General Brock

The Channel Islands were once included in the "Duchy of Normandie," and are the only parts of that duchy which remain to the English Crown. Again and again Guernsey has been unsuccessfully attacked by the French, who, from the days of Edward I. to those of Edward VI., strove to subdue its Anglo-Norman inhabitants. Through the centuries they retained their northern love of independence, and Guernsey is still governed by its own laws and ancient institutions. It is divided into ten parishes, whose rectors, appointed by the Crown, sit in the elective states. The chief court of justice in the island is the royal court, whose {4} power is very extensive and rather undefined. It consists of the bailiff, appointed by the Crown, who presides, and twelve jurats appointed by the islanders through their delegates to the elective states. There is an appeal in certain cases to the king in council. The French language is used in the courts and on public occasions. The dialect of the people in the eighteenth century was still the pure Norman of many centuries before. Each parish had a school, but the principal one was Elizabeth College, originally a grammar school founded by Queen Elizabeth, where Hebrew, Greek and Latin, French, German, Spanish, Italian, drawing, music, fencing, and drilling were taught for the modest sum of twelve pounds a year.

Although wealth and luxury were almost unknown among them, the governing class in St. Peter's Port formed an extremely aristocratic and exclusive set, vying in dress, manners, and language with society of the same rank in England. Their children were frequently sent there to school, and as their sons grew up, commissions in the English army and navy were eagerly sought, and in many a hard-fought battle on land and sea, the men of Guernsey have won renown. It was not the gentler born alone that were trained to arms. By the law of the island, every male inhabitant between the age of sixteen and thirty-three was bound to render "man service to the Crown," and in the stormy days of the latter half of the eighteenth century {5} and the beginning of the nineteenth, they were often called on to take their share in the king's wars.

For generations the Brocks had lived in St. Peter's Port, and as Guernsey chronicles go back to legendary times, the story that they were descended from one Sir Hugh Brock who came there in the fourteenth century is perhaps a true one.

It seems that in the reign of Edward III. an English knight of that name was keeper of the castle of Derval, in Brittany. When the French overran that country this castle was besieged by the Duke of Bourbon, the Earls of Alençon and Perche, and a gallant array of the chivalry of France. Now Sir Hugh Brock's cousin, Sir Robert Knolles, who was governor of the duchy of Brittany, was also at that time besieged in Brest by the famous Bertrand du Guesclin. He succeeded in driving off his assailants, and then marched to the relief of his cousin, Sir Hugh, who was on the point of surrendering when the timely succour arrived. The English were, however, soon after driven out of France by the valiant du Guesclin, and as Guernsey lies directly between the coast of Brittany and England it is not improbable that this same Sir Hugh or some of his family settled there.

Towards the close of the seventeenth century, one William Brock, of St. Peter's Port, had three sons and one daughter. The eldest son, William, married Judith de Beauvoir, also of an ancient Guernsey family. The third son, Henry, married {6} Susan Saumarez, the sister of that valiant sailor, afterwards the celebrated Admiral Lord de Saumarez. The second son, John, born on January 24th, 1729, married in 1758 Elizabeth de Lisle,[2] daughter of the bailiff of the island, whose ancestor, Sir John de Lisle, had been governor of Guernsey in the reign of Henry IV. By her he had fourteen children, of whom ten lived to maturity. Isaac was the eighth son, and was born on October 6th, 1769,[3] the year that also saw the birth of Wellington and Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1777 the family was deprived of a father's care, for Mr. John Brock, formerly a midshipman in His Majesty's navy, died at Dinan in that year at the early age of forty-eight. His two eldest sons had already entered the army, John as an ensign in the 8th (King's), Ferdinand in the 60th, that famous regiment once known as the Royal Americans, which was raised in the colonies in the time of the struggle with France, and which afterwards did such good service in the American war. These were strenuous times, and England was fighting in all parts of the world.

In 1779, just two years after his father's death, {7} Ferdinand, a youth of nineteen, was killed at the defence of Bâton Rouge, on the Mississippi. Isaac was then ten years old, a strong and lusty youth. At that age he was sent to school, for a short time to Southampton, and afterwards under the care of a French pastor in Rotterdam. While in Guernsey he attended Queen Elizabeth's school, where the Rev. C. Crispin was headmaster. But school life and academical distinction were not to be his portion. At the early age of fifteen he followed the example of his brothers, and on March 2nd, 1785, he obtained a commission, by purchase, in the 8th Regiment, in which his eldest brother had just purchased a captaincy, after ten years' service in America. Though young in years he even then showed proofs of that indomitable will which so distinguished him in after life. Feeling the defects of his education he determined to devote his leisure to study, and often the young ensign would, in spite of jeers, turn from his gay comrades to pass his time among his books, with his door locked to prevent intrusion. Not that he was by any means a prig, for, trained to athletic sports from his earliest years, Isaac Brock had the reputation of being the best boxer and the boldest swimmer among his competitors at school and on the island.

When he entered the army it was at a time of peace, when England was recovering from her long and disastrous American war, and the French Revolution with all its horrors had not yet convulsed {8} Europe. It was well for the young soldier that peaceful garrison duty at home was his lot for a few years. There was plenty of work in store for him abroad. In 1790 he purchased his lieutenancy and for a time was quartered in Guernsey and the neighbouring island of Jersey.

At the same time, though not in the same regiment, there was quartered with him Mr. Francis Gore, exactly of his own age, who had entered the army about the same time, and who was destined in after years to be associated with him in Canada.

In 1791, having raised an independent company, Isaac Brock was gazetted as captain and exchanged into the 49th, then ordered on foreign service in the West Indies. He was now no longer a stripling but a man of twenty-two, of commanding stature, very erect, of a strong athletic build, with a frank open countenance and very winning manners. Though of a very gentle disposition he yet possessed that quickness of decision and firmness in peril which on many trying occasions during his military career proved most useful qualities. From 1791 to 1793 he was quartered in Barbadoes and Jamaica.

During those years, though still at peace, England had spent three millions in increasing her navy, and was, therefore, well prepared to hold her supremacy on the sea.

In 1793 the war that the great minister, Pitt, had vainly tried to avert, broke out, and from that {9} time until the peace of Amiens in 1801, England was engaged in a desperate struggle with her hereditary foe led by the consummate genius of Napoleon.[4] On December 1st, 1793, the French Convention declared war on Great Britain and Holland. Pitt thought that the war would be brief, but he had miscalculated the power and resources of the enemy, and for more than seven years it raged without intermission.