High-Church fervour which had animated the late unfortunate King. Their
ultimate motive, as is common to human nature, was for their own
interests; and although the influence of the Carterets had kept them,
for the most part, nominal followers of the cause of royalty, men like
Michael Lempriere and Prynne had good reason for believing that they
would, in the long run, favour those who seemed the best friends to
Jersey. Let them not be blamed for this. Their love for England was very
much founded upon fear of France. By observing the attitude of the
Scottish borderers of a slightly earlier period, an Englishman of the
seventeenth century could imagine the attitude of the Jersey mind
towards the "Normans," by which name they were accustomed to designate
their feudal and aggressive Catholic neighbours the Lords and Ministers
of the French Kingdom. Even as the Grahams and Scotts of Tweedside stood
at arms against each other on either bank of the dividing stream, so did
the de Gruchys and Malets, the Le Feuvres and de Quettevilles, on either
side the Channel. The danger that was nearest was the most formidable;
and the Channel Islanders were ready to side with England much as the
Saxon Scots of the Lothians came to make common cause with the Celts of
the Highlands.

These explanations may appear tedious: but the reader is implored to
pardon them; for without such he could not realise the passions which
are exemplified in this little story. Long exposed to invasion, the
Jerseymen of the middle ages had handed down to their descendants an
abhorrence of France which was fomented by the stories of persecution
brought to them by Huguenot refugees; and which, indeed, has hardly yet
completely died out among the rural population. Thus sentiment and
interest kept the islanders attached to England by a two-fold cord;
careless whether their immediate leaders were Cavaliers, as in Jersey,
or Parliamentarians, as in the neighbouring island of Guernsey, where