Did you know that New Jersey was named after one of the Channel Islands?

The United States of America has long prided itself on being a beacon of religious and political freedom. Of course, it wasn’t the first polity in history to champion such causes, and, in fact, a part of these freedoms can be traced back to a man from a small group of islands in the English Channel. The Isle of Jersey is one of the Channel Islands, the only part of the British Isles to fall under German occupation in World War II. (The Channel Islands in WWII) It also gave the State of New Jersey its name, and contributed to religious liberty in America.
 
George Carteret was born sometime around 1610 in Jersey to the family who were also the feudal lords of Sark, another island in the Channel Islands. Carteret became an officer in the Royal Navy and, despite an embarrassing lack of education, reached the rank of vice-admiral in the service of King Charles I of House Stuart.
 
England descended into the bloody English Civil War in 1642, fought between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians. Loyal to the king, Carteret turned Jersey into a Royalist stronghold and launched privateer attacks on Parliamentarian merchant shipping. After King Charles I’s capture and execution in 1649, Carteret had the king’s heir proclaimed king in Jersey. He held the island for another two years against superior Parliamentarian forces with such valor that he was allowed to depart in honor and join the king in exile after the island finally fell.

After the collapse of the Parliamentarian regime and the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660, Carteret and fellow Royalist Lord Berkeley of Stratton were given a charter to develop a colony in North America in a region that was captured from the Dutch in 1664. The new name of the colony, New Jersey, honored Carteret’s loyalty by adopting the name of his island of birth.
 
In 1664, Carteret and Berkeley issued a document called Concession and Agreement, which provided freedom of worship in New Jersey, turning the colony into one of the few that went against the state-mandated supremacy of the Church of England. In this way, George Carteret of Jersey and the province, later U.S. State, named after him, became one of the early pioneers of American religious liberty.

(In the name of honesty, we must note that Carteret, a supporter of religious freedom, was also a founding member in a company that traded in African gold, ivory and slaves. History, and people, are often complicated and contradictory.)
 
Join us on our Normandy-Channel Islands Tour to explore the rich medieval and World War II history of the archipelago.