HE EM. 



Paper read before the Society on June 15th f 1889, by 

 the Rev. O. E. Lee, M.A., F.S.A. 



The earliest document extant, which illustrates the history 

 of Herm, informs us that Duke Robert of Normandy gave the 

 Islet, together with one half of Guernsey, and the islands of 

 Sark and Alderney, to the great Benedictine Abbey of Mont 

 St. Michel. That Abbey was not long left in undisturbed pos- 

 session of the island, for Duke Robert's illustrious son, William 

 the^ Conqueror, made it over to the famous Augustinian Convent 

 of Notre Dame du Voeu, near Cherbourg. In the hands of 

 these new owners Herm remained as long as the Norman 

 monks held any property in the English Islands. Mr. Tupper, 

 in his History of Guernsey, quotes a statement of the Abbe Le 

 Canu, to the effect that Sark and Herm anciently formed one 

 parish. This is quite without foundation. There exists still at 

 Coutances a copy of a famous work of the middle of the 13th cen- 

 tury, called the Livre Noir. That work contains an account of 

 the parishes in the Diocese of Coutances, with the names of the 

 Churches, their patrons, and the value of their benefices. We 

 learn therefrom that there was a church in the islands dedicated 

 to S. Tugual, a Breton Bishop. Some writers have supposed 

 that S. Tugual's was the Church of Alderney, but this cannot 

 be, for we have more than one document to prove that the 

 Alderney Church, like that of Sark and several others in the 

 Deanery of Guernsey, was dedicated to S. Mary the Virgin. 



