Since 1993, Brecqhou has been owned by David Barclay, one of the Barclay brothers who are co-owners of The Daily Telegraph. However, the candidates endorsed by their various business interests on the Island failed to win any seats in the elections held in 2008 This is because the British Isles were likely repopulated from the Iberian Peninsula following the last Ice Age.He proposes a comparison between the probable root of Sark, *Sarg-, and Proto-Semitic *śrq "redden; rise (as of the sun); east", noting Sark's position as the easternmost island of the Guernsey group.In August 1990, an unemployed French nuclear physicist named André Gardes armed with a semi-automatic weapon attempted an invasion of Sark.The night Gardes arrived, he put up two posters declaring his intention to take over the island the following day at noon.Recent (1990–2000) geological studies and rock age dating by geologists from Oxford Brookes University shows that the gneisses probably formed around 620–600 million years ago during the Late Pre-Cambrian Age Cadomian Orogeny.The quartz diorite sheets were intruded during this Cadomian deformation and metamorphic event.A subsequent attempt by the families to endow a constitution under a bailiff, as in Jersey, was stopped by the Guernsey authorities who resented any attempt to wrest Sark from their bailiwick.
The 40 tenements survive to this day, albeit with minor boundary changes.Sark also exercises jurisdiction over the island of Brecqhou, only a few hundred feet west of Greater Sark.It is a private island, but it has recently been opened to some visitors.By the 16th century, however, the island was uninhabited and used by pirates as a refuge and base. Ouen in Jersey, received letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I granting him Sark as a fief in perpetuity on condition that he kept the island free of pirates and occupied by at least forty men who were of her English subjects or swore allegiance to the Crown.This he duly did, leasing 40 parcels of land (known as "Tenements") at a low rent to forty families, mostly from St.