A Brief Description and Historical Notices of the Island of Jersey - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1826. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER THE SECOND. Historical JVotices of the Island. IK who seeks much historical information respecting the early periods of the Island of Jersey, will seek it in vain: his researches will be fruitless, and his labour ineffectual. Its remotest ages are exhibited to our view only through the fallacious medium of tradition, and are to be described therefore with hesitation, with caution and with doubt. Even the commencement of historical record is vague, uncertain, and indefinite. But it can scarcely excite regret, that of savage life little is chronicled and little remembered. The manners of the barbarian hordes, the primitive occupants of states now civilized, can have differed but little from the inhabitants of countries still in the infancy of refinement; and must have exhibited a picture of rude and uncultivated life, that may now b8 drawn from the wilds of America. We know little more of the earliest Britons, than that they were clothed in the skins of wild beasts, that they dwelt in huts, and painted their faces: and we may infer without fear of erring in our supposition, that such was the state of the aboriginal inhabitants of Jersey. Information more explicit must be conjectural, inaccurate, and unsatisfactory. We have therefore few annals on which much reliance can be placed, 'till we arrjve at the period of the subjuga D tion of the Island by the legions of Julius Caesar. I remained under their authority 'till the expiration of the fifth century, when the Roman power languishing into decrepitude was unable to preserve it when opposed by the barbarian but warlike forces of the Francs. In their possession it remained during a long series of years, when it was again destined to be placed under the control of a different government. About the year...