ISLAND OF SARK

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 March 1937, Page 10

ISLAND OF SARK

“FEUDAL ST 110 NG HOLD”

An island in the English Channel miles long and li miles wide, which exists completely in a sixteenth-cen-tury feudal state is important enough to he. reported on to the National (geographic Society, and so Mrs. Robert Hathaway, who rules over it as the Dame of Sark, with her husband, the Seigneur, has reported (states the "Christian Science Monitor”).

Mr. and Mrs. Hathaway on a temporary holiday from feudalism—-have been visiting in the United States, and, due. to newsreels, the radio, ami such like uufeudal contrivances, a good many more persons than lormerly now know that there is one little feudal stronghold left in the world, and that it hasn’t any crime problem or other mark of civic disorderliness. Mr. Hathaway is Seigneur of 1 Sark by marriage, as you might say; but that does not mean any less the SeigUVUf. Simply that Mrs. Hathaway was already the Dame of Sark when he married her, and so came to have a share in the responsibilities which are hers.

The Hathaways were not prepared to have their status in life produce quite the astonishment i' did in some quarters when they arrived in the United States to visit relatives and friends; but they quickly perceived that, after all, perhaps it was a little unusual.

Ami it is because the little stale, presents such a unique combination of institutions and governmental archaisms that it has interested the National Georgraphic Society.

Sark's written record begins in A.D. 565. but there is evidence that it was occupied in the Stone Age. At least one interval in its history was notable for its possession by pirates supposedly Scottish pirates, who preyed on channel shipping and iequired British expeditions to deal with t hem.

ICarly in the sixteen! It cenTury, the French occupied it for a while, but Sir Walter Raleigh’s records contain 11,,, (uie of the way in which it was wrested from them. The details made up in daring what they lacked in honesty.

A vessel Hying Flemish colours, arrived off the Sark coast; Sark has some 35 miles of coastline, due to quantities of inlets and coves at the foot of the cliffs that rise clear around it. Anvhow, the Flemish sailors said

that their captain had passed on, and requested leave to bring him ashore, for burial services.

When they got. to the little old church of St. M.agloire they disclosed their arms and waged a short, sharp, and successful campaign, taking the island.

But evidently they did not want it very much: at least not. enough to bother to hold it. For presently it was just a deserted place in the. Channel. However, not much later. Sir Hclier de Carteret received from Queen Elizabeth letters patent granting (he right to set up a constitulion of Sark and. along with the Royal grant, Sir Holier received almost unlimited powers on the one condition I hat he would colonise the island with 40 families. It may be that it was thus the island got its name. “The Island of the Forty.” Each man was given a musket wilh which it was required of him that he defend the island in ease of necessity. Nowadays, if one of the island farms changes hamh), one ef the conditions is that a man with a musket handy must live there.

Sark passed out of the hands of the De Carteret family in 1732. though the family still owns the Manoir ue SaintOuen, iu Jersey. ’Phus the island passed into the hands of Mrs. Ilathawayts family in .1852, in the period of her great-grandmother lo be exact. The “Seigneuric,” where the Hathaways live, is of gray granite, situated in a sheltered part of the. island. The main section of the house dates from 1565 and probably many of its stones were in the monastery that preceded it on the site.

It is no mere empty formality, this being Seigneur ami Dame of Sark. The Seigneuric is the place to which everyone comes with any question to he settled about life on tile island. There is a Parliament and it is called Chief Pleas and the. Seigneur and Dame are the presiding officers. Members of the Parliament come to it from each of (he It) farms: and there are 12 Deputies, chosen from the population at largo which is now 675. There is no crown taxation aiitl the only laws are the realistic ones needed to make the island a pleasant place in which people can live harmoniously. I

If you try to visit Sark you land in a small, quite charming harbour, connected with the island by a road which goes through a 2()ll-l'oot tunnel. Leaving the tunnel there is a steep road which winds up to the centre, where there, are a few little shops, and four inns. The highway meanders along to La Coupee where, the two parts of the island meet, Great Sark ami Little

Sark, joined by a natural causeway which supports a road that is wide enough for one carl Io travel at i lime. The dislurbauces to living on Sark are all minor ones and easily settled. Existence is complete, in that it is self-contained on the island, and there is little disturbance to its calm cur-| rent because there is nothing for people Io disagi’ee about. Sark seems to its inhabitants as though it had always been, and so there is no need

to change it. The Hathaways like to conic back to the States to visit, but they like Sark to live in. Mr. Hathaway is a .graduate of an American University, I Hid never foresaw as an undergraduate that he would become a Seigneur ! ol’jhis little feudal kingdom. But, with one ear cocked to the clamour and restlessness of New York City he will smile slowly and say, “Sark is a pretty pleasant place in which to live. And -well, restful.”