Peter de Havilland

Sir Peter de Havilland (1747–1821), was Bailiff of Guernsey from 1810 to 1821.

Peter De Havilland was born 27 October 1747 at St Peter Port in the Channel Island of Guernsey, the son and thirteenth child of John de Havilland (1706-1770) who was elected a Jurat of Guernsey in 1729 and Mary Dobrée, daughter of Peter Dobrée.

The De Havilland's had been in the island since at least the 13th century having probably arrived from Valognes in Normandy. The family has a coat of arms dating from 1623.

The Dobrée family were a wealthy Guernsey family, however Peter Dobrée had moved for business reasons to London and it was in Clapham in 1728 that John de Havilland married Mary Dobrée.

John and Mary de Havilland lived in a house called La Bataille, which no longer exists, and between them had thirteen children, eight of which survived to adulthood. Catherine, Mary, John, James, Martha, Eliza, Martin and Peter.

The daily family language was French, with English and Guernsey French being learned by the children. His sister Catherine married when he was just one year old and his mother died in 1763 when he was sixteen.

At the age of seventeen, Peter de Havilland was sent to Cette in France on the Mediterranean coast, an important port for the wine trade, working with Marc Fraissinet, a local merchant with contracts to supply wines to the Dobrée and De Havilland families, to learn the trade, returning to Guernsey after three years.

Deciding to train in law, a small profession at that time, with less than ten Advocates in Guernsey, he spent a year as an observer in the Royal Court which was in La Plaiderie, St Peter Port, before being sworn in as an Advocate in 1770, at the age of twenty three, having not studied French or Norman Law at a University in France, as was normal at the time, before setting up his legal business in Guernsey.

Peter de Havilland married Carterette Fiott, daughter of Reverend Thomas Fiott and Mary Le Marchant in 1771, bearing him children in 1772, 1773 and 1776, other children born in 1781 and 1784 died very young, however two others born in 1786 and 1789 survived.

There was ill will between De Havilland and a number of families in Guernsey related to the then Bailiff, William Le Marchant during the 1770s resulting in a challenge to a duel, which did not take place, an exchange of public pamphlets and the resignation of de Havilland as an Advocate in 1777.

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