- Jean Poingdestre
- Philippe Falle
- The Rev Edward Durell
- Guy Fortescue Burrell de Gruchy
- The Rev Alban Ragg
- A C Saunders
- George Balleine
Jean Poingdestre
Poingdestre wrote Caesarea: Or a Discourse of the Island of Jersey in 1682, but it was not published until the end of the 19th century, by La Société Jersiaise. It is written in old English, and can be quite difficult to understand. In many ways it is more a statement of life in Jersey at the time than a record of what had gone before.
Philippe Falle
An account of the Island of Jersey, the greatest of those islands that are now the only remainder of the English dominions in France, with a new and accurate map of the Island published in 1694, came to be regarded as the definitive early history of Jersey, but was already attracting considerable criticism in the 19th century as more and more historical inaccuracies came to light, when the publication of Caesarea revealed that Falle copied much of his book from Poingdestre’s.
Like Caesarea, another criticism of Falle’s Account is that it was more a statement of what Jersey was like at the end of the 17th century than a history of what had gone before.
Caesarea is quoted extensively in the many histories of Jersey published since, and many of its mistakes continue to be perpetuated. Perhaps modern authors should have paid heed to the words of Edmund Toulmin Nicolle, 17 years the honorary secretary of La Société Jersiaise and a respected writer on the island's history in the 1920s. In The Town of St Helier he wrote:
- "While referring to Falle and his history of Jersey it may be well here to observe that although he has generally been regarded as a writer of high authority, when his work comes to be examined in the light of present-day knowledge, we are forced to the conclusion that it not only contained many errors as to facts, but that it will not bear criticism as to many statements, historical and constitutional. It is superficial, due doubtless to the author's lack of the necessary materials."
Edward Durell
Durell is best known for editing and enlarging on the original Falle history for a fourth edition, published in 1835. Although many of the original errors are perpetuated, Durell introduces substantial new content, including many of the references missing from earlier editions.
Many students of island history have lamented that rather than devoting his time to editing and updating Falle’s work, Durell would have made a greater contribution had he written his own history from scratch.
But as Jerripedia revealed when it published the work in full in 2013, A Picturesque and Historical Guide to the Island of Jersey, written by Durell and published 12 years after the Falle 4th edition, in 1847, is his own history, coupled with a guide to Jersey as it was in the mid-19th century.
Alban Ragg
The Rev Alban Ragg’s Popular History of Jersey, also available in full in Jerripedia, is certainly comprehensive, particularly in relation to the 19th century, but is very much a chronological record of events, and fails to paint a broader picture of what life was like in Jersey at various points in history.
Guy de Gruchy
Guy de Gruchy was obliged by the Island`s disastrous 19th century bank crashes to spend nearly three decades living abroad, twenty years having been spent in Brazil. Having returned to the United Kingdom, if not to Jersey, he began to make up for time lost in writing The Normans in Sicily (1909) and The Settlement of Normandy with special reference to the Channel Islands (1911). On his return to Jersey, he wrote for the Société Jersiaise Bulletins carefully researched articles such as Entries relating to Jersey in the Great Exchequer Roll of Normandy, The Family of Walsh and the Seigneurie of St Germain`s and The Perquages of Jersey. He was one of three editors of Cartulaire des Iles Normandes.
His magnum opus was Medieval Land Tenures in Jersey. Researched over many years, and finally written in the 1930s, it was completed merely a few weeks before his death in 1940. It was published posthumously in 1957. It is the only history of the island that concentrates solely upon the Middle Ages. Subjects vary greatly, ranging from Fiefs Nobles, Tenants of the Seigneurs, Feudal Rights, Dues and Services, Vavassorie, Bordage and Field Systems, to name merely a few. The origins of the Jersey people are studied in great detail, whilst an Appendix of seventeen pages includes "Words, Place-Names and Personal Names found in the Channel Islands and attributed to a Scandinavian origin, which are mentioned in the text of this work, with their derivations". Fully equipped with notes and references, this publication will have acted as a stimulus to the authors of Jersey Place Names, (Société Jersiaise, 1985).
Furthermore, de Gruchy gave a talk to the people of St Aubin, entitled The Town of St Aubin, this being a subject which he hoped eventually to complete and publish, together with a planned, but unstarted, maritime history of Jersey. Fortunately, John Jean (qv) took on this vital work in the 1980s.
Years in the Tropics, with repeated bouts of malaria and yellow fever had, however, weakened de Gruchy`s heart and these and other projects had also to await the attention of others.
Arthur Saunders
A four-volume history of the island was written by Société Jersiaise honorary librarian Arthur Saunders in the early 20th century. It is divided into four eras. The book dealing with the 18th and 19th centuries was the first to be published in 1930, and it was followed by the 17th century in 1931, the 15th and 16th centuries in 1933 and the period before the Norman Conquest in 1935. A fifth volume, entitled Jean Chevalier and his times, was published in 1936.
Although Saunders covered some of the most important periods in the island’s history, he largely failed to look beyond the major events and examine their impact on the life of islanders. Another criticism is that the reader is expected to take everything Saunders wrote (some of it quite controversial) at face value, because references are virtually non-existant.
George Balleine
George Balleine, also an honorary librarian of La Société Jersiaise, is credited with writing the best history of Jersey in the 20th century, and probably the best of all.
History of the Island of Jersey, which was published in 1950, is now known to most researchers as Balleine’s History of Jersey, because it was revised and updated in 1981 by Société Jersiaise stalwarts Margaret Syvret and Joan Stevens.
Although both editions need to be studied side by side to reveal what was changed and what was added, there was no attempt to change or challenge some of the assertions which Balleine, in subsequent books which drew heavily on his magnum opus, himself questioned.
Sadly, although in a 1941 article on 17th Century social life in Jersey in the Annual Bulletin of La Société, Balleine wrote: ‘Much has been written on the constitutional history and the military history of Jersey, but little on our social history’ concluding: ‘One of our members is studying the agricultural history of the island. We want others to specialise on different subjects … ... when those investigations have been carried right through the centuries, then and not till then will it be possible for anyone to write a real history of Jersey.’ those investigations had presumably not borne sufficient fruit for his work nine years later to include the social history content to make it what he would have deemed “a real history of Jersey”.
Edmund Toulmin Nicolle
Balleine was being less than charitable towards his fellow Société Jersiaise official Edmund Nicolle, who prepared a comprehensive lecture on the Town of St Helier in the 1920s but died before it could be delivered.
However, the length of The Town of St Helier, which was subsequently published in 1931 in book form by La Société Jersiaise, as a tribute to its former honorary secretary, suggests that it was intended as more than a lecture.
This is more than a history of the island’s capital town, which was the centre of island life over the centuries covered in the work. It is a history of the people of the town, and by extension, of those living in the country parishes, and comes closer than many of the better known historical works to exploring the island’s social history.
The importance of this short but eminently interesting volume is now recognised by its addition in full to Jerripedia’s pages, pursuing our objective of making available historical works which are out of print, or have previously had limited availability, to a wider audience.
