DAME OF SARK

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 36, 11 August 1930, Page 13

DAME OF SARK

A¥ ABSOLUTE RULER

Mrs. Dudley Beaumont, tho Dame of Sark, who visited London recently, is one of the last surviving examples of an absolute ruler in Western Europe, says an English correspondent. For two years she has reigned as dame of this little channel island, eight miles north-west of Guernsey. Mrs. Beaumont succeeded the late seigneur, her father, Mr. William Collings.

Mrs. Beaumont's burdens are by no means light, and she has but a small staff to assist her. Schemes o£ sanitation, .school examinations, road repairs, harbour construction, fishery laws, tithes, and taxes are all features which she has to master in dotail and attend to personally. She derives her incomo from ancient seigneurial dues, consisting chiefly of taxation in kind. Recent experience has shown that refusal to accept money in lieu, a practice that had been allowed to creep in, has resulted in am. increase in the area of land under cultivation.

There is a tax which must bo paid in fowls by each, liouae according to tho number of chimneys. None but the

dame herself may keep a female dog or pigeons. No property may be bought or sold without her consent, and she receives on every sale one-thirteenth part of the purchase price.

Notwithstanding .all this, however, Sark claims to be up to date. "Wo were tho first to adopt compulsory education," said Mrs. Beaumont, "bofore Queen Victoria's reign began, and today the minimum wage for women is £1 per week. There v is no crime in the island, and the prison is perpetually idle."

! Mrs. Beaumont also has to solve the ecclesiastical problelms. The church building is her property erected by her Ancestors, and the incumbent is paid out of her family estates. There is no obligation on parishioners or incumbent, however, to keep church or vicarage in repair, and meanwhile some of the parishioners have seceded and built a Wosleyan chapel. ' Most of the natives can speak English, but their native language is a pure descendant of the old Norman French.

Deapite the deaths of more than 40 per cent, of the men who fought in the war, Sark still has more men than women. These men, 40 in all, were bound to servo their King, and country according to the terms of Queen Elizabeth's charter, from which Mrs. Beaumont's seigneurial rights are held. Lobster fishing is one of' the most flourishing industries on the island, and the ltest problem of tho island is its harbour, for the improvement of which tho sum of £10,000 has been g'rantedi ; ■ . .1