Sausmarez Manor

The first mention of the Sausmarez family in Guernsey is at the consecration of the Vale church in 1117 attended by Guillaume de Sausmarez, followed by a letter dated 1254 in which Prince Edward, Lord of the Isles, afterwards King Edward I, ordered an enquiry into the rights of the Abbot and Monks of St. Michel to "wreck" in the Islands of Guernsey and Jersey. The enquiry was duly held before "Dominus Henry le Canelu, Dominus Gulielmus De Saumareis, milites". The William de Saumareis is almost certainly the same person as William de Salinells who was Seigneur de Samarès, then called Saumareys, in the parish of Saint Clement in Jersey, who was born towards the end of the reign of Richard Coeur de Lion. It is not known when he acquired his new fief in St Martin's parish in Guernsey, but its manor-house was on much the same site as the present one.
In 1313 an inquisition of Edward II and again in 1331 Matthew de Sausmarez was Captain of the Castle at Jerbourg and the Seigneur of the Manor. The fief was mentioned in the Extente of 1331 in the reign of Edward III of England as having belonged "from time immemorial" to the family of his grandson Matthew. The capture of the Island by the French in 1338 resulted in 1341, after a battle was lost in Les Hubits, St Martin, to Sir Peter de Sausmarez escaping via Petit Port to Jersey, returning after the Island was retaken.in 1345.

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