1919.] EAHLY CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY. i9l 



service out uf the island in the host, or the array, except 

 under the personal command of the Duke of Normandy if 

 necessary to reconquer England, and exemption from all 

 feudal aids and tallages, in return for a yearly payment of 70 

 livres tournois. These privileges are stated by the jury at the 

 Inquisition held in 1248 to have been enjoyed in the time of 

 the kings, /.<?., of John, Richard and Henry II. (1) The posses- 

 sion of such privileges in the twelfth century, however, gives 

 us no right to assume that we were also possessed of the right 

 of election of our Jurats and other communal privileges, 

 especially as the same jury in 1248 positively asserts that it 

 was King John who instituted twelve Coronor-J urats after 

 the loss of Normandy to guard the pleas of the Crown, and 

 further authorised the Bailiff, with the assistance of the 

 Jurats, to try various minor possessory cases without a King's 

 writ. In the twelfth century only very few, less than ten, 

 important towns in Normandy were possessed of a Commune, 

 and the jurisdiction of their civic courts was not nearly so 

 great as ours in 1248. Until the loss of Normandy there was 

 no reason for such an out-of-the-way locality as the Channel 

 Islands to possess such privileges. Afterwards we became 

 an important outpost off an hostile country, guarding the 

 communications between England and Gascony. It was, 

 moreover, the common policy, both of John and of Philip 

 Augustus, to grant privileges of self-government to the 

 frontier towns of Normandy, Gascony and Poitou, at this 

 period, to gain over the inhabitants to their sides. 



(1) See Lettres Closes, Soc. Jersiaise, p. 43. Second Report, p. 291-293. 



