The Channel Islands in Diocese of Portsmouth – Part 1

Mgr. Lawrence, Episcopal Vicar of the Channel Islands
 with Bishop Emery and Canon Lecluze (left).

This week’s history comes from the “Diocese of Portsmouth: Past and Present” by Gerard Dwyer published in 1981, and looks at the history of Catholics in Jersey after the Reformation to the early1980s.

The Channel Islands in Diocese of Portsmouth – Part 1

CHAPTER 16

The Channel Islands

All through the Middle Ages the Channel Islands formed part of the French Diocese of Coutances. On 28th October 1496 King Henry VII, the first of the Tudors, requested Pope Alexander VI to transfer them to Salisbury. Three years later he asked to have them transferred to the Diocese of Winchester. The Pope did as Henry asked but the Pope's Bull had no effect.

Right up to the reign of Elizabeth I, the Bishop of Coutances exercised jurisdiction over the Islands. In 1569 the then Bishop of Coutances was on a diplomatic mission in London. He complained that the dues from the Islands' Deaneries were not forthcoming.

The Privy Council unearthed the Bull and the Royal Letter of 1499; an Order in Council of 11th March 1569 executed the separation of the Islands from the Diocese of Coutances and placed them under the jurisdiction of the Anglican Bishop of Winchester but once again the order had no effect. The authority of the Bishop of Winchester was completely ignored owing to the fact that Presbyterian discipline and church government were firmly established in the Islands. It was in fact 1818 before the Anglican form of Confirmation was administered for the first time by Dr. Fisher, Bishop of Salisbury, as the Bishop of Winchester was not well enough to do so. The Islands then had to wait until 1829 to receive the first Episcopal visitation from their Anglican Bishop, Dr. Sumner of Winchester.

When the Church in England was placed by Rome under the care of Vicars Apostolic, the Channel Islands were looked after by the Vicar Apostolic of the London District (although it is not clear if they were ever formally included in the territory of his jurisdiction). Bishop Douglass, who was Vicar Apostolic from 1790 to 1812, appointed in 1807 Fr. Charles de Grimouville, an English-speaking priest in charge in Jersey, as Vicar General for Catholic administration in the Channel Islands; in 1817 he was nominated Bishop of St. Malo, but died that same year before being consecrated. The post of Vicar General does not appear to have been continued.

In Pope Pius IX's Letters Apostolic restoring the English Hierarchy in 1850, "the islands of Jersey, Guernsey and other adjacent" are included under the Diocese of Southwark. When Southwark was divided by the Letters Apostolic of Pope Leo XIII in 1882, the new Diocese of Portsmouth contained "those Islands in the English Channel (seu le Manche) appertaining to the English Crown."

During the Second World War the Church in the Channel Islands was completely cut-off from the rest of the Diocese due to the German Occupation of the Islands. Bishop King solved the problem of administering this part of the Diocese by appointing Canon Hickey, Parish Priest of St. Joseph's, Guernsey, as his Vicar General for the Channel Islands. This fact was made known to Guernsey seemingly through Ireland and the Vichy Government, but it appears that news of it did not reach Jersey until after the war.

After the Occupation, Mgr. Hickey continued to hold this post until his death in 1952, following which the Islands returned to direct administration from Portsmouth (or Winchester, as the Bishop lived there). In 1978 the present Bishop of Portsmouth, Rt. Rev. A. Emery, appointed Mgr. Canon Raymond Lawrence as Parish Priest of St. Joseph's, Guernsey and Episcopal Vicar for the Channel Islands, granting him all necessary faculties to deal with the normal administration of the Church in the Islands; at the same time he was granted faculties by the Holy See to administer the Sacrament of Confirmation in the Islands when requested by the Bishop to do so. And so today the Channel Islands form an Episcopal Vicariate within the Diocese of Portsmouth.