I really wanted to understand more about the 1600s Jersey diarist, Jean Chevalier. His journal (a legacy gift to his own familial descendants) has become an unmatched window into his times. It is also the crown jewel of the Société Jersiaise, and the only credible historical document to tell of Sir Richard Lane’s fate while in exile with King Charles II during the English Civil War. But who was Jean Chevalier? How credible were his observations? I finally found a book that promised to tell me…
Category: LLK-LostGrave
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Jean Chevalier’s Diary – An Amazing (and largely unknown) Historical Document!
Have you ever spent a moment thinking about the word “journalist”? Because of modern media, we think of a journalist as someone who reports on news for the public media. But in mid 1600s, a local Jersey man named Jean Chevalier was a journalist in the most basic sense of the word – he began a diary, capturing events in Jersey during the Period of the English revolution – starting in 1643 and continuing until parliamentary forces finally captured the island in 1651. What is so remarkable about this journal is the level of penetrating detail it captured about people and events on the island – providing singular and often quite personal insights into day-to-day and historically significant events alike. I’ve never seen anything like it…
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