AN EMINENT Gl EKN8EYMAN. 



289 



should only be. allowed to send people to prison for martial 

 crimes, and not, as in this instance, for civil offences. 



John de Vic had married, for his first wife, Anne Carey e, 

 daughter of the Seigneur of Blanch el ande, but she died sud- 

 denly and mysteriously, and on the 26th of July, 1594, an 

 unhappy woman was sentenced by the Royal Court to be 

 burnt that selfsame day " until her body was reduced to 

 ashes " for having " compassed the death of the said Anne, as 

 well as divers others, by her sorcery and witchcraft."* The 

 Bailiff who conducted the trial was Louis de Vic, first cousin 

 to the plaintiff, but in those days no one would have dared to 

 raise an objection on that score. Four months later the easily- 

 consoled widower married Elizabeth Pageot, and she became 

 the mother of Henry de Vic. After a short time John de Vic 

 died and his widow re-married Henry Masham, an English- 

 man who had settled in the Island, and had been granted by 

 the Royal Commissioners appointed by Queen Elizabeth the 

 house and adjacent chapel belonging to the hospital of St. 

 J alien, and classed among those buildings "dedicated to super- 

 stitious uses "| wdiich, after the Reformation, were alienated 

 by the State from the Church to which they had been given. 

 It was here, in all probability, that Henry de Vic spent his 

 boyhood ; but he seems to have been sent to England at an 

 early age, probably to the care of that cousin, William de 

 Vic, who had been his father's ward, and who Avas doubly 

 related to him, both through the Fouaschins as well as through 

 the de Vies. 



This William de Vic was either half-brother or brother- 

 in-law to a Sir Thomas Edmunds, the English Ambassador in 

 Paris in 1616 and the Household Treasurer to King Charles 

 I. in 1624. 



I have failed to trace the exact relationship between 

 them, but I have seen letters written to each other signed 

 "your most lovinge brother," and in one of them, written in 

 December, 1596, Sir Thomas tells William de Vic that " Your 

 brother came hither, his onlie errand Avas to make sale of the 

 plate in gage . . [which] he and your sister would needs 

 make offers of the sale hereof first to me. I made him ansAver 

 that I was a beggar and not able to venture upon so great a 

 purchase, and returned manie thanks for their great kindness. 

 Whereupon he proceeded to the sale of it otherwise." Sir 

 Thomas had married as his second Avife the rich young AvidoAV 

 of Sir Francis Anderson, who had the additional recommend- 



* Guernsey Folklore," by Sir E. MacCulloch, p. 606. 

 t " Documens relatifs a l'lle de Guernesey," p. i2. 



