It has taken nearly 500 years but one of Europe’s last bastions of feudalism has finally voted for democracy.

Government and laws of the tiny Channel Island of Sark have remained virtually unchanged since the reign of the first Elizabeth but by the end of this year it should be experiencing the novelty of a fully elected parliament and universal adult suffrage among its population of 600.

Known as the Chief Pleas, the island’s legislature is currently composed of around 40 landowners and 12 elected deputies. It has been dragged into the 21st century by the need to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights, which requires regular free and fair elections.

Not part of either the United Kingdom or the European Union, Sark is a semi-independent state leased from the British Crown. It enjoys complete freedom from party politics, cars, mains water and income tax but does not offer its citizens a free health service, unemployment benefit or old age pension. Revenue is raised by the island’s equivalent of council tax.

Whitehall looks after Sark’s external affairs and for some years has been pressing the Chief Pleas to conform with the Mother of Parliaments. This week the island’s legislators ratified a reform law that will introduce a 28-member all-elected chamber.

A spokesman for Jack Straw, the Justice Minister, said last night: “The UK is responsible for ensuring that Sark’s constitution meets human rights and other international obligations, and would be vulnerable to challenge if it does not.”

Lt Col Reg Guille, the Seneshal or presiding officer of the Chief Pleas, said that the decision to opt for full democracy had been taken after a two-and-a-half-hour debate. Although a number of legal details had still to be settled, the new constitution should receive Royal Assent by next month. “Once we have sent the law to Royal Assent we no longer have control over it. We have been assured that all the stops will be pulled out,” he said.

The Seneshal, who is a direct descendant of the original 16th-century settlers who landed on the island to ensure that it did not fall into French hands, said that his forebears would have been horrified by this week’s decision.

“The system of government over 450 years has proven for our small community to be a very successful way to manage our own affairs. In its day, Sark had a very democratic system; the settlers ran the island.”

In 1563 Helier de Carteret, the Seigneur of St Ouen in Jersey, applied to Queen Elizabeth I to colonise Sark to prevent a permanent French settlement there. The Queen awarded Sark to him as a “noble fief” on condition that he kept it inhabited, had 40 men with muskets to defend it, and paid the Crown one twentieth of a knight’s fee annually.

The island was split into 40 farms or tenements, with the tenants of the Crown forming the Chief Pleas to act as the island’s government. It remained much the same into the second Elizabethan age.

Sark’s road to modernity has at times been rocky. A small element of democracy was introduced in 1922 when 12 elected people’s deputies were added to the 40 landowners in the legislature. But serious reform did not get under way until the island set up a constitutional review in 2000 under pressure from London, Five years later the island produced a plan for a governing body of 16 landowners and 16 elected deputies, but it was challenged by Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay, who in addition to owning The Daily Telegraph also own the small nearby island of Brecqhou. They have built a huge and secretive home on Brecqhou, which they argue is politically independent from Sark, suggesting that it is subject to no legal or fiscal jurisdiction.

In 2007 the Barclay twins challenged a revised plan for a government of 12 landowners and 16 elected deputies, and the plan was withdrawn after a poll showed, in an 89.5 per cent turnout, that 56 per cent of the population was in favour of universal suffrage.

Pockets of feudalism still exist in other parts of Europe, notably the enclaves of Liechtenstein and Andorra. Sark is now far ahead of the latter, which has neither signed nor ratified the human rights convention.

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