It is also said that Robert I., Duke of Normandy, father of William the Conqueror, called by some Le Magnifique and by others Le Diable, having been driven by stress of weather to take refuge in Guernsey, when on his way to England with a fleet to assist the Saxon Princes Alfred and Edward in their resistance to the Danish invader Canute, was received and hospitably entertained by the monks, and in return confirmed them in the possession of the lands they had been the means of reclaiming, at the same time constituting the community a priory in dependance on the great monastery from which they had originally come; a connexion, which although frequently interrupted during the long wars between England and France for the possession of Normandy, existed until the suppression of alien priories in England by Henry V. Like all other fiefs the priory had its own Feudal Court, by means of which it collected its rents and dues, and which had jurisdiction in civil matters between all its tenants, subject, however, to an appeal to the higher authority of the Royal Court of the island. The Court of St. Michel-du-Valle consisted of a seneschal and eleven vavassors, who, in virtue of their office and in consideration of their services, held certain lands on the fief. The officers of the Court were a greffier or registrar, four prevôts, who had duties analogous to those of a sheriff, six bordiers, who had certain services to perform in collecting dues and attending the meetings of the Court, and, though last, not least, an officer styled porte-lance--of whom more hereafter. The principal duties of the Court seem to have consisted in legalizing sales of real property, in which tenants on the fief were interested, and settling disputes concerning the same arising among them. But there appear to have been attempts made from time to time to encroach on the prerogatives of the Royal Court, and various ordinances of the latter are in existence restraining the seneschal and vavassors from doing certain acts, and even fining them for having gone beyond their powers. There was one function, however, of the Court of St. Michael which it seems to have exercised without dispute from time immemorial, but which it is impossible to account for--the inspection and keeping in order of the King’s highway throughout the island, and of certain of the works for preventing the encroachments of the sea. Possibly it may have originated in marking out the bounds of the Fief St. Michel and its dependencies only, and with this keeping in order the sea defences.[30] Once in three years, the seneschal and vavassors of the Court were bound to perform this duty, which, judging from their later records, they appear to have considered rather onerous, as we find several Acts of the Court dispensing with the ceremony, the reason given being generally the interruption it caused in agricultural labours, and the loss occasioned thereby, at a time when farmers were far from being in