60 



FEUDALISM IN GUERNSEY. 



and viscounties, the latter granted to prominent chiefs of the 

 Norman host. These viscounts, if not from the first here- 

 ditary, soon became so, and by the eleveuth century were the 

 representatives of the duke in the provinces committed to 

 their charge. To them the abbots and bishops looked for 

 help from the oppressions of the barons. We have no reason 

 to suppose that the administrative and judicial powers of our 

 two viscounts over the tenants of their fiefs in Guernsey were 

 not as full and complete as those they possessed on the main 

 land. Their courts, composed as were similar feudal courts 

 in Normandy, of a seneschal or bailli, sitting as president, 

 with their suitors or chief tenants, as judges, would have 

 judged all causes of their tenants, have held pleas of the 

 sword as well as pleas of land and chattels.* The few cases 

 reserved for the duke's judgment would not have been suffi- 

 cient to warrant the assumption that anything approaching a 

 permanent local ducal court was in existence in the island at 

 this period. Assault iu the duke's court, or on the way to or 

 from it, offences committed in the host, or within a week or 

 its setting forth or its return, offences against pilgrims, and 

 violations of coinage, being the only causes reserved for the 

 duke's judgment by the " Consuetudines et Justii " of William 

 the Conqueror 109 l.f 



The reign of Stephen probably ushered in a new era of 

 our history. Stephen was the chosen king of both the 

 English and Norman barons who hated the Angevin Geoffrey. 

 The latter's first attempt to conquer Normandy, to establish 

 his wife Matilda's claims, failed conspicuously, and it required 

 two years of Stephen's mis-rule to pave the way for his second 

 and successful attempt in 1138. Both our overlords were 

 partisans of Stephen. Ranulph, Earl of Chester, was a 

 strong supporter of his up to 1140, though he afterwards 

 changed sides frequently during the civil wars, as occasions 

 offered for his own advantage. Roger, Vicomte du Cotentin, 

 was one of Stephen's justiciars, and chief supporters in 

 Normandy, and was killed in an ambuscade by the partisans 

 of Geoffrey of Anjou, in 1138. The result when Geoffrey 

 became master of our island must have been the forfeiture 

 of their fiefs, which probably may account for the altered 

 condition of the island when we next hear of it under 

 Henry II. 



* Pollock & Maitland's History of English Laio, Vol. I., p. 72, and F. M. 

 Powiche's Angevin Administration of Normandy.— English Historical Review, 

 October, 1906, pp. 635-615-647. 



t English Historical Review, July 1908, p. 503. 

 The Norman Consuetudines et Justii of William the Conqueror, Professor C. 

 H. Haskins. 



