78 



FEUDALISM IN GUERNSEY. 



be an extract from the rolls of the Exchequer of Rouen, 

 of the reign of William the Conqueror ; it is almost needless 

 to state that the Exchequer of Normandy had no existence 

 before the reign of Henry L, and that rolls of its proceedings 

 for the twelfth century even do not exist. According to this 

 remarkable document, William the Conqueror, having heard 

 that Guernsey had been ravaged by a pirate called Le 

 Grand Sarasin, who had established himself in "le chateau du 

 Grand Sarasin," on the site of the present Castol Church, 

 despatched his Esquire, Sampson d'Anneville, to expel him. 

 Sampson was successful and was given the Manor of 

 Anneville, which was said to have then included Fief du 

 Comte, as a reward. On the death of his son, Richard 

 d'Anneville, the manors were escheated to Robert, Count of 

 Mortain, the Conqueror's step-brother, who gave them to his 

 Esquire, Robert de Vere, whose son Baldwin sold them to Sir 

 William de Chesney. Well, Robert, Count of Mortain, was 

 dead before 1100, and Sir William de Chesney was still alive 

 in 1261 ; still Elizabeth's commissioners seem to have 

 swallowed this little difficulty of dates without question. 



Anneville passed from the Fashions to the Andros family in 

 1663, on the marriage of Charles Andros and Alice, daughter 

 and heiress of Thomas Fashion, and has remained to this day 

 in the hands of their descendants. The old Manor House 

 is mentioned in a charter of 1350, concerning the division of 

 the estate of Sir William de Chesney, by which Sir Edmund 

 de Chesney, his eldest son, who received as his portion the 

 Fief du Comte, stipulates that he shall have the use of 

 it whenever he shall come to the island. 



This manor has been looked upon as the most important 

 in the island, but it owes this position more to the accident of 

 its having been the residence of the de Chesneys and conse- 

 quently the head of their possessions in Guernsey, rather 

 than to any particular nobility of its tenure, for it was only 

 held by petty serjeantry of keeping the King's prisoners. 



Le Fief du Comte. 



This manor originally belonged to the Yicomtes du 

 Bessin, who, early in the reign of Henry I., became Earls of 

 Chester, and derives its name from this circumstance. Early 

 in the reign of Henry II. it passed into the hands of Geoffrey 

 Wake, whose descendants possessed it, until 1240, when Hugh 

 Wake granted it to Baldwin de Vere, to hold of him by 

 service of a half a knight's fee and the yearly payment of £6 

 sterling. It was one half of the original fief of the Vicomtes 



