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