Daniel de Lisle Brock

Daniel de Lisle Brock (1762-1842)
Guernsey’s Horatius
Because of Guernsey’s lack of schooling facilities during his boyhood Brock received his early education in Alderney.
He then went to school in Surrey but left at the age of 14 to go to the Continent with his ailing father.
His brilliant career had a stormy start because the Bailiff refused to confirm his election as Constable of St Peter Port. He was elected a Jurat in 1798 at the young age of 36 and rapidly acquired a reputation as the champion of the Bailiwick’s liberté - its charters and privileges upon which depended its survival as a political entity. He was foremost in putting up a stubborn resistance to any attempts by British ministers to override these rights, or by the British Parliament to interfere with them. ( We could do with him right now  when the British Government has been trying it on again!). On no less than 4 occasions between 1804 and 1810 he was deputed by the States of Guernsey to represent them 8n London. The most noteworthy of these was when Brock appeared before the Privy Council to protest against attempts to impress islanders for the Royal Navy. 
Brock became Bailiff in 1821 at a time when further trouble was brewing as a result of the British Parliament’s enactment of The Corn Laws. The British Government construed the Act as applying to the Channel Islands. Once again Brock was successful in demonstrating his claim that this claim was in derogation of the islands’ status as free ports. 
Throughout his career Brock continued to fight for Guernsey’s rights; the last time he went off to London being at the age of 73 in 1835.
On his return from that final trip in 1835 Brock found a financial crisis looming. After some tentative experiments in connection with financing the building of the markets and the provision of schools, the States in the 1830s ceased earmarking note issues for one particular purpose at a time; thus launching a permanent paper currency. Almost immediately the Old Bank and Commercial Bank also took to issuing notes so the island was threatened with a flood of paper money. By persuading the States to assert their entitlement to a monopoly issue Brock halted the incipient inflation and thereby guaranteed a stability of money values that was to endure until the First World War.

Brock died on 24 September 1842.