12 THE JERSEY, ALDERNEY AND GUERNSEY COW 



them as the Constable of France did the famished 

 Englishmen — offered them ransom, *that their souls 

 might make a peaceful retire from off the fields where, 

 wretches, their poor bodies must lie and fester/ But 

 such terms did not suit the Norman mind. They 

 donned their rusty armor, and gave the Emperor so 

 hearty a lesson that his daughter chronicles that he 

 never stopped in his headlong retreat till he reached 

 the gates of the Hellespont. He never tried them 



agam. 



** Of course, during the reign of the first five kings, 

 Normandy was part of the English realm ; but when 

 King John was defeated by Philip Augustus, and the 

 French wrested it from his sceptre, the Channel Islands 

 had to make their choice of nationality, and they fol- 

 lowed their crown. Since that day there has never 

 been war between the two nations but a descent has 

 been made and successfully resisted, but not one sun's 

 setting has witnessed the French flag on their shores, 

 though many a bloody day has been fought out between 

 the stout islanders and their near neighbors. The 

 inventory of the families and their lands of King John's 

 day is still extant. The heraldic records, and many of 

 the deeds of knights' service and other feudal tenures 

 of possession, still remain in the Herald's College of 

 Rouen, the caf)ital of the ancient duchy to which they 

 then belonged. The law-courts, the petty jurisdictions, 

 even the terms, are all Norman French, as is all the 

 language of agricultural labor, to this day. Hence, 



