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AN EMINENT GUE RN SEYM AN. 



that on the following Sunday it should be announced by the 

 town cryer, to the congregations of the Vale and St. 

 Sampson's while issuing from Church, that they should no 

 longer tie their horses to the garden wall of La Plaiderie 

 garden, belonging to Mr. Henry de Vic, on pain of a fine 

 of 18 livres tournois. The Royal Court then sat at La 

 Plaiderie, although it was nothing but a mere barn and 

 so tumbling to pieces as to be almost dangerous, but being 

 situated in the Pollet and thus at the northern extremity of 

 the town, we can understand that the inhabitants of the 

 northern parishes found it much more convenient to tie up 

 their horses there than to ride them through the narrow 

 ill-paved streets, sloping down to a deep gutter or rather 

 open drain, in the centre, and bordered with high projecting 

 houses, which almost met up above, as were all the principal 

 thoroughfares of the town in those days. We can imagine 

 what these streets must have been like on market days 

 from a Petition about the Market Halls which some of the 

 principal inhabitants sent up in the year 1670, which says : 

 " The common Halls anciently appointed for this place of 

 Markett have been neglected, and a most beastly and incon- 

 venient custome introduced of hanging up their beefes and 

 other slaine beasts for sale along the houses of the High 

 Streete, and in the same streete they are cutt out, divided, 

 and sold ; the fish likewise bee laid out and exposed to sale 

 in the same open streets, which, being narrow enough of 

 themselves, are so straightened by it for divers houres of 

 every day in the weeke, but the Sundays, that they are 

 rendered in a manner impassable." 



In connection with this we must remember that the 

 houses bordering High Street were not shops as they are 

 now, but the private dwelling houses of the Le Marchants, 

 de Beauvoirs, Bonamys, Tuppers, de Sausmarezs, Careys, 

 Priaulx, Dobrees, &c, and we can realize what grounds they 

 must have had for signing this petition. 



We all know that at that time the Vale Parish was 

 practically a peninsula, at high tides being only connected 

 to the island by bridges, and that the Braye du Valle — as 

 the inlet through which the tide rushed was called — was only 

 filled in, at the instigation of our most popular Governor 

 Sir John Doyle, in 1808. But it is interesting to note that 

 two hundred years previously Sir Henry de Vic thought 

 of reclaiming this land. Possibly he may have seen similar 

 work done in the low-lying shores of the Flemish coast, 

 and in September, 1639, he petitioned Charles I. that these 



