TEE JERSEY, ALDERNEY AND GUERNSEY COW, II 



gentility possible to conceive. All these have preserved 

 to this day their ancient forms through all the political 

 disturbances of eight centuries. When the Norman 

 mail-clad warriors debated at Rouen the question of 

 their invasion of Saxon England, many of the lords of 

 feudal territories in the Channel Islands were in the 

 conclave, just as some of their grandsons took part in 

 the other great march eastward of those fearless buc- 

 caneers under Godfrey of Bouillon, whose castle still 

 looks over the narrow strait of seven miles of stormy 

 sea dividing Coutances and Jersey. Channel-Islanders 

 fought with Roger in the conquest of Sicily, and routed 

 Alexis, the Emperor of Constantinople, on the shore of 

 Butrinto. This story is ludicrously particularized by 

 the Emperor's daughter, Anna Comnena, the historian 

 of her times. The expedition, which sailed from Sicily 

 for the conquest of the Eastern world, met with misfor- 

 tune from its outset Storms and tempests, hunger and 

 finally disease had thinned their ranks and broken their 

 pride, so that the Byzantine army found their tents ten- 

 anted by only five hundred knights, attenuated by short 

 commons and prostrated by fever— 



'Their gesture sad, 

 Investing lank, lean cheeks and war-worn coats, 

 Presenteth them unto the gazing moon 

 So many horrid ghosts' — 



as the genius of Shakspeare portrayed the famished 

 host of Plantagenet Henry's ragged array at Agincourt 

 No wonder that the rich and overfed Orientals treated 



