and possessions seized by the Crown. The parishioners of St. Peter Port complained to the Royal Commissioners of 1607 of the alienation of this property, which they looked upon as belonging to the parish, but their complaint was not attended to. In the early part of the century there were the remains of an old house, in a late debased Gothic style of the fifteenth century, standing at the bottom of Bosq Lane, which used to be looked upon as the remains of a conventual building. The house in question was a residence of a branch of the de Beauvoir family, whose arms were carved in stone over the principal entrance. The stones forming this entrance were preserved, and are now in the ruins of the Chapel of St. George.
With the exception of the Franciscan Friary, there is no proof of any conventual establishments in the island, though tradition points to La Haye-du-Puits as being the site of an old convent. Doubtless in early times, and before the English had lost Normandy, the great monasteries which held lands in Guernsey may have had priories here. Mont St. Michel we know had the Priory of St. Michel du Valle, and there is some reason to believe that Blanchelande also had some establishment of the kind in the island. How the Abbeys of Marmoutier, La Rue Frairie, Croix St. Lenfroy and Caen, all of which had possessions in the island, managed them, we have no means of knowing, though it was most likely by the machinery of a feudal court.
We will now speak of the Priories of St. Michel du Valle and Notre Dame de Lihou.
A tradition, which may be traced up to the time of Edward II., says that certain monks, driven from Mont St. Michel for their dissolute lives, settled in the Vale parish and founded an abbey about the year 968 A.D. The same authority informs us that they reformed their lives and became famous for their sanctity, and that when Robert, Duke of Normandy, visited the island in the year 1032, having been driven here by stress of weather while on his way to England with a fleet to the help of his nephew, Edward the Confessor, he confirmed them in the possession of the lands they had acquired. The same tradition also says that in the year 1061 certain pirates attacked and pillaged the island, and that their leader “Le Grand Geoffroy,” or “Le Grand Sarasin,” had his stronghold on the site of what is now the Castel Church. Complaint having been made to Duke William, he sent over Samson d’Anneville, who succeeded, with the aid of the monks, in driving them out. For this service they were rewarded by the Duke with a grant of one half of the island, comprising, besides the Vale, what are now the parishes of the Castel, St. Saviour’s, and St. Peter’s-in-the-Wood. This grant they divided between them, and the monks, in right of their priory, held that portion of the lands which is still known as Le Fief St. Michel. The rest is now comprised for the most part in the Fiefs Le Comte and Anneville and their dependencies. To the south-east of the Vale Church is an old farm house which still bears the name of L’Abbaye, and which, without doubt, occupies the site of the original priory. Even at the present day, it is easy to trace part of the walls of the earlier edifice, which, however, was in a ruinous state as early as the reign of Henry IV., for we find Sir John de Lisle, Governor of Guernsey, writing to the Privy Council about the year 1406 for permission to use the timber of the building for the repairs of Castle Cornet, and alleging in his letter that the priory had fallen into decay, and giving as a reason for his request that in consequence of the war it was impossible to procure timber either from Normandy or Brittany.
The names of a few priors have survived. It is not quite clear whether a certain Robert, whose name appears as witness to the deed by which Robert, Abbot of Mont St. Michel, during a visit which he made to the island in 1156, appointed Guillaume Gavin, monk, to the chaplaincy of St. George, was Prior of the Vale or not. He is styled in the deed Priest and Dean of the Vale (de Walo). In 1249 Henry, Canon of Blanchelande, was collated to the Vale Church by special dispensation. About 1307 Johannes de Porta was prior (probably a Du Port, a family of considerable antiquity in the island, and of good standing). In 1312 Guillaume Le Feivre filled the office. In 1323 Renauld Pastey was Prior of the Vale, and had a lawsuit with the inhabitants of that and other parishes concerning tithes. In 1331 there was another dispute concerning tithes, which was referred to the arbitration of two monks, Guillaume Le Feivre and Jourdain Poingdestre, who had both formerly been priors. In the year 1335 Andreas de Porta, 1364-68, Geoffrey de Carteret, and in 1365 Denis Le Marchant, clerk, was appointed seneschal of the Court of St. Michel.
According to the ballad known as “La Descente des Arragousais,” “Brégard”[84] was the monk in charge of the priory in 1372, and by his intrigues the Vale Castle fell into the hands of the enemy, which was evidently a legend current at the time. Guillaume Paul, alias Règne, in 1478, is the last prior of whom we have found mention.
The Priory of Lihou, as has been already said, was a dependency of St. Michel-du-Valle. The ruins of the church and other buildings are still to be seen. The former was entire at a time long subsequent to the Reformation, and is said to have been destroyed at the command of one of our Governors to prevent the possibility of its serving as an entrenchment in case of an enemy landing on the islet. It appears to have replaced a still more ancient building, as many pieces of Caen stone, with well-executed Norman mouldings, are built into the walls. Probably the first building had been destroyed in some of the many inroads to which the island was subjected during the reign of Edward III.
An incumbent of Lihou, with the title of prior, existed until the time of the Reformation.