In the fourteenth century Henry VI. of England, in consideration of a red rose as annual rental, conveyed the entire group to the Duke of Warwick.  But strange privileges were from time to time extended to these audacious people.  Queen Elizabeth proclaimed the islands a world’s sanctuary, and threw open the ports as free harbours of refuge in time of war.  She authorized protection to “a distance on the ocean as far as the eye of man could reach.”  This act of grace was cancelled by George the Third, who regarded it as a premium on piracy.  In Cromwell’s time Admiral Blake had been instructed to raise the siege of Castle Cornet.  He brought its commander to his senses, but only after nine years of assault, and not before 30,000 cannon-balls had been hurled into the town.

Late in the fourteenth century, when the English were driven out of France, not a few of those deported, who had the fighting propensity well developed, made haste for the Channel Islands, where rare chances offered to handle an arquebus for the King.  Among those who sought refuge in Guernsey there landed, not far from the Lion’s Rock at Cobo, an English knight, Sir Hugh Brock, lately the keeper of the Castle of Derval in Brittany, a man “stout of figure and valiant of heart.”  This harbour of refuge was St. Peter’s Port.

     “Within a long recess there lies a bay,
     An island shades it from the rolling sea,
     And forms a port.”

The islet that broke the Atlantic rollers was Castle Cornet.  Sir Hugh Brock, or Badger in the ancient Saxon time—­an apt name for a tenacious fighter—­shook hands with fate.  He espied the rocky cape of St. Jerbourg, and ofttimes from its summit he would shape bold plans for the future, the maturing of which meant much to those of his race destined to follow.

The commercial growth of the Channel Islands has been divided into five periods, those of fishing, knitting (the age of the garments known as “jerseys” and “guernseys"), privateering, smuggling, and agriculture and commerce.  To the third period belong these records.  The prosperity of the islands was greatest from the middle of the seventeenth century up to the overthrow of Napoleon at Waterloo and the close of Canada’s successful fight against invasion in 1815.  During this period the building of ships for the North Atlantic and Newfoundland trade opened new highways for commerce, but the greatest factor in this development was the “reputable business” of privateering, which must not be confounded either with buccaneering or yard-arm piracy.  It was only permitted under regular letters of marque, was ranked as an honorable occupation, and those bold spirits, the wild “beggars of the sea”—­who preferred the cutlass and a roving commission in high latitudes to ploughing up the cowslips in the Guernsey valleys, or knitting striped shirts at home—­were recognized as good fighting men and acceptable enemies.

Trade in the islands, consequent upon the smuggling that followed and the building of many ships, produced much wealth, creating a class of newly rich and with it some “social disruption.”