William Frederick Collings

Less than five years after his accession, the Royal Sark Militia, once cherished by his parents, deteriorated into what a visiting journalist described as "seven dozen pairs of boots".

[2] The alcoholism caused him to attack the vicar's wife with his stick, write anticlerical messages on walls, insult the constable, break window panes and ride into private gardens.

He raised her as a boy and, despite her lameness caused by unequal leg length, taught her to shoot, sail, and climb cliffs.

[1] The seigneur strongly disapproved of his heiress presumptive's relationship with the painter Dudley Beaumont, considering him a "weakling" because he did not shoot or climb cliffs.

"[1] In April 1906, the seigneur and his wife survived a shipwreck, but it worsened her existing illness, leading to her death a few months later.

[1] She described her father as "extremely insubordinate, madly obstinate, fiercely self-opinionated and prone to outbreaks of uncontrolled rage," but noted that he was a "generous man" and "never hard on those who found difficulty in paying their rents or dues".