SARK: Death of a Dame

Nearly all 560 subjects of the medieval fiefdom of Sark gathered last week around a gnarled oak tree in their parish churchyard to mourn Dame Sibyl Mary Collings Beaumont Hathaway, 21st Seigneur of Sark. She had died suddenly of a heart attack in her palatial home on Sark at the age of 90. During almost five decades of rule over the minuscule (4½ sq. mi.) Channel island, Dame Sibyl had labored to keep the 20th century at bay in what she pridefully called "the last bastion of feudalism in the modern world."

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