mmon ancestor of the present Guernsey family of the name of Brock
was William Brock, Esq., a native of the island, who died in the year
1776, and was the grandfather of the subject of this volume. He had
three sons and one daughter, who became connected by marriage with some
of the principal and most ancient families of Guernsey; namely, William,
married to Judith, daughter of James De Beauvoir, Esq.;[4] John, married
to Elizabeth De Lisle, daughter of the then lieutenant-bailiff of the
island; Henry, married to Susan Saumarez, sister of the late Admiral
Lord de Saumarez; and Mary, wife of John Le Marchant, Esq[5]

John Brock, Esq., born January 24, 1729, second son of the above-named
William, had by his wife, Elizabeth De Lisle, a very numerous family of
ten sons and four daughters, of whom eight sons and two daughters
reached maturity. He died in June, 1777, at Dinan, in Brittany, whither
he had gone for the benefit of the waters, at the early age of
forty-eight years.[6] In his youth he was a midshipman in the navy, and
in that capacity had made a voyage to India, which was then considered a
great undertaking. As he was possessed of much activity of mind and
considerable talent, his death was an irreparable loss to his children,
who were of an age to require all the care and counsels of a father; the
eldest, John, having only completed his seventeenth year. They were left
in independent, if not in affluent, circumstances; but the fond
indulgence of a widowed mother, who could deny them no enjoyment,
tended, notwithstanding their long minority, to diminish their
patrimony.

Isaac Brock, the eighth son, was born in the parish of St. Peter-Port,
Guernsey, on the 6th of October, 1769, the year which gave birth to
Napoleon and Wellington. In his boyhood he was, like his brothers,
unusually tall, robust, and precocious, and, with an appearance much
beyond his age, remarkable chiefly for extreme gentleness. In his
eleventh year he was sent to school at Southampton, and his education
was concluded by his being placed for a twelvemonth under a French
Protestant clergyman at Rotterdam, for the purpose of learning the
French language. His eldest brother, John, a lieutenant in the 8th, the
King's, regiment, being promoted to a company by purchase, Isaac
succeeded, also by purchase, to the ensigncy which consequently became
vacant in that regiment, and to which he was appointed on the 2d of
March, 1785, soon after he had complet