President's Address. 7 



five men for murder at the Carlisle Assizes. I remember still iLore 

 distinctly his sending me £5 on my taking a double Eemove at Eton. 

 He had been at Eton himself. " You have gladdened our hearts," 

 he wrote ; " depend upon it a man's success in life depends almost 

 entirely upon himself." 



So much for our descent from the de Bailleuls, a family hold- 

 ing a high position for many centuries in Flanders, early adherents 

 of the reformed faith, driven from Flanders by the persecuting 

 tyranny of Philip II., and from France by that of Louis XIV., 

 and finding safety and liberty in this country. 



A few words now upon our maternal descent. At the period 

 during which the family of de Bailleul was seeking freedom of 

 conscience — first in France and then in England — there was living- 

 at Cormont, near Montreuil, in the north of France, a middle-class 

 family named Minet. The first of the family of whom we have 

 any authentic record is Ambroise ; born in 1613, he removed to 

 Calais, where he built up a large business. He seems to have 

 been a general merchant. He was a distiller, he supplied the 

 country round with groceries and drugs, he sold more tobacco 

 than was sold within a hundred miles round, being- the first who 

 had from London an ingin (sic) for cutting tobacco square. He 

 seems to have had the true commercial instinct, and wherever a 

 demand existed he was ready to supply that demand. Spirits, 

 groceries, tobacco, drugs, all were alike to him ; he was the fore- 

 runner of the modern stores, the universal provider. But not only 

 was he a man of business and a citizen of Calais, he was a member 

 of the Reformed Church, a deacon of the church at Gruines, near 

 Calais, which he attended, and of which the accounts, with his 

 autograph appended, are still in existence. 



(Juriously enough, in the diary of Bishop White Kennett, to 

 whom I have referred as one of our paternal ancestors, there is an 

 account of a visit he paid to France in October, 1682, the crossing 

 from Dover to Calais having taken 17 hours. He describes his 

 first Sunday there. " Went up by boat to Guines. A custom for 

 the Protestants formerly to sing Psalms in the several boats, but of 

 late forbidden by authority." Then follows an account of the 

 service in the church at Guines. " The reader at some distance 

 from the pulpit reads the lessons and sets the psalms, their sermons 

 set off with eager repetitions and vehement expressions. The sacra- 

 ment administered after sermon, the table placed under the pulpit. 



