arresting the progress of an invader, unless in great force. Each of the
twelve parish churches contained the arsenal of the local militia; and
all things betokened a hardy population, ready to do battle against all
intruders.

The titular Governor, Lord Jermyn, was an absentee, following the
fortunes of the widowed Queen, Henrietta Maria, in France. The actual
administration, both civil and military, was in the hands of a naval
officer of experience, Sir George Carteret, or de Carteret, cousin and
brother-in-law to the Seigneur of S. Owen, a large manor on the western
side of the island. This family, distinguished in island history ever
since it abandoned its fief of Carteret on the coast of Normandy to
follow the fortunes of John Lackland, when the Duchy was confiscated by
Philip Augustus, was by far the most powerful in the island. Its only
possible rival, the house of Lempriere, of Maufant, had espoused warmly
the cause of the Parliament, and had consequently met with reverses when
the Carterets, who were royalist, effected the revolution mentioned in
our Prologue.

It only remains to be added that the people at large were not at all
warmly attached to either of the parties to the Civil War. The language
of the majority was an old form of French, now reduced to the condition
of a patois; the more educated classes studied the laws and language of
France. The proceedings of the Courts and the services of the Church
were conducted in modern French, and the sympathies of the community
were divided between a mundane attachment to England, and a religious
leaning to the creed of the Huguenots, of whom a great number had sought
refuge on their shores. Hence the Jersey folks were indifferently
submissive to royalty, the only form of English government of which,
till these days, they had heard; but they by no means shared the