8 Transactions. 
Laurie of Maxwelton caused Cornet Bailie give me martyrdom.” 
This is one side of the picture, we will now travel somewhat afield 
for the other, and, as I hold, the happier and the better side. 
In the 16th century the ancient family of de Bailleul had long 
owned estates in Spanish Flanders; but, having embraced the 
principles of the Reformation, they emigrated in the next 
century from Spanish Flanders, then under Philip IJ. and the 
Inquisition, to French Flanders, and thence, when persecution 
began under Louis XIV., to England, where they purchased 
property near Peterborough, and intermarrying with the 
families around them, were ere long known by the English name 
of Bayley. From one of those Protestant refugees my tather’s 
family is descended. Thus shortly before the time at which 
Sir Robert Laurie was sentencing William Smith to death for 
adherence to Reformation principles, an ancestor on my father’s 
side was, for the sake of the same principles, forsaking his own 
country, and seeking refuge in England. But we have another 
link with the principles of the Reformation. In the year in 
which William Smith was put to death, a member of the 
French family of Minet, Isaac by name, was carrying on 
business in Calais. In that year the edict of Nantes was 
revoked by Louis XIV. The persecution of the Protestants 
became exceedingly severe, and Isaac Minet, who had embraced 
the new faith, was cast into prison, and told by the president 
that if he did not sign to be a Roman Catholic he would be 
burnt. He, however, made his escape, and with other members 
of hisfamily, 23 persons in all, crossed by night in an open boat 
to Dover, and there founded a banking house. He was joined in 
due course by his nephew, Peter Fector or Vechter, a native of 
Mulhausen, who, with his father, had married into the Minet 
family, and together they carried on for many years the bank of 
Minet and Fector, now absorbed into the National Provincial 
Bank of England. The son of Peter Fector and Mary Minet 
was my mother’s father, as also of the late Mr Laurie (formerly 
Fector) of Maxwelton. Thus whilst on my father’s side we 
claim direct descent from the victims of Roman Catholic 
persecution, we claim a like connection on my mother’s 
side also, and can show that at the very time that the one 
ancestor was doing the Covenanter to death, other ancestors 
were bearing witness to Reformation principles, and forsaking 
their own country for ever rather than renounce them. And this _ 
