History
The Veneti tribe almost certainly possessed the island in ancient times. These people were subdued by the Roman Empire circa 56 BC and the island would have been annexed to the empire. Following the end of the Roman Empire and before the middle of the tenth century Sark had probably been an appendage of one of the Breton speaking kingdoms. After 933 it became a part of the Duchy of Normandy which became united with the Crown of England after 1066. In the thirteenth century, Sark was used as a base of operations by the French pirate, Eustace the Monk, after he served King John of England. Although populated by monastic communities in the medieval period, Sark was uninhabited in the 16th century and used as a refuge and raiding base by Channel pirates. Helier de Carteret, Seigneur of St. Ouen in Jersey, received Letters Patent from Queen Elizabeth I granting him Sark in fief in perpetuity on condition that he maintained the island free of pirates and occupied by at least 40 men who were the Queen's subjects, which he duly did, bringing with him 40 families mostly from St. Ouen.
An attempt by the newly settled families to endow themselves with a constitution under a bailiff, as in Jersey, was put down by the authorities of Guernsey who resented any attempt to wrest Sark from their bailiwick.
In 1844, desperate for funds to continue the operation of the silver mine on the island, the incumbent Seigneur, Ernest le Pelley, obtained crown permission to mortgage the Fief of Sark to local privateer John Allaire; but the mine company went bankrupt, and he was unable to keep up the mortgage payments. In 1849, his son, Pierre Carey le Pelley, the new Seigneur, was forced to sell the seigneurie of Sark to Marie Collings, daughter and heiress of Allaire, for £6,000.
During World War II, the island was occupied by German forces from 1940–1945, as were the other Channel Islands. The Island Kommandant of Guernsey, Major Albrecht Lanz, arrived at Creux Harbour by boat on 3 July 1940 with his interpreter and chief of staff Major Maas and they met the Dame and Seigneur at the Seigneurie to announce the start of German military rule. The next day German troops arrived to occupy the island. On 3–4 October 1942, Sark was the site of a British raid called Operation Basalt.
Read more about this topic: Politics Of Sark
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It is my conviction that women are the natural orators of the race.”
—Eliza Archard Connor, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 9, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art’s audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.”
—Henry Geldzahler (1935–1994)
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)