THE beginning of the long reign of Henry III, an infant of nine at the time of his father's death, brought an immediate respite for all sections of his subjects. William Marshal and Hubert de Burgh, the successive regents, set themselves to restore order and stability, and in this they had the fullest support of the nation at large, which realized the necessity of reasserting the legitimate prerogatives of the Crown. There was still some suffering in store for the Jews while the embers of disorder were being stamped out, 1 but otherwise they immediately felt the change for the better. As part of the policy of re-establishing the financial system, everything possible was done to renew their confidence and rescue them from the deplorable condition into which they had fallen. Thus, in the confirmation of Magna Carta which took place at Bristol almost immediately after John's death, the clauses relating to the Jews were omitted, as prejudicial to the interests of the Exchequer; and they were not reinserted in any of the many reissues in subsequent years. 2 Instructions were given for the release of those Jews imprisoned at the close of the previous reign or in the subsequent unrest, and in some cases their sequestered bonds were restored and they received safe-conducts. 3 In the following year, when preparations for the Crusade proclaimed by the Pope in 1215 renewed the bitter memories of the last reign but one, precautionary steps were taken in good time. In every city in which Jews were to be found in any number, the royal officers were instructed to select as sureties twenty-four burgesses who would be held responsible for any outrage on those placed under their care. By this means, a repetition of the murderous outbreaks of York and London was effectively prevented. 4 The right of the Jews to live in Hereford, Worcester, York, Lincoln, Stamford, Glouscester, Bristol, Northampton, and Winchester was expressly confirmed, the local officials being enjoined not to molest them or to permit unauthorized persons to interfere with them in any way. 5 In consequence of the improved conditions, there was a renewal of immigration from abroad, some of those who had fled in the previous reign doubtless returning to their former homes. Difficulties were encountered by many on their arrival owing to the unfriendly attitude of the Wardens of the Cinque Ports, which controlled communications with the Continent. When this became known, the latter were peremptorily instructed to liberate those whom they had thrown into prison and to admit intending immigrants freely in future. No formality was to be required from them henceforth except to give a guarantee that they would present themselves before the Justices of the Jews to be enrolled. On the other hand, no Jews were to be allowed to leave the realm without licence—renewed testimony to their importance to the State. 6 The policy of the ecclesiastical authorities was less liberal. Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, had been one of the leading spirits at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which affected the Jews profoundly. Considering their influence to have been responsible for the alarming spread of heresy in Europe, it renewed all the degrading restrictions that the Church had postulated academically in its first flush of triumph, with some even more stringent additions. Moreover, it attempted to extend to them the obligation to pay church tithes and—particularly where the borrowers were Crusaders—to restrict their 'usury' (the practice of which by Christians had been a principal preoccupation of the Third Lateran Council of 1178-9). Transgression in these matters was to be placed, moreover, under the jurisdiction of the church courts. The English authorities, particularly subservient to Rome at this period, had no objection against the first part of this policy; and England was thus the first country in Europe to enforce consistently the restrictive and humiliating clauses in the new anti-Jewish code. But it was impossible for them to tolerate the attempt to drive the Jews out of the activities that proved so useful to the Treasury, or to permit the extension over them of the power of the ecclesiastical tribunals. This therefore was stoutly resisted; and the conflict that resulted between the secular and spiritual authorities continued intermittently throughout the first half of the reign. The conflict of policy began to manifest itself as soon as order was restored. The most novel and least palatable of the recent Lateran regulations was that which introduced into the Christian world for the first time the obligation for all the unbelievers to wear a distinguishing badge—ostensibly in order to prevent the scandal of unwitting sexual intercourse between the adherents of different faiths. This was introduces into England as early as 1218,when a royal decree enjoined every Jew to wear at all times a mark on his outer garment (the form was carefully prescribed) by which he might be differentiated from Christians. 7 At the same time, the Church was beginning to enforce other innovations of the same sort, without any objection being raised. 8 But matters were different when it embarked upon a campaign to undermine the economic position of the Jews and bring them under the discipline of its own courts. This could not be tolerated, and in reaffirming the right of undisturbed residence for the Jews the civil authority specifically repudiated all clerical claims to interference, 'as the Bishops have no concern with our Jews'. 9 The all-powerful papal legate, Pandulph, could not remain indifferent. In a peremptory letter of complaint addressed to the justiciar, he voiced his indignation at what he considered the excessively favourable position of the Jews. Above all, he objected to the conduct of Isaac of Norwich (the wealthiest English Jew of the age, whose caricature executed by a playful Exchequer clerk is still extant, and who was still paying off at the rate of one mark daily the fantastic fine imposed on him by King John); and he requested that the proceedings pending between the financier and the Abbey of Westminster should be postponed until he was himself at liberty to be present. 10 The reaction was strengthened by a dramatic episode that took place at this period. At the Council of the Province of Canterbury, held in Oxford in 1222, the most violent passions were aroused by the trial of a certain deacon who had been Induced through the study of Hebrew to adopt Judaism and had married a Jewess. 11 He was degraded and handed over for punishment to Fawkes de Breautè, the sheriff of Oxfordshire. The latter, swearing 'by the throat of God' that he would be avenged on the blasphemer, and expressing his regret that he would go to Hell without his paramour, immediately had him burned. 12 (This incident served as the common-law precedent for the punishment of heretics by burning, for which the notorious statute 'De Heretico Comburendo' passed in 1401 was in fact unnecessary: accordingly, it was the occasion for many executions both before the passing of this law and after its repeal.) Thoroughly stirred by this episode, the Council went on to reiterate the anti-Jewish regulations decreed at the Lateran seven years before, with a few elaborations. Jews were forbidden to employ Christian servants, to enter churches or store their property in them, or to build new synagogues; they were enjoined to pay tithes to the priests of the parishes in which they resided not only on their real estate but also on their usurious profits; they were once more ordered to wear a distinguishing badge, the size of which was stipulated for the first time; and they were submitted to the ecclesiastical authority in cases of neglect. 13 But this was not enough. In over-meticulous obedience to the Lateran canons which ordered those who practised 'immoderate' usury or exacted it from Crusaders to be cut off from intercourse with Christians, the Archbishop of Canterbury apparently determined to apply this drastic discipline to all Jews without discrimination. Zealously supported by the Bishops of Norwich and Lincoln, he published an injunction threatening with excommunication those who entered into familiar relations with Jews or even sold them provisions. Obedience to this would have resulted in the annihilation of the Jewish communities in a large part of the country by starvation. Accordingly, Hubert de Burgh, now chancellor, issued an order forbidding the king's subjects under pain of imprisonment to refuse to provide Jews with the necessities of life. 14 But the English Church remained stubbornly set on this plan, and at intervals during the reign the central authority had again to be exerted to prevent its execution. Against minor ecclesiastical annoyances, on the other hand, there was no protection—least of all in the pious young king, who had shown his prejudices by having the Jews of London shut up in the Tower during his recoronation ceremony in 1220. In 1221 the Black Friars (to be followed three years later by the Franciscans) were granted a tenement in the Oxford Jewry 'to the end that by their exemplary carriage and gift of preaching the Jews of Oxford might be converted to the Christian faith'. In 1212 a synagogue recently erected in London, and said to be of great magnificence, was confiscated and made over to the brethren of St. Anthony. 15 The same year, in imitation of an institution founded in 1213 by the Prior of Bermondsey in the suburb of Southwark, south of the Thames, there was set up in London under the royal auspices, an establishment known as the ‘Domus Conversorum’ for the reception of those Jews who abandoned their ancestral faith: and proselyization was henceforth carried on more and more systematically. 16 Ecclesiastical vexations notwithstanding, the condition of the Jews remained tolerable during the royal minority, and so long as the old ministers were entrusted with authority. However, on the fall of Hubert de Burgh in 1232, a new spirit prevailed. The Court, thronged with alien favourites, was extravagant to a degree. The king's intensely artistic nature, his love of the beautiful, his passion for building, proved a constant strain on his resources, being no less a source of misery for his subjects than of delight for their posterity. His foreign policy, which culminated in a series of unsuccessful wars, was ruinously expensive. Extreme piety led him to support implicitly the schemes of a succession of popes against the Holy Roman emperor, which were largely financed by the people of England. Taxation became oppressive, and of all the king's subjects (as was deemed natural and proper) the Jews were made to suffer most. The old system, under which they had been permitted to amass wealth as the financial agents of the Crown, was now superseded. Henceforth they were regarded only as a source of revenue—an object of pitiless excoriation, regardless of the ultimate result. From an extraordinary expedient resorted to only in case of emergency, the raising of money by arbitrary tallage became a regular source of income, exploited with every circumstance of cruelty. During the minority, the extraordinary amercements on the Jews had been comparatively mild. 17 With the beginning of the king's personal rule in 1227, conditions changed, and during the next ten years alone tallages were exacted to the combined value of at least 65,000 marks—nearly four times as much as the total exacted during the previous decade. This was, however, far from representing the total burden. The cost of the foreign campaigns from 1230 onwards was defrayed to a considerable extent by the remission of the interest on, or sometimes the principal of, the debts owed to the Jews by those who participated—whether the whole or part, temporarily, or for good. 18 In 1237, in the interval between two heavy tallages, the communities of the realm were commanded to make a gift of 3,000 marks to the Earl of Cornwall, the king's brother, for the purpose of his intended Crusade, and this became a precedent henceforth whenever a member of the royal family announced his intention of going to fight the Saracens. One debtor after another obtained from the sympathetic ruler an order for the extension of time and more reasonable terms for the repayment of his debt. The burden of tallage was made more serious on the general body by the exemption from participation, for special considerations, of some of the wealthier; 19 and the administration of the Exchequer of the Jews passed into the hands of the king's foreign ministers, who were alleged to use it as a means of patronage and extortion. The only possible method of evasion was by flight, and the exodus from the country seems to have reached considerable proportions. 20 As long as Henry's authority was supreme, there was no break in the record of spoliation. From the close of the royal minority down to 1259, a total of over 250,000 marks in tallages was extorted from English Jewry, without reckoning other wholesale levies of unspecified amount. 21 The methods of exaction became more and more cruel and rapacious. In 1236 ten of the richest Jews of the realm were taken into custody as security for the sum of 10,000 marks to be contributed by their co-religionists. Three years after, an alleged murder in London was punished by the confiscation of one-third of their property. 22 1240 witnessed a census of every Jew and Jewess in the country above the age of twelve, presumably with a view to assessing the levies of the following year. 23 On this occasion, the so-called 'Parliament of Jews' consisting of from two to six members of each of the twenty-one communities of the realm then recognized, was summoned to meet at Worcester to apportion among themselves a fresh tallage of 20,000 marks, nominally equivalent to one-third of their property, for the collection of which they were personally held responsible. Appalled at the amount, unprecedented hitherto in the reign, some of the London community set out after the Court to expostulate. 24 The king was unaffected and ordered drastic steps to be taken. Many Jews from all parts of the country, unable to raise their full assessment, were arrested with their wives and children and imprisoned in the Tower, the deficiency being presumably made up by the seizure of their property. 25 The success attending the experiment was so great that the king was emboldened to repeat it on a yet larger scale. In 1244 a fine of the stupendous sum of 60,000 marks was assessed on the Jews on the pretext that they had been guilty of a ritual crime. 26 Somehow the amount was raised, though it was six years before the last arrears were collected. Meanwhile, the same year, a minor levy of 4,000 marks was extorted in order to repay a loan to the Italian merchants, 27 and in the next a fresh tallage of 8,000 marks was imposed to meet the emergency expenditure of the Welsh war. On this occasion, payment was secured by a threat that, in case of undue delay, the wealthiest of the Jews would be dispatched to Ireland to be imprisoned. It was only natural that some, fearing a repetition of the wholesale arrests of 1241, placed their wives and children in hiding: a precaution for which they and their families were outlawed and their property confiscated. 28 On the king's safe return from Wales that autumn, a thank-offering of forty gold marks was exacted, though it is questionable whether those who paid it in fact appreciated the event. 29 When in 1250 Henry was compelled by the pressure of debt and poverty to take the Cross, and proclaimed his contrition by begging the forgiveness of the people and ordering a reduction in his household expenditure, he consoled himself by a further raid on the Jews. First, an official inquiry was made throughout the kingdom into concealed Jewish property: and in the following year a new levy of 10,000 marks was ordered, instructions being issued that no Jew was to be spared, and the community of Wilton at least being imprisoned en masse. 30 The commissioners to whom the assessment was entrusted were accompanied by an unprincipled Jew, Abraham of Berkhamsted, who urged them to greater severity and threatened to denounce them if they showed the slightest moderation. 31 When in 1253 Henry crossed to Gascony, the Jews had to 'pacify' him with a payment of 5,000 marks. 32 Next year the Treasury was again empty. The king sent home urgent instructions to his brother, Richard of Cornwall, who had already shown himself the only competent financier of the family, to raise money by any expedient to meet the anticipated invasion. Barons, prelates, and Commons were all unhelpful, and the brunt of the attack fell on the Jews, whose representatives were assembled at Westminster to hear the royal communication. After being kept waiting about for three weeks, they were summoned before the earl and told what was wanted. Elias le Eveske of London, who had been appointed Presbyter Judaeorum in 1243, 33 and was at the head of the Jewish representatives, was aghast at the magnitude of the sum demanded. In a pathetic speech, he intimated that his co-religionists had no more left to give and begged in their name for permission to leave the country. Richard was sufficiently moved by what he said to modify his demands, exacting only an amount which was within the bounds of possibility. The licence to emigrate was of course refused. However, after his return from Gascony in the following year, when he was in desperate straits to find money in order to obtain the throne of Sicily for his son Edmund, the king repeated the experiment, demanding from the unhappy Elias immediate payment of 8,000 marks under the penalty of hanging. He was met once more by a blank confession of inability to pay, and a further request for permission to leave the realm. This he angrily refused (‘I am a mutilated and diminished King', he exclaimed. 'It is dreadful to think of the debts in which I am involved, and I am under the necessity of obtaining money from every quarter'); and the Wardens of the Cinque Ports were enjoined to arrest any intending emigrants. 34 It was now obvious that all immediate possibilities for raising revenue were exhausted. Henry, over head and ears in debt, now exercised his rights as suzerain by mortgaging the whole of the community as security for a loan of 5,000 marks to his wealthy brother, who (in the words of the chronicler) 'was thus permitted to disembowel those whom the King had flayed' (1255). This amount, with an additional 1,000 marks by way of douceur, was to be paid by the detested usurers in instalments over a period of two years, during which two adroit Jewish financiers were appointed to administer the affairs of their co-religionists—for all the world like an estate in bankruptcy. 35 In fact, Richard (whose relations with the Jews had been consistently good, and whose candidature to the Imperial Throne in Germany they are said to have favoured) proved himself a comparatively mild master. But immediately this period was at an end, the Jewish communities were made over in a similar manner for three years, with the whole mechanism of the Jewish Exchequer, to the king's son Edward, the heir to the throne, to secure his loyalty, in return for an annual revenue of 3,000 marks from his estates; and he was even allowed to maintain his own prison for incarcerating them in case of need (1262). 36 The latter in turn assigned them after a little more than twelve months to their business competitors, the Cahorsin merchants (who were acquiring an increasingly evil reputation for their usurious activities) in security for a loan. 37 (The comparatively small amounts which were in question at this period indicate how far the victims had been impoverished.) Meanwhile, unprecedented sums were exacted from individuals. In 1250 the king put forward a claim to succeed to the possession of all houses owned by Jews on their demise, though he did not carry it into execution. Nevertheless, when any wealthy capitalist died, vast reliefs were exacted, in accordance with custom, from his heirs; and in 1257 a loan of 10,000 marks was raised from the Florentine merchants in London largely on the security of the Escheats of Jewry. 38 On the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey in 1245, the Jews were forced to contribute both in their corporate capacity and as individuals. Licoricia, widow of a wealthy Oxford financier, was made to give over £2,500; Moses of Hereford furnished £3,000; Elias le Eveske had to provide a silver-gilt chalice; others defrayed the cost of internal embellishments. 39 (It was a needless aggravation of insult by injury to sell the Hebrew scrolls of the Pentateuch used by the Justices of the Jews for administering oaths, so as to defray the cost of a new chasuble and other appurtenances.) 40 The worst individual sufferer was Aaron of York, son of the Josce of York martyred in 1190 and Presbyter Judaeorum before Elias le Eveske. With dealings extending over at least fourteen English counties, and with some twenty co-religionists serving as his local agents, he was the greatest Anglo-Jewish financier of the thirteenth century, as Aaron of Lincoln had been of the twelfth. His importance to the Treasury must have been as high, though different in type. At every exigency of the reign, it was to him that recourse was had by the Court. In 1243, on the occasion of Richard of Cornwall's marriage to the queen's sister, Sanchia of Provence, he had to provide 400 gold and 4,000 silver marks to defray the expenses, as against a bagatelle of 100 levied from the remainder of English Jewry; and contemporary observers were shocked at the spectacle of the king of England demeaning himself to accept the gold (though not indeed the silver) with his own hands. Five years later Aaron was fined 1,000 gold marks, and he was mulcted in a further 4,000 marks in 1250 on a charge of forging a deed, apart from his contributions to the general burden of taxation in the interval. The next year, he was assessed for tallage at 2,000 marks. Meanwhile, Henry, unable to restrain his greed, had begun to wring from the financier's family the estate-duty which they were expected to pay on his death—a presumption not in fact justified, as, worn out by incessant exactions, he ended his days in penury. In seven years only, he complained to Matthew Paris, the historian of the reign, the court had received from him upwards of 30,000 marks, without reckoning what he had to pay the queen. 41 Meanwhile, as the king's ruthless Poitevin ministers consolidated their power, the abuses in the administration of the Jewish Exchequer reached their climax. In 1232 the office of Justice of the Jews, together with the Wardenship of the Jews of Ireland, was held by Peter de Rivaux, who at this time concentrated in his hands an accumulation of administrative positions unique in English history, from Treasurer and Keeper of the Wardrobe downwards. His coadjutors in the office were Robert Passelewe, Deputy Treasurer of the realm, and Stephen Segrave, the Justiciar—the only Englishman of the trio. It does not seem that the Jewish Exchequer was included in their drastic administrative reorganization, figuring rather (so at least their enemies alleged) as an inexhaustible opportunity for personal enrichment. They imprisoned their charges to obtain ransom, manipulated their taxes, made them pay exaggerated sums for licences to live where they wished, compelled them to reduce debts and return pledges, charged a commission for nominal assistance in collecting dues, extorted free-will gifts in money and jewels on the slightest pretext or none at all, even held the archa to ransom and abstracted the bonds, which were publicly offered for sale in West Cheap. The Exchequer itself was alleged not to be safe from their audacity: on one occasion, when the Jews were to pay a tallage of £500, they were assessed for no less than £700 of which, however, the king received only £462. When in 1234 the Archbishop of Canterbury forced the king under menace of excommunication to dismiss these unpopular administrators, their conduct at the Exchequer of the Jews constituted one of the long series of charges against them. The palace revolution took place with dramatic suddenness: on May 3rd the Jewish communities had been enjoined to give Passelewe implicit obedience: on May 30th they were told to obey him no longer, and the Justices of the Jews were directed to report all matters of importance direct to the king, and not to De Rivaux as hitherto. In the subsequent inquiry, eighteen London Jewish business men gave damning evidence of the manner in which they and their co-religionists had been fleeced by the disgraced trio—especially Passelewe—for their own enrichment. They were nevertheless restored to favour two years later, De Rivaux having the opportunity later on of imposing his authority once more as Treasurer. 42 Punishment so half-hearted was almost an incitement to imitation. There is accordingly little wonder that further irregularities were discovered in 1236, when Hugh de Bathe was dismissed, and again in 1244-5, when the entire staff of the Exchequer, Jewish as well as Christian, was suspended, one of the Justices being cashiered a little later on. 43 Before long, in 1249, after a drastic reorganization of personnel, 44 a fresh coterie of royal favourites obtained control. Their chief was the notorious Philip Lovel whom Henry had advanced from a simple clerkship to the highest offices of state. In 1251 he and another official of the Jewish Exchequer, Nicholas of St. Albans, were accused of corruption and were disgraced, the same happening in the following year to one of his colleagues, Robert de la Ho, who was found guilty of gross abuses. But before twelve months had passed, Lovel was back in office again, now enjoying the dignity of King's Treasurer: his subordinates were Simon Passelewe, who followed faithfully in the path of his brother Robert, and Henry de Bathe, formerly one of the Justices of Common Pleas, who had recently been fined for corrupt practice. For several years this junto continued in authority. 45 The Jewish offcials at the Exchequer were no safeguard to their Co-religionists; and one arch-presbyter after the other—Josce fil' Isaac of London (1207-36), Aaron of York (1236-43), and Elias le Eveske (1243-47)—was removed from office. The last named was driven in the end to become converted to Christianity, and tried to reinstate himself in favour by bringing wild accusations against his former co-religionists. So obnoxious had the institution of the arch-presbyter become during his oppressive period of office that an undertaking was obtained from the king not to make any further appointment except by the election of the Jewish community, whose nominee would receive official sanction. Their choice fell upon Vives, or Hagin, son of Master Moses of Lincoln, member of a family outstanding for its scholarly reputation. 46 Needless to say, this privilege also was granted only at the price of a considerable payment. The consequences of such rapacity should have been obvious to any intelligent being. The king was like a spendthrift with a cheque-book, drawing one amount after the other in utter indifference to the dwindling of his resources. Even as regards his personal interests, the policy was foolish. It progressively impoverished the English Jewries, rendering them less and less remunerative to the Exchequer as time went on. Moreover, in order to support these constant calls upon their purse, they were compelled to exercise still greater acquisitiveness in their business affairs, grinding desperately out of their clients the amounts that they would be compelled so inexorably to surrender to the Crown. Never was it more true that the Jews were like a sponge, sucking up the floating capital of the country to be squeezed from time to time into the Treasury; while some king, high above them and sublimely contemptuous of their transactions, was in fact the arch-usurer of the realm. Paradoxically, measures were taken at the same time which tended to restrict their activities. In 1234 Crown tenants were forbidden to borrow money from Jews on the security of their estates; 47 and four years later the provision was extended to all who held their property by military service. Thus, it was ensured that failure to redeem their lands (very frequently followed, or else forestalled, by sale to the Church) would not have any untoward effect upon the feudal levies of the realm, or make it difficult for the tenants-in-chief to raise their quota. 48 The outcome of other regulations was similar. As a concession to religious houses, it was ordered that estates given to them should be exempt from any liability on account of the debts of the original donor; henceforth, therefore, an impoverished layman who raised a loan from the Jews and was unable to repay could present the security to the Church (perhaps in return for a slight monetary compensation) and thereby both ensure the felicity of his soul and deprive the Jewish creditor of his dues. 49 The papal decree that interest could not be taken from a crusader was enforced, and even extended to intending crusaders who supported the king with money instead of going in person; 50 and the provision of the Magna Carta, that it could not be charged on the property of a minor on account of his late father's debts, was re-enacted separately. 51 In order to safeguard the Church's right to tithes, the acquisition of further land or tenements in the capital was forbidden. The inevitable result of these restrictions, which in their cumulative effect tended to cripple Jewish activity, was that the rate of interest rose, and it was found necessary to limit it by law to the conventional twopence weekly on every pound, corresponding to 43½ per cent. per annum. 51B Theological odium meanwhile was increasing more and more: a current perhaps fostered by, and expressed in, the legend of the Wandering Jew, the earliest medieval literary expression of which is connected with the visit of an Armenian archbishop to England in 1228. 52 Feelings ran especially high in the eastern counties, where medieval English anti-Semitism was always most acute. At Norwich it was noted with resentment how the Jewish community had swollen in consequence of recent expulsions elsewhere in the neighbourhood, and the popular hatred was unconcealed. Here, accordingly, in 1234, certain Jews were accused of having seized and forcibly circumcised four years previously the son of a certain Benedict, a physician—possibly a converted Jew, whose offspring they considered to belong by right to their community. Though the alleged offence had happened so long before, and the traces of the operation had been partly effaced, the consequences were most serious. Ten persons were arrested and sent to London for trial. The case was heard before the king himself, in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury and many bishops and barons of the realm. They decided that, as an offence against the Church, it should be tried by ecclesiastical law, and it was remitted accordingly to the Ordinary of Norwich for decision. In the end, after long delays and a vain attempt (reinforced by lavish gifts) to secure trial by a mixed jury, in which Jews too would have been included, some of the prisoners were condemned to be drawn and hanged, while one, who had fled the realm, was outlawed. 53 Meanwhile, repeated rioting took place: several Jewish houses were set on fire; and there was a clash between the mob and the soldiers sent from the castle to protect them. When in the following year the king passed through Norwich, he was met by a throng of citizens and priests, headed by the mayor, vociferously complaining of the increase in the Jewish population and of the severity of the sheriff in punishing those implicated in the recent disorders. 54 Though these complaints did not lead to any drastic action, proclamation was made not long after throughout the eastern counties once again forbidding Christian women to enter Jewish employment as nurses or domestic servants. 55 Elsewhere conditions were not very different. Royal intervention was periodically necessary to ensure that the unbelievers should not be starved out by a boycott on the sale of food: 56 and during the festivities at the time of the king's marriage to Eleanor of Provence in 1236 the entire London community took the precaution of seeking refuge in the Tower. 57 There is some evidence 58 that at this stage the Jews appealed to the Holy See for protection; but there were certainly no positive results. The Church Synods held at Worcester (1240), at Chichester (c. 1246), and at Salisbury (c 1256). renewed the prohibition to employ Christians, with the rest of the old anti- Jewish regulations: in the diocese of Lincoln. Bishop of Gloucester took steps to prevent friendly intercourse between Jews and their neighbours; and in the Council of Merton in 1258, and of Lambeth three years later, it was ordered that those who transgressed in matters ecclesiastical should be forced to appear before the Church authorities and, in case of contumacy, be cut off from all association with the faithfull. 59 The king readily followed the lead set by the Church. On the first Saturday of Lent in 1240, while the Jews were at service in their synagogues, their books were seized in obedience to a papal decree, and all copies of the Talmud were subsequently burned. 60 In 1241 a pretext was found to qualify the autonomy of English Jewry in internal matters. 61 In 1246 the lending of money on the security of ecclesiastical vestments or appurtenances was made a capital offence; 62 and in 1251 Jews were forbidden to eat meat on Fridays or during Lent, when Christians had to do without it. 63 The episode at Norwich proved to be the first of a fresh series of accusations of ritual outrage, now made with the connivance or even the encouragement of the civil authorities. 64 On the Feast of St. Alban (June 22nd) 1239, a bloody riot was started in London when a Jew was accused of murder. Henry's principal minister at this time was Brother Geoffrey of the Temple, recently appointed Keeper of the Wardrobe, who combined the religious zeal of a Churchman with the jealousy of what was in effect a rival body of bankers. Accordingly, he avidly seized the opportunity offered him. A number of Jews were thrown into jail, several were put to death, and a tax of one-third of their property (for the collection of which the Knights Templars themselves acted as agents!) was levied collectively from the entire community as a punishment for the crime. 65 Five years later, in 1244, another accusation—this time wholly preposterous—was made in the capital. It was alleged that the body of a child found in the churchyard of St. Benet's bore an incriminating Hebrew inscription cut into the flesh, proving that it had been done to death for ritual purposes. Absurd though the tale was, the corpse was claimed by the canons of St. Paul's Cathedral and buried near the High Altar, and it cost the Jewish communities of the country a payment of a further 60,000 marks to the Treasury to escape worse consequences. 66 In 1250, Abraham of Berkhamsted, who has been mentioned above as one of the wealthiest financiers of his time, was arrested on a charge of maltreating an image of the Virgin and murdering his wife for her refusal to imitate him. On the intervention of Richard of Cornwall, his patron, he was released without further punishment than the payment of a heavy fine (in itself it would seem testimony of his innocence). 67 The reaction culminated in the most famous case of all the fantastic and tragic series. In Lincoln, at the end of August 1255, large numbers of Jews from all parts of England had assembled in honour of the marriage of Belaset, daughter of Magister Benedict fil' Moses (almost certainly identical with Berechiah ben Moses of Nicole, who figures in the Rabbinic literature of the time). On the day after the wedding there was discovered in a cesspool near the house of one of the community the body of a little-Christian boy, Hugh, the son of a widow named Beatrice. He had been missing for over three weeks, and there is every reason to believe that he fell in accidentally while running after his ball at play. To the thirteenth-century mind, however, there could—be only one explanation. The corpse was removed to the Cathedral, to the accompaniment of miraculous manifestations which made it obvious to those who wished to believe so, that it was that of a martyr. It was escorted by the dean and canons, and a long procession of officials bearing crosses, candles, and censers, amid chanting and weeping. The Jew Copin, near whose house it had been found, was seized and tortured until he 'confessed' that the child had been put to death for ritual purposes at a representative gathering of his co-religionists. The king himself, who was in the neighbourhood, heard the news and hurried to Lincoln to inquire into the matter in person. The immediately ordered Copin to be hanged, after being dragged up and down the precipitate streets of the city tied to a horse's tail. The rest of the Jews implicated, to the number of nearly one hundred, were brought to London followed by a jury' of twenty-four burgesses and twenty-four knights to try the case. Eighteen of those accused preferred not to submit to the judgement of this biased tribunal, and demanded a mixed jury of Jews and Christians. This was taken as a confession of guilt, and they were immediately hanged. The remainder (with the exception of one acquitted and two pardoned before the case came on were convicted and sentenced. So far were popular passions aroused in London that the intervention of the Franciscans 68 whose learned teacher Adam Marash pleaded eloquently for moderation, was generally ascribed to bribery and brought so much unpopularity upon the Order that for some time the common people of London withheld their customary alms. Material considerations carried greater weight, and thanks to the intervention of Richard of Cornwall (to Whom the Jewry of the kingdom had recently been mortgaged, and who was naturaly anxious to safeguard his property) the surviving prisoners were ultimately released. 69 The case of 'Little' St. Hugh of Lincoln (as he was called, to distinguish him from the bishop of the same name, benign even towards the Jews, who had died half a century before) was of more than temporary importance. The body was buried in a splendid shrine in the Cathedral, where the relics were venerated down to the time of the Reformation as those of a martyr, working miraculous cures. The legend entered into the folklore of the English people: it was cited and imitated by Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales: it formed the inspiration of many ballads, in English, in French, and in Scots, which were handed down for centuries in the mouth of the peasantry. Thus, in after generations, when no Jew was left in England, it was from the poetical descriptions of this half-legendary event that a large part of the population received its impressions of the despised race. All these episodes contributed to increase the unpopularity of the Jew in the eyes of the English people. Many places, not content with restrictions, began to demand exclusion. In consequence there was a complete reversal of the tolerant policy of the early years of the reign, when the settlement of the Jews in every part of the country had been so sedulously encouraged. The lead in the reaction was taken by Simon de Montfort, son of the warrior of the same name who had harried the Jews and Albigensians in Provence, and of the fanatical Lady Alice de Montmorency, who in 1217 had given the Jews of Toulouse the alternative of baptism or death. His personal religious prejudice was heightened by the realization that the Jews were in a large measure the instrument of the royal absolutism, of which he was so determined an opponent; and in addition (it can hardly have been without effect upon his mind) he was himself heavily indebted to them. His prejudice found expression in 1231, when he issued an edict expelling the Jews from his city of Leicester—the first measure of the sort recorded since the expulsion from Bury St. Edmunds forty-one years before. 70 The example was readily followed. In 1233 an inquiry was held in the diocese of Lincoln, and perhaps elsewhere, to discover whether any Jews were now living in places from which they had previously been absent. This was the prelude to a whole series of local expulsions—from Newcastle, Wycombe, the entire county of Warwick and parts of East Anglia in 1234, from Southampton in 1236, from Northamptonshire (outside the county town) in 1237, from Berkhamsted in 1242, from Newbury and Speenhamland in 1243. 71 The tendency culminated in 1253, in an order forbidding settlement, except by special licence, in any place where no recognized community was to be found. Hitherto the Jews were permitted to live in any place from which they were not expressly excluded; now they were excluded from all places where they were not expressly permitted to live. The consequent influx into the few major centres left open caused much resentment among the general population. It was natural for Canterbury Jewry to make an attempt at this period to exclude further immigration likely to prejudice its interests. 72 The restriction of the area of residence was the conclusion and culmination of the 'Mandate to the Justices assigned to the Custody of the Jews' issued on January 31st, 1253, which crystallized Henry's policy. The first of the thirteen paragraphs was typical of the whole, stipulating as it did that no Jew should remain in England unless his presence were of benefit to his sovereign. Subsequent clauses re-enacted in excruciating detail all the restrictions embodied in the current papal legislation—from building new synagogues, contaminating Christian ears by over-loud psalmody in those which already existed, entering a church and disputing on matters of religion, or impeding conversions to the true faith down to the scandalizing of Christians by eating meat during Lent, employing Christian servants and nurses or daring to discard the Jewish badge of shame. 73 Meanwhile, popular dislike continued to express itself in intermittent local outbreaks. Thus in 1244 the Oxford students had attacked the Jewry (in what is now Pembroke Street and St. Aldate's) and sacked the solidly constructed houses of their creditors. 74 In 1261 there was a similar onslaught, in which many monks and priests participated, at Canterbury, where a determined attempt was made to set fire to the Jewish quarter. 75 It will be recalled that here, in the previous century, relations between Jews and monks had been especially cordial. From the outset of the constitutional struggle between Henry III and his barons, led by Simon de Montfort, the Jews formed one of the objects of dispute. The lesser baronage was particularly involved with them, and therefore desired some check to be placed upon their activities. At the same time it was bitterly realized by the more far-sighted that they were, in fact, merely an instrument in the hands of the Crown. In the period of agitation and unrest which preceded the Civil War one of the reforms demanded from time to time was 'that the Exchequer of the Jews should be amended’; and it was proposed in 1244 that the Council of the Realm should be allowed to nominate at least one of the Justices of the Jews and thus share in the control of this important branch of the Exchequer. 76 Plainly this could touch only the fringe of the problem, which was essentially economic. One of the complaints specifically ventilated at the Parliament of Oxford in 1258 was that the Jews sold lands pledged to them to the great magnates of the realm, who took possession and subsequently refused to accept payment of the debt if it were offered. Thus, if the debtor died leaving an infant child as his heir (when, in accordance with provision of Magna Carta re-enacted in 1235, the interest on debts was cancelled and the rights of inheritance safeguarded) the latter entirely lost his rightful due. (It may be noted that the Jews are mentioned here only incidentally; in the following clause they do not figure with the Cahorsins among those whose usury was complained of.) Moreover, even when payment was accepted, the magnate often prolonged the negotiation unnecessarily on the pretext that he could do nothing without the knowledge of the Jew who had made the loan in the first place. In the Provisions of Oxford, which were forced on the king's acceptance as a result of these deliberations, an undertaking was given in general terms to cope with the problem and to reform the Exchequer of the Jews. As a preliminary, Guardians of the Jewries were to be appointed. The autumn of the following year saw a further set of demands put forward, one of which stipulated that the Justiciar and Treasurer of the realm should appoint honest men to see that the Exchequer of the Jews was rid of its abuses. 77 To satisfy these demands, Lovel, Bathe, and Passelewe were removed from the control of the institution which they had controlled for the past ten years, and two hardworking judges were appointed in their place. For some time they continued to administer its affairs efficiently, the king chafing against their incorruptibility. Unable to replace them, he found a means to render them impotent: and in 1261, when he made a violent attempt to rid himself of baronial control, he appointed his faithful instrument, John Maunsell, chancellor of St. Paul's and noted pluralist, over the head of the Justices of the Jews, who in May 1261 were enjoined to obey him in all things. 78 The Jews thus remained an integral part of the financial system of an unpopular government. Accordingly on the outbreak of the Civil War, they suffered terribly at the hands of the baronial party, recruited as it was largely from the class most heavily in their debt, and led by a man who had already given frequent testimony to his extreme anti-Jewish bias. In every city that the barons entered, the Jewry formed their first objective, and its business records were at once destroyed. The example was set in London shortly after the outbreak of hostilities, on Palm Sunday, 1263. A dispute between a Jew and a citizen, concerning the interest on a trivial debt, served as the pretext. The great bell of St. Paul's tolled the tocsin and a numerous mob assembled, led by Stephen Buckrel, the marshal of London, and John FitzJohn, a leader of the baronial party. The Jewry was sacked mercilessly, the number of victims being estimated at four hundred of either sex; it would have been greater but for the fact that many pretended to accept baptism, or were able to take refuge in the Tower or in the houses of friendly Christians. The most distinguished of the victims was the wealthy Cok (or Isaac) fil' Aaron, whom FitzJohn himself ruthlessly ran through with his sword, thereafter seizing his treasure. A large amount of property was confiscated to equip the baronial forces, the leaders of which did not lose much time before they quarrelled amongst themselves over the distribution. A newly constructed synagogue was burned to the ground. 79 The example spread like wildfire through the country. The Jewry at Winchester was plundered with much bloodshed by Simon de Montfort the younger, who was commanding in the west, before he began his march through the Midlands. The subsequent onslaught of the royalists upon him at Northampton caused his father to leave London and hurry northwards. At St. Albans he received the news of his son's capture, and fell back on London with bitterness in his heart. His disappointed followers wreaked their resentment on the Jewry, finding justification in the report that its denizens, besides furnishing the king with money, were plotting to betray the city to the royalists on the anniversary of the massacre of the previous year, having prepared duplicate keys to open the gates and Greek fire to set the houses in flames. 80 They were again put systematically to the sword, except for a few concerning whom the baronial leader wished to make inquiries with a view to subsequent spoliation. The total number of dead was estimated—probably with some exaggeration—at 1,500 souls. For the first time for three-quarters of a century, the echo of English events reached the ears of the continental martyrologists, who annually commemorated this tragedy in their synagogues. 81 The example of the Montforts, father and son, was followed by their associate, the Earl of Gloucester, when he captured Canterbury. Here many Jews were killed and the archa in which the record of their debts was preserved was seized and conveyed to Dover. At Worcester, Lincoln, Bristol, and Bedford similar outbreaks took place, the chirograph-chests being burned or carried off. Isolated families in rural centres were fortunate if they escaped with their lives. 82 Henry de Montfort, another of Simon's sons, despoiled the Jews at Kingston. The community of Northampton was forced to take refuge in the castle. 83 Large numbers of fugitives from other towns sought refuge in Oxford, their lack of visible means of sustenance causing the authorities serious preoccupation. After the baronial victory at Lewes (May 1264) there were fresh disorders at London, Lincoln, and Nottingham, and many householders, despairing of a restoration of order, fled to the Continent. In the last phase of the struggle (1266-7) a further wave of disturbance was caused by the so-called Disinherited (the last remnant of the anti-Royalist party), who carried off the archa from Cambridge to the Isle of Ely and sacked the synagogue at Lincoln. The remnants of the community of London were driven, in the incongruous company of the papal legate Ottoboni, to take refuge in the Tower, which they manfully assisted to defend against the assailants (February 1st, 1266/7). 84 During the course of the sixteen months (May 1264–August 1265) when he was personally in control of the government of England, Simon de Montfort seems to have been sobered by the responsibilities of office, and his attitude towards the Jews changed. At last (late though it was) he realized their importance to the Exchequer, and attempted to restore their confidence. The London Jews were persuaded to leave their refuge and were taken under the king's nominal protection; those of Northampton had to evacuate the castle and return to their homes; the refugees in Oxford were ordered back to their places of origin. Letters patent were addressed to the authorities in the principal cities where the disorders had taken place, bidding proclamation to be made that the Jews might return and resume their activities peaceably, with twenty-four citizens in each place as guarantors responsible for their protection from further molestation. The Jewish chirographs were as far as possible reassembled and the Jewish archae renewed; and instructions were given for those records which were still extant to be consulted to see whether it was feasible to retrieve the heavy losses suffered. Towards the end of the winter, normal conditions were so far re-established that it was possible for the Justices of the Jews to resume their sessions (February 1265). 85 Yet at the same time the dangerous and uneconomic precedent was followed of rewarding zealous adherents of the new regime by cancelling their debts. When the Lord Edward, the king's son, to whom the Jewries of the realm had been pledged in 1262, joined the opposition to Montfort, Henry was forced by the latter to resume his nominal control, forbidding any money to be paid to his son's representatives or obedience given to the Justices whom he had recently appointed. 86 De Montfort's defeat in the summer of 1265 initiated a more settled state of affairs. A new effort was now made to strengthen the position of the Jews—not from altruistic motives so much as in anticipation of the benefit which would accrue. Persons who had fled overseas were encouraged to return. Edward was permitted to resume control of the Jewries, which were restored in matters regarding business transactions to the position that had obtained before the Battle of Lewes. All Montfort's acts of pardon to Christian debtors were revoked, the Jews being enabled to claim their debts as before (notwithstanding the destruction of the archae) if reasonable proof were forthcoming. A clerk was appointed to supervise their writs and records. Special protection was given to the communities of Wilton, Cambridge, and London in consideration of the heavy losses which they had recently sustained, a number of citizens in each place being again nominated to safeguard them. Those of Bedford as a body, as well as many individuals elsewhere, received a promise that none of their Christian debtors should be pardoned by the royal authority for five years. In consideration of a cash payment of £1,000 in 1269, the king pledged himself that no further tallage should be imposed for the next three years, unless he or his son should go on crusade. At the same time, several individuals who had been of service during the recent troubles were given special protection, and others impoverished in the wars had their debts to the Crown remitted. Thus the Jewries of the realm were afforded a breathing-space in which to recuperate. 87 The partial recovery was automatically followed by a recrudescence of complaint. For a long time past, discontent had been rife (as has been seen) in connexion with the loans made by Jews on the security of land. If the debt were not repaid, their simplest course was to dispose of the claim to some Christian magnate, who did not scruple to foreclose. Thus there was a tendency for private estates, and therewith military power, to become more and more concentrated in the hands of the great landowners, the increase in whose influence was highly unwelcome to the Crown. Alternatively, either debtor or creditor might seek the assistance of the Church by selling or surrendering his title. The reasons would, of course, be diametrically opposite: in the one case it was to evade repayment, in the other to secure it. But so far as the interests of the State were concerned the result was identical—the loss of feudal dues and above all of military service. Hence the mere fact of the lending of money by Jews to improvident landowners constituted, through no fault of theirs, a national problem. At intervals during the past thirty years or more, half-hearted attempts had been made to cope with it. 88 The restoration of peace brought the question forward again in an accentuated form. The Jews, on the verge of ruin, pressed their legal claims with a determination hitherto unusual, because impolitic: the Crown, determined to assist their financial recovery, abstained from granting debtors those concessions which had formerly served as a safety-valve. Edward, the heir to the throne, whose influence in affairs of state had come to be preponderant, realized that if the monarchy were to be strong, and the power of the great magnates curbed, steps must be taken to cope with this problem. With his brother Edmund he placed himself at the head of those who demanded reform, thereby attaining much popularity among the lesser baronage. The result was the enactment of the Provisions of Jewry, which were delivered at the Exchequer by Walter de Merton in January 1269. No debts whatsoever might be contracted in future with Jews on the security of lands held in fee; all obligations of the sort already registered were cancelled; the transference to a Christian of a debt thus secured was to be treated as a capital offence; and debts of any other nature could henceforth be disposed of to a third party only by special licence, and on condition that the principal only, without any interest, was exacted. 89 Thus prevented from realizing loans made on the security of land, the Jews sought compensation in a different direction, so as to be able to liquidate past transactions without loss. Hitherto, when a mortgage fell in, they had often held property in their own name for a short while. Now they attempted to regularize and extend this practice. They accordingly presented a petition requesting permission to hold manors, with all the customary feudal 'incidents' enjoyed by Christian landowners. At the same time they secured a re-confirmation of their traditional Charter of Privileges first granted a century and a half before, in which the right to hold land was expressly guaranteed. 90 The matter came to a head contemporaneously in an actual case, when the financial magnate and subsequent arch-presbyter, Cok Hagin fil' Deulecresse of London, was formally enfeoffed by one of his debtors with the manor of Childewick, in spite of the efforts of the monastery of St. Albans to obtain possession. He was prevented from entering into occupation, and a lawsuit followed, in which the monastery was successful. In the royal council a strong body of opinion —influenced, as was inevitably alleged, by bribery—favoured the application. Nevertheless, in the end (largely through the influence of a minorite friar, Henry of Wodstone) the opposition triumphed. 91 Not only was the petition of the Jews rejected, but it was determined to clarify the position and to curtail the privileges which they had enjoyed in virtue of their traditional Charter for the past century and a half. A new law was enacted forbidding them to have free holdings henceforth in any manor or lands, whether by charter, by gift, or by enfeoffment. Even in cities they might in future possess no houses except those in the personal occupation of the owner, or let by him to other Jews. In the event of any dispute arising out of property thus held, proceedings were allowed only before the Justices of the Jews, and not as in other cases by writ of Chancery. Lands already in Jewish occupation were to be vacated immediately, on the payment of the capital of the loans for which they served as security, without any interest ( July 25th, I271). 92 As a result of these measures, the economic activities of the Jews were greatly restricted. Forbidden to lend money at interest on landed security, whether to nobles or to citizens (who could at that time offer little else), they could no longer engage in any major transaction. At a stroke their status was virtually reduced to that of pawnbrokers. Even before this, their impoverishment had gone far. It had not been so easy for them to recover from the succession of blows which they had received at the time of the Barons' Wars and during the previous misrule. On the departure of Edward on his crusade in 1271, as his father's deputy, a comparatively moderate tallage of 6,000 marks towards the expenses had been imposed on them. The amount they could raise fell short by one-third of this total. The remainder was advanced by Richard of Cornwall, king of the Romans, to whom the Jews were assigned once more for one year as security: on the last occasion when they had been pledged with him it had been for nearly three times as much. On Richard's death, not long before his own, Henry took the Jews again into his own hand and laid upon them a tallage of 5,000 marks, of which one-fifth was assigned to the king's purveyor for his disbursements for the royal table. 93 After a little time fierce measures were adopted to exact the arrears of this levy. All who could not furnish security to pay within four months (they included the entire community of Hereford) were thrown into jail. When the time-limit had elapsed, those even part of whose dues were still outstanding were held 'at the King's mercy', with their families and chattels—reduced, that is, to beggary and serfdom. 94 Large numbers were imprisoned in the Tower and elsewhere, in the hope that their sufferings would help them to recollect some untapped reserve. Even the Jews' opponents, the Friars, and their rivals, the Cahorsins, are said to have pitied their lot on this occasion. Yet hardly was this transaction completed when they were re-entrusted to Edmund of Almain, Richard of Cornwall's son, so that the residue of the 2,000 marks due to him might be extracted. 95 This typical measure was one of the last in Henry's long reign. He died in November 1272, leaving his successor, instead of the prosperous Jewry which he himself had found on emerging from his minority, a ruined community, the condition of which was one of the most serious problems of the following years. FootnotesChapter 3
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