GUERNSEY HISTORY. 



109 



Carteret, Seigneur of St. Ouen, was a fugitive in Normandy, 

 and only received pardon about ten years later.* Of what 

 happened in Guernsey we hear little, probably we were no 

 better than our neighbours ; one fugitive we do know of 

 who may, or may not have been a Guernseyman, and that 

 was Stephen Coquerel, Rector of St. Peter-Port. f 



Note the hurry in which this charter of confirmation was 

 granted. There was no time to define our privileges, although 

 they had been under consideration for over thirty years ; this 

 was left for the future, when, had opportunity arrived, 

 the whole question could have been re-opened de novo. The 

 hundred years' war intervened, and England, in a death 

 struggle with France, had not time to attend to our affairs. 

 Then followed the Wars of the Roses, and when peace again 

 prevailed under Henry VII., no attempt was made to define 

 them, but each successive English sovereign confirmed them 

 on the lines of Edward III.'s charter. We were left to 

 develop our constitution on the lines laid down in our claims 

 made before the justices in 1331 ; the " Precepte d'Assize " 

 in 1441 marking a further step of development ; but it was 

 only in the reign of Queen Elizabeth that our privileges 

 were defined, and the Precepte d'Assize received royal 

 sanction and became the " Magna Charter " of our constitu- 

 tion. 



To complete the history of this period we must go back 

 to the siege of Castle Cornet, which we left in the hands 

 of the French in 1340. 



During the truce which lasted from September, 1340, to 

 the summer of 1342, the French remained in peaceable posses- 

 sion of the castle. In that interval the king had strengthened 

 Jerbourg Castle, and re-organised the defence of the island. J 

 On the renewal of the war in 1342, the siege of Castle Cornet 

 recommenced, and in the accounts of Thomas de Hampton, we 

 have details of the force of the beseigers, and of the blockade 

 of the castle to prevent communication with Normandy. 

 Towards the end of the summer, about the beginning of 

 August, the English force sent to Brittany with the Countess 

 de Montfort and Robert d'Artois passed our islnnd, and after 

 leaving it encountered the fleet of Don Louis of Spain, when 

 the famous naval battle took place, in which the Countess 

 fought like a man among the knights. Another truce 

 followed in the spring of 1343, which found Castle Cornet 

 still unconquered, and the siege was again abandoned for the 



* Cal. Patent Rolls, 1350-1354, p. 174. Letter of Pardon for him dated 5 Nov , 1351. 

 t Cal. Patent Rolls, 1350-1354, p. 534, Dec. 1, 1353. 

 t Cal. Close Rolls, 1342, p. 179. 



