266 SOCIAL LIFE IX GUERNSEY. 



disciples, the Reverend Nicolas Baudouin, to fill the vacant 

 living at St. Peter-Port. < ] > 



John Afteiywho was born at Calais, had been ordained in 

 London in 1560, was sent to the Island as Commissioner by 

 Elizabeth in 1561-1562, and was nominally dignified by the 

 title of Dean ; but he was evidently a poor creature and was 

 too busy filling his own pockets to bother about niceties of 

 ritual or observance. 



But there are many indications in our Records, both civil 

 and ecclesiastical, to prove that in some of the rural parts of the 

 Island, in those especially Avhere influential families of conser- 

 vative principles Avere located, the people clung with tenacity 

 to their old customs and beliefs. They might perhaps have 

 conformed to the Anglican forms and discipline — as indeed 

 they did in Edward VI. time — without much difficulty, but the 

 lack of reverence to all they held most dear and the strict 

 puritanical ride of the Genevan Church, especially as enforced 

 by an alien Dean and by refugee French pastors, met with 

 little favour in their eyes ; — for the wars with France were 

 too recent for any " entente cordiale " to be accepted by the 

 people. 



In 1564, two thousand of the inhabitants sent up to 

 England " Articles concerning the great disorder, not long 

 since introduced in religion in the Island of Guernsey by one 

 John After." The principal grounds of complaint were : 

 " That the said Dean will not allow the people to kneel in 

 Church : that should the name of Jesus be uttered in Church 

 no one dares lift his cap or bend his knee : that all Saints' days 

 and festivals, Sundays excepted, are kept as days of business 

 and toil : that the Office, the Sacrament and the Burial Service 

 are irreverently administered and quite contrary to the order 

 in Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book (" Livre de la Reine"): 

 that Church doors were always kept shut except during their 

 newly devised (" nouveau devise ") service : that no Church 

 bells were rung or tolled : that the organs were demolished, the 

 painted windows (" verrines aux histoires ") thrown down, and 

 the seats so shifted that the Choir could not be seen from the 

 Church door : that dead bodies were put under the ground by 



(1) In a letter from M. Chauvet (Calvin's nom-de-plume), Minister of St. 

 Gervais at Geneva, written to Guillaume de Beauvoir in 1559, he says :— 

 " Et comme de bon coeur recommande a vous Monsr. aussi fais-je a 

 Mine, votre femme, et la prie an nom de Dien de bien penser a son 

 salut et qu'elle sache qu'il lui fandra rendre compte de tout ce qu'elle 

 a vn et oui, et l'admonnete de servir d'exemple de par la ettd'edifier tant par bonne 

 doctrine que par Sainte Vie, et si le Seigneur avoit ouvre en elle vous prie de moj 

 faire savoir, et ce me seroit une grande joye. Si elle demeure en son etat, je conti- 

 nuerai d'avoir compassion de vous." (De Havilland MSS.) Who de Beauvoir's first 

 wife was we do not know. He married Thomasse de laMarche in 1571, and thirdly, 

 in 1576 he married Marguerite Uompton, daughter of the Bailiff. 



