GUERNSEY’S NEW PARK

Hawera Star, Volume LII, 26 January 1933, Page 6

GUERNSEY’S NEW PARK

PLACE OF TRAGIC MEMORIES. WHERE WITCHE'i"WERE BURNER The little island of Guernsey, where the people are' fervently English, although in tile country districts they speak an almost unintelligible French patois, is making a ploasme-groum' of one of the saddest spots m Europe. This is the Vallee de Mi sere where in the bad pld clays -vitehet and. heretics were burned. On Lie spot where many helpless old women and men were burned workmen arc now reclaiming what is called the Cornet Street Plateau for the use of the public. The new park will command a wonderful view of peaceful islands and a sunlit sea—Herm, Jethou, Jersey, Alderney, Sark —where the Seek rules under a medieval charter —the Casquets, and, on a clear day the coast of France. 1 A curious thing about these 3Manas is that, though they came to England with the Conqueror, being .part of hisj estates, they have never neon ment-.-m----ed in any of the treaties between France and England. In the early 13th century the French king recaptured Normandy, and tnc | Channel Islands would normally haw been considered part of his capture, being, as they were, part of Williams’* Norman possessions. But a ■ert.un Pierre Re Priaulx negotiated the "treat-, of 1204, when King John of EJnglam. lost Normandy. De. Priaulx happened to he friendly with John, and in negotiating the treaty he was careful not to mention the "Channel Islands, though they should have gone to France with Normandy. In this way they rema.Tlied part of the territory of England. The French king made-no protest, perhaps, because, as one chronicler suggests, he had never heard of the Channel Islands. It was Normandy lie wanted, and John, on ins part, kept C|U.:oi about it. He cared nothing for Normandy, in any ease, so long as England was safe._ ‘Thus it may be said that the islands remained English because they ucre overlooked! Strange things have happened hi the forgotten islands, amt , sjiome of the strangest and saddest have taken place in the Vallee tie Misere. Fox’s Book of Martyrs contains the picture of one notorious burning; of women there. This time they were not accused of witchcraft ; their crime was "that they had .darocl to worship God in then- own way. They, were Protestants —a mother and her 'two daughters. The last burning of sorcerers in Guernsey was in 1747. This _ was in the Car re four due Bordage, just below the place that is now being made into a pleasure ground.