Christopher Beaumont

Christopher Beaumont is the 23rd and current Seigneur of Sark, the hereditary head of the self-governing Channel Island of Sark. A former British Army officer in the Royal Engineers, he succeeded his father, Michael Beaumont, in 2016 and works on the island’s long-term development.

He served as a regular officer in the Royal Engineers before returning to Sark, and moved into the Seigneurie in 2017, where he has worked with his family on restoring the house and gardens, which are open to visitors.

The office he inherited is a genuine constitutional curiosity. Sark has been governed under a charter granted in 1565, and until reforms in 2008 its parliament, the Chief Pleas, was composed largely of the holders of the island’s forty tenements. Those reforms, which his father supported, moved most of the Seigneur’s remaining authority to an elected chamber, leaving the Seigneur as the island’s head rather than its ruler. Beaumont, who was educated at Clifton College and Sandhurst, has defended the arrangement publicly, arguing that a working legislature for a few hundred people needs far less machinery than outside critics assume.