Marie Collings

She inherited the fortune of her father, the privateer John Allaire, who had obtained the mortgage on the fief shortly before his death.

The island's then-ruling seigneur, Pierre Carey le Pelley, soon had no option but to sell the fief to Collings, but she never actively governed it.

[1] Her father was reputedly the most affluent man in Guernsey, whose fortune appears to have stemmed not only from privateering during the Napoleonic Wars, but also from outright piracy.

She then decided to foreclose the mortgage, forcing him to seek Queen Victoria's permission to sell the seigneurie of Sark on 10 November 1852.

[6] La Seigneurie, official residence of the ruler of Sark, was modernised and extended during Collings' brief rule, just like it was in the 1730s, when another widow, Susanne le Pelley, bought the fief.