Bring back the Bellebouches

So much for the frailty of life, how about the fragility of names?

Surnames specifically, and Guernsey ones at that.

An old sports colleague lamented recently that ‘his lot’ would soon die out.

He had no son to carry the name forward, nor did his male cousin. Therefore the name will die out in a few decades, or the Sarnian branch of their family will and another surname will have gone.

It’s as simple as that folks and it has been happening here for centuries, as a glance through a recently compiled electronic list of local jurats these past seven and a bit centuries proved.

It’s an eye-opener.

Among the 550-odd men and very few women who have held the prestigious jurat post since 1299, more than two dozen carry a name which has long faded from our existence.

Some I knew about, many had never heard of.

Like these…Coquerel, Caretier, De St Georges, De St Jean, De St Martin, De St Pey, De Vauregard, De La Capelle, Devyk, Effart, Ettur, Fautrart, Fouaschin, De Le Court, De Rosel, La Corneille, Le Gay, Maucouvenant and De Maucouvanant, Perrin, Touley, Toulley and De Quetteville.

These all crop up in several instances while the singular jurat appearances include the wonderfully named Philippe Bellebouche, elected to the top bench of our Royal Court in 1331.

Beautiful mouth, as Bellebouche translates, sounds a mouthful, but in my eyes it’s a cracker. It’s stylish, exotic even.

Who would not want to carry the name Bellebouche?

Many others catch the eye too.

There was also a Jourdain Choffin (1299 to 1308) and while you won’t find any Choffins in our ever shrinking phone book, there is a Rue des Choffins in St Saviour’s, so perhaps that lane was named after him and his long-lost family.

I wonder, too,whether the two Jean Etturs and one Simon Ettur that held jurat seats on and off in the period 1331 to 1489, have anything remotely to do with Les Eturs, the hill heading down to Delisles and once a school I attended for a year in the early 1960s when Castel bulged to the extent of being overcrowded.

There is also the process of surname adaption.

That jurats list includes many a Carey, a name that initially was often seen as Careye but ultimately decided to lose the final e.

Le Feyvre is very prevalent in the 14th and 15th centuries, before ultimately becoming Le Feuvre or Le Fevre.

For Le Hurey, now read Le Huray.

No surname crops up more than Le Marchant, with 32 of the fellows being elected jurat, but only one in the last 200 years.

Le Feyvre have also been substantially honoured, with 20 of them elected, but again none since 1810.

Blondels were notably powerful in the period 1299 to 1809, 18 of them becoming jurats, but no more since the start of the 19th century.

After that they just became prominent footballers.

And it will be no surprise to most people that Careyes or Careys have often sat among the juracy, with 27 of their clan all told.

Closer study of the list it soon becomes obvious how, through the centuries, the names have become ever-more anglicised.

Through the first 300 years the numbers are full of French-orientated surnames, mostly ‘De’ or ‘Le’ something or another.

This past 200 years the ‘Le’ has survived to a small extent, but the ‘De’ boys have gone in a new scene where English names are very common place.

There is also the case of the now disappeared elites such as Beauvoir, Andros, Dobree and Tupper.

Those four alone have owned some of the island’s most noted properties and lived as gentry, perhaps none more so than the Tuppers at Les Cotils.

What a tragic family they were – literally.

They might have struck very, very lucky in obtaining an estate of so much beauty, but in family terms John Elisha Tupper and his wife Elizabeth (nee Brock) were cursed to the extent that only three of their family of 13 children lived beyond young adulthood.

One family member after another perished either at sea, at war or in highly careless duels.

Their agony began 15 years before they moved into Les Cotils, having bought the family estate from William Bell.

Elizabeth’s brother, Lt-Col John Brock, was killed in a duel fought at the Cape of Good Hope.

Next to come a cropper was Lt Carre Tupper RN, who was apparently hugely handsome and a big lad of over 6ft. He was a first cousin of John Elisha and was killed attempting a night reconnaissance during the siege of Bastia in 1794.

His death was felt so acutely by his father, Royal Marine John Tupper, the first Guernseyman ever to attain the rank of Major General, that he died nine months later, broken-hearted.

But the misery continued for many more years, as did the funerals.

Four years later, in 1798, William de Vic Tupper, brother of our Cotils man and perhaps not fully up to speed with the family’s record in head-to-head duels, fought an officer of the 27th Regiment based in the island and was wounded sufficiently badly to die the next day.

For the following 14 long years the Tuppers lived more happily, cosily ensconced in Les Cotils and lapping up those views of the Russel and the islands. But then the deaths came thick and fast.

Their 20-year-old son, also John Elisha, was drowned on a ship that went down between Catalonia and Gibraltar. Meanwhile, their intended son-in-law Lt Jones – a nice lad, they say – fell in action in Spain. He was engaged to Henrietta Tupper, 19, but it turns out that even before Jones sailed out of the pier heads her father feared she might miss out on tying the knot with her young lieutenant.

A recorded note tells us: ‘On leaving for the Peninsular War he [Lt Jones] was invited to a farewell dinner at Carrefour House given by John E Tupper. On my meeting the old man next morning, he said of his intended son-in-law – “He’ll never come back to us again, you know.” And why, he was asked? Tupper replied: “Oh, we were 13 at table yesterday and I am sure we will never see him again”.’

And so it turned out, the unlucky 13th seat at dinner bought it on the battlefields and poor Henrietta died a spinster.

We are far from finished yet though, as the misery continues. Tupper’s distinguished brother-in-law and arguably the greatest of all Guernseymen, Major-General Sir Isaac Brock, was killed in action in 1812. Three years later the Tuppers of Les Cotils lost another son, Charles James, who was 16 when he drowned at Spithead after his boat overturned. Then the sword of Damocles fell on Tupper’s brother, William Elisha, who died of wounds received in action against Greek pirates near the island of Candia.

Another brother, William de Vic Tupper, named after the uncle killed in the 1798 duel, fell fighting in 1830. A Colonel in the Chile service, he was killed near Talca in Chile at the age of 29. He was hacked to pieces by Indians.

Brock Tupper was next.

Another of the couple’s sons, he was 30 when as a passenger on an HM sailing packet from Rio de Janeiro to Falmouth, he popped his clogs and was buried at sea.

William Le Mesurier Tupper, a nephew, was made of very stern stuff though and having risen to captain in the 23rd Regiment, he volunteered for service with the British Auxiliary Service in Spain. But nobody had told him it was a dangerous place and even after his arm was shattered in a fiercely contested battle near San Sebastian, he passed it off as a mere scratch and headed out for more action. Concealing his arm wound from his men, he advanced at the head of his regiment and was rewarded with a musket ball in the brain. He was killed aged 35.

William was buried with full military honours on the spot where he fell, mortally wounded.

Frederick Tupper’s name is the last in the long list of calamities which befell the menfolk of John Elisha and Elizabeth Brock’s families.

By a highly strange coincidence he was also a passenger on an HM packet sailing from Rio to Falmouth – although years later – when he too became unwell, died and was buried at sea.

Quite how much travelling Henry Tupper, a surviving son of John Elisha and Elizabeth, did is unclear, but given that this Cotils heir became a hugely successful son of Guernsey and did so much good in island life, it is easy to imagine that he stayed well clear of Brazil and took his holidays closer to home. Rocquaine perhaps?

Henry, who was the third of four Tuppers to hold the post of jurat and did so between 1857 and 1875, did a lot to Les Cotils, which, by the early part of the 19th century, with its stables, outbuildings and extensive grounds, was regarded as a show place.

Henry and his wife Mary Ann entertained dignitaries that outnumbered family deaths and two of them were no less than Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who visited in 1854. The initials VR on the stone gate pillars of what is now the exit drive commemorate the royals’ visit.

Incidentally, the original old house was built on a mound nearer the cliff edge, but it was not until Henry Tupper inherited the property from his doom-laden parents that it took the shape we know and love. He pulled down his father’s house – perhaps he considered it unlucky – and built the mansion that CE Brett in his architectural ‘bible’ described as ‘an expansive late-Victorian stucco mansion’, stating that ‘those who marvel at the quality of the contemporary decorations, the fine wooden doors, marble fireplaces, the carvings and mouldings in the present-day lounges, can verify that no expense was spared when they were originally made to create elegant reception rooms for the Tupper residence.’

After Henry’s death in 1875 Les Cotils entered uncertain times, largely due to an inheritance row. De Vic, the eldest son and jurat for 12 years, won the right to live there, but it hardly made him happy and eventually he shot himself.

The era of the Tuppers of Les Cotils was over and by 1904 the family home had become the idyllic setting for a convent, albeit after a short period when it served as the residence of the Lt-Governor General Nathanial Stevenson.

The Tuppers were fast disappearing from island life, but right to the end they lived as elite.

Colonel Jasper Selwyn Tupper of Hauteville House, died aged 79 in 1922, being buried in the family vault at Candie cemetery.

The mourners included then Bailiff Sir Havilland de Sausmarez and future Bailiff Victor G Carey.

They would never again adorn the jurat honours board and soon disappear from our almanack or telephone lists.

By 1930 just two Tuppers remained and the same two ladies were still going in 1950.

But with the guys having gone, Tuppers were doomed as far as Guernsey was concerned, and another good old Sarnian family had gone.

Who’s next?