The Chief Gardener's Island

Lost world: the last days of feudal Sark
on independent.co.uk
[Blogroll >> ::An Leabharlann:: >> :Articles: >> Feudal Sark]

Seigneur John Michael Beaumont of Sark, from article by Charles Schwab

"As Seigneur of Sark, an island three miles long and one mile wide, 25 miles from the French coast, Beaumont's position is an enviable one. Since 1565, when Elizabeth I granted the island to the nobleman Hellier de Carteret in return for his protection against pirates, the Seigneurs have ruled this rock. And, in return for the £1.79 Beaumont pays annually to the British Crown to keep the island "in perpetuity", the Seigneur holds the privilege of granting the Sarkees permission to buy and sell their houses; and he is also entitled to collect a treizieme - one-thirteenth of every land transaction.

"But not for long. Beaumont's days of occupying his unique position are numbered. Earlier this month, the self-governing island, which falls under the protectorate of the British crown, voted by a majority of 234 to 184 to usher in universal suffrage for its population of 610. No longer will the island's 40 landowners, or "tenants" as they are confusingly known, sit on Sark's government - the "Chief Pleas". Nor will Beaumont retain his treizieme, or his right of veto.

"Next year, the adult population of the island will go to the polls for the first time with one vote each and elect 28 new members of the "Chief Pleas". Sark will be a democracy. That it has taken Sark 500 years longer than most of Western Europe to abolish feudalism should come as no surprise. As any newcomer soon realises, on Sark things move slowly."

I: Law reforms on the Island of Sark were aproved just this Wednesday, which appeared in the front page of Wikipedia. Democratisation should sound good; it certainly did sound good once, like, ten years back. But, like in any story involving preaching the glories of the modern world to a reclusive and simple-minded people, it would tend to turn members of the audience onto each other.

Because while a community ruled by the authority of one lord certainly sounds out of this age, one finds it hard to imagine that it is right for a couple of wealthy businessmen, both outsiders, to force democratisation upon Sark as a way of dodging tributes to the Seigneur.

II: I notice that the Barclay brothers relied on the European Convention of Human Rights to challenge Sark's law of inheritance (along with, it reads, Sark's jurisdiction over Brecqhou, an adjacent island bought over by the Barclays). It strikes me as a cynical gesture, an abuse of the idea of human rights that is not uncommonly met today.

In an spotlight issue entirely unrelated to Sark, more than a few fists were flying over where the Olympic Torch made its way. The issue is on the independence of Tibet, again a purported "human rights" issue.


Paralympic fencer Jin Jing and pro-Tibet assailants, from related article in 万维读者网

Give it a rest, hotheads.