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From:
Subject: [HWE] England to Belgium
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 19:06:13 -0800 (PST)


Hello all happy elves and elvettes here at this time of
year.

Yet another family argument.. Now that is too harsh.

A disagreement has arisen around the old house
regarding a few of our Huguenot ancestors and so I turn
to this list.

Giles LEROY marries Margurite de CONCY and off they
head with his brother Jacques and his wife to merry old
England. Health matters you see, being alive was good,
being unalive, due to those Papists, was not.

And so Judict and her brother Jean (yes we had trouble
too selecting other names ) are born in the delightful
English countryside, Wiltshire to be more precise.

Now Jean does well and marries Anne Piton, ah nothing
like mixing good French stock with some money.

And here it comes folks, their second child, Guillaume,
is born in Belgium, well Mons which is close enough.

Now we have familly historians that say no siree this
could not be possible, afterall the Protestants of that
part of Europe were doing no better than us French
folks, oh ok now we are English folks. Changing
nationality and sides is not and uncommon past time in
our tree.

So to the question.

Does anyone wish to take a guess or even may shed some
historical fact as to why, this little band of
Huguenots would wander back across the Chunnel to
Belgium of all places ?

Were there safe houses there ?

Was the Protestant army doing well and so security
amongst fellow French speaking folk was better than
mixing it with a bunch of foreign devils on the island
off the mainland ?

One suggestion is to do with money or finance.

And boy, were we into that little enterprise from the
beginning.

It seems that only a few years earlier, up in Holland,
some folks had begun the first banking business. And so
it has been suggested that for tax purposes, well the
English were taking a liking to taxing anything that
moved, the family should take its finances off shore.
ok so Europe isn't off shore but you follow the drift.

Having arrived with a pocket full of livre perhaps we
took up banking ?

Does anyone know anything at all or could point toward
further information regarding banking in Belgium or
Alsace during the Reformation ?

Well it is chilly here south of Dijon but the family
wine is good and my sojourn seeking genealogical
knowledge continues.

Kind Regards,
Peter Leroy

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