Glynis Cooper - Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Jersey

Renaud despoiled her on a number
of occasions to teach her a lesson ...
when she was finally released she was
bleeding and hysterical.

I f there is such a thing as a designer crime, then in the late thirteenth century it appeared to be the abduction and rape of Jersey women. The Jersey Assize Roll of 12991300 records an astonishing number. The perpetrators were rarely brought to justice because of a legal loophole and they became quite outrageous in their audacity. The rapes and abductions were not results of date rapes or simply of having had too much to drink. They were planned and executed with the use of deliberate force and violence, with a complete and callous disregard for the female sex. The cases below represent only a fraction of those brought to the Court on a charge so horrid that the details were not made public.

Peronelle de la Haye, the wife of Guillaume de la Haye, was at home preparing some supper for her husband who was due to return shortly from his toil in the fields. She was tired and she knew that her husband would be as well. After he had eaten they would go to bed. Hearing a noise, she looked up to see two men standing in the cottage. She knew them. It was a small enough community and everyone knew everyone else. Guillaume Baillehache and Jourdain Renaud stood there looking at her in a calculating and patronising fashion. Then Baillehache said that she was to come with them at once to answer charges of theft. Peronelle knew their reputation and she also knew that she was innocent. She refused to go until her husband returned, she said, and they had explained their accusations to him. The two men just laughed. Then they dragged her, terrified and screaming for help, to Baillehaches house where they accused her of having stolen a silver buckle from the house some days previously. She denied this vehemently but her abductors were not about to be deprived of their prey. Ignoring her screams of protest, Baillehache stripped Peronelle naked and announced his intention of despoiling her as a punishment. She was then kept naked and imprisoned in his house for two nights and a day during which time both Baillehache and Renaud despoiled her on a number of occasions to teach her a lesson. When she was finally released she was bleeding and hysterical. Her outraged husband, Guillaume, at once invoked the Clameur de Haro (see A brief History of Jersey above) and, unusually, on this occasion Baillehache was actually arrested and fined ten shillings by the Royal Court.

Jeanne Corbel was not so lucky. She was at home with her mother, quietly sewing by the small turf fire, when Jean de Barentyn and Raoul Turgys broke into their house, smashing the door aside, and, without explanation, seized Jeanne. Jeanne screamed and struggled for she knew them and she had a good idea of what was about to happen to her. Her mother rose from the bench where she and Jeanne had been sitting and tried to protect her daughter but de Barentyn and Turgys were having none of that. Jeannes mother was pushed aside roughly and one of them deliberately broke her arm to put her out of action. Jeanne managed to struggle free and crawled to her mothers side but again she was grabbed. Like Peronelle, the girl was stripped naked and, as her mother lay moaning and injured on the floor, Jeanne was carried off to Longueville Manor. Here, both men committed other outrages against her before she was discarded to make her way home as best she could. Jeanne was devastated and she also invoked the Clameur de Haro but with remarkable sangfroid de Barentyn and Turgys denied the whole thing and put themselves for life and death on the country. This was an extremely serious oath to make, and the jurors, their palms well greased with suitable bribes, ... declared on their oath that they are not guilty and may therefore go quit thereof ...

Free to look for fresh victims, de Barentyns eye now fell upon another lady named Jeanne, the daughter of Pierre Renaud. Jeanne had married a man named Laurent Laysel, and it seems to have been a happy and contented marriage. The couple were at home together when a number of men burst into their house without warning. According to the charge, Jean de Barentyn and his friends, Guillaume de Tailleur, Guillaume le Warener, Geoffroi Langleis, and Henri le Palefraiur, then ... carried off Jeanne, wife of Laurent Laysel, against his wish and in his presence, and Jean worked his way with her ... After he had finished with her he turned over to his companions who also worked their way in turn with her. When the distraught Jeanne was finally returned to her husband, he too invoked the Clameur de Haro. Once again de Barentyn and his friends denied everything, made their oath, bribed the jurors and were declared not guilty. A furious Laurent promptly sued them for rape. However, as the men had already been declared not guilty of these charges Laurent was sent to prison instead for defamation of character.