1918.] QUAKERISM IN GUERNSEY. 125 



Guernsey they settled down about a mile from the town, and 

 Martha Howell and Priscilla Grurney soon came to stay with 

 them. For the next fourteen years Nicholas Naftel's diary is 

 a record of Quaker Ministers— both men and women — coming 

 to stay with them in Guernsey on " religious visits," or the 

 pilgrimages of himself and his wife, either to Quaker Meetings 

 in various towns or to various country districts, preaching the 

 tenets of their faith, testing the bona fides of new converts, and 

 working night and day in the cause of their religion. 



In the intervals of preaching, however, we find that 

 Nicholas Naftel and his brother, under the title of Messrs. 

 Naftel and Blanchemain, embarked in the West Indian Sugar 

 trade in addition to their clockmaking. This turned out to be 

 most lucrative, so much so that Nicholas wrote that his business 

 " took rather too much of my mind and time, hardly consistent 

 with the life of a Christian, wherefore we concluded to make a 

 stop, sold our large premises and wound up our business, having 

 installed Edward Richards (his wife's nephew) in the concern." 

 And at the end of 1804 Nicolas Naftel and his wife gave up 

 Guernsey as a residence. 



Eight years previously — in 1796 — their son Joshua had 

 died and they buried him in the spot Nicholas Naftel had 

 purchased for a " Friends Burying Place." The records at the 

 Greffe show that it was bought on the tenth of December 1796 

 from Hellier de Beaugy of St. Peter Port, by Nicolas Naftel, 

 in his name and " an nom de ses freres en Societe Religieuse 

 communement appeles Quakers." It consisted of a piece of 

 ground 44 feet square, situated at Les Vardes, south of the 

 property belonging to Robert McCrea, Esq., now known as 

 Montville. It was sold for 3 bushels of ground wheat rent and 

 210 livres tournois, one condition of the sale being that the 

 ground should be enclosed by a high wall, and that it should 

 not be used for any other purpose but a Quaker's Cemetery. 

 As a Cemetery it still remains, though only one corpse has been 

 buried there for many a long year. It is extraordinarily 

 haunting and impressive : a small square of ground enclosed in 

 high ivy covered walls ; a few trees, possibly self sown, dotted 

 about ; in the centre a half dead chestnut, with one large branch 

 hanging lifeless to the ground ; underneath it grows a small 

 clump of daffodils, the only gleam of brightness among the 

 prevailing green. For the whole ground is a tangle of grass 

 and ivy ; there are no headstones or monuments, nothing but a 

 slight ripple in the soil to indicate a grave. Yet over all 

 hovers the undefinable atmosphere of death, shut in from the 

 outer world by a tightly locked door in the wall. 



