Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/444

 412 The Chcvauch^e de St. Michel.

quently subdivided among various Norman nobles, and, after our separation from Normandy in tiie reign of King John, the lands held by those Norman laymen who took the part of Philip Augustus escheated to the English Crown, and thus formed our present Fief le Roi, but the Norman abbots retained their lands until the dissolution of the monasteries in the fifteenth century, and, ecclesiastically, all the islands remained in the diocese of Coutances until the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

That the procession of which I am about to speak was more or less confined to the boundaries of these various fiefs, must be my excuse for dwelling on these apparently irrelevant details.

The Court of the Priory of St. Michel-du-Valle was only second to the Royal Court in importance, and it retained its jurisdiction in the island until 1862. Its headquarters were in the district where most of our dolmens were situated, and where our earliest missionaries concentrated their energies in stamping out paganism. It consisted of a seneschal, eleven vavasseurs, six sergeants, a greffier, four prevots or sherifi"s, eight bordiers, and a wand-bearer or porte-lance.^ As the fief extended from the extreme north- east to the south-west corner of the island, for the con- venience of its tenants its Court was held alternately at the Vale Priory, south of the Vale Church and below the site of what was once a Logan stone, where the Chief Pleas were held and the cases of the northern residents were decided ; and in the cemetery of St. Mary de Castro in the centre of the island, on a spot marked by some flat stones bordering the north wall of the churchyard, where the causes of the tenants of the southern portions of the fief were pleaded.

^ The titles of the vavasseurs were : — Gervaise, Capelle, Soulaire, Maresq, Grent Maison, Garis, Behon, Agenor, Piquenie, Le Move, Holiet. The titles of the sergeants: — Gaillot, Paisson, de la Lande, Roque des Roques, Bourg, I'Ange. The titles of the sheriffs : — The Vale, Grand Moiitier, Petit Moiitier, Rozel ; and of the bordiers : — Bequerel, Rebour, Renost, Ricard, Nant, Salmon, Infart, and Scarabie.