 to the island,' he told me. 'But then I thought it would be more satisfying to give it back.' That is what he has just done, in a journey to the island with his wife, Margaret. 'We were greeted off the ferry by the local priest, Père Jean-Pierre Penhouët, and at Mass on Saturday evening at Locmaria, we offered it back to the church.' Mr Edwards was taken by the islanders' enthusiasm. A good 200, a tenth of the whole island's population, filled the church. A bagpiper played traditional tunes on the Breton biniou. The mayor toasted the visitors in a municipal verre de l'amitié or cup of friendship. By an irony, the missal would probably not have survived if the raiders had left it in place. Such books are worn out by use. This on){kind=link}
A missal taken from a French island in 1696 has been found and formally restored
A strange gift came the way of King Edward VI School, Southampton, when its headmaster was building up a library there at the end of the 17th century. It was a Roman missal plundered from a little island off Brittany.
Inside, the donor left a note: “This Missale was taken out of ye chief Church of ye Isle of Croy when the English fleet went into ye bay of Biscay & destroyed it & ye adjacent Islands July ye 16 Anno Domini 1696.” The donor was the Rev William Philps, “chaplain of his Majesties Ship Kent”, who had been given it by Captain Henry Phillips after the raid by the Royal Navy. England was at war with France.
The island that Philps spelt Croy is Groix, of three or four thousand acres tucked under the arm of Brittany, 10 miles south of Lorient. Today you can take your bike on the ferry. In 1696, the English plundered grain and livestock, and burnt houses and the church of Notre-Dame de Plasmanec at Locmaria, on the southern shore, taking away the bells, presumably for their scrap value. And with the plunder went the folio missal used in the church.
Last year a Henley bookseller, Christopher Edwards, bought the missal at auction, to which it had been consigned by the school. “I thought I might sell the book (which is, after all, my trade) to the island,” he told me. “But then I thought it would be more satisfying to give it back.” That is what he has just done, in a journey to the island with his wife, Margaret.