At the time of his accession Edward I was still in the East, engaged in his crusade against the Saracen. He returned to England two years later, in 1274, to find himself confronted with the problem of the Jew. The consequences of the policy of his father's last years were by now apparent. The communities of the realm were all but ruined. Constant exactions had begun the work: it had been completed by the recent enactments which made impossible financial operations on a large scale. Many debtors, who could well afford to pay what they owed, had been emboldened to evade their dues, with so little concealment that the government had to intervene. 1 A tallage of 12,500 marks (now only considered equivalent to one-third of their property) which had been imposed by the Council of Regency during the new king's absence, with the severe methods that had become recognized as normal, had failed to realize the amount anticipated, notwithstanding the inspection of the chirograph-chests which as usual had preceded it. Several once-affluent financiers had to sell their houses in order to meet their obligations. Even so, the arrears were so great that, on November 1st, 1274, it was found necessary to appoint a special commission to exact them. Those unable to pay were banished, in conformity with the old idea that Jews were tolerated in England only if they could be of benefit to the Crown. 2 Such desperate methods could not be repeated indefinitely. It was obvious that the general condition of the Jewish communities called urgently for reform. Contemporary events abroad indicated one manner in which this might be effected. In the year of the king's return, the Council of Lyons, under the stimulus of Pope Gregory X, urged the Christian world to greater efforts against the sin of usury, and peremptorily demanded that no community, corporation, or individual should continue to tolerate those who followed this heinous practice, whether they were native-born or foreign. Edward, loyal son of the Church that he was, took immediate steps to put this policy into execution, ordering an inquiry to be made into the usurious activities of the Florentine bankers, who had been carrying on their activities in the kingdom since 1223. 3 Next he turned his attention to the Jews—with an austerity that most of his contemporaries would have regarded as excessive since, as 'infidels', they were not considered to be bound by canon law in the same way as professing Christians. For nearly two centuries the Jewish financiers had been encouraged to carry on their activities in England for the benefit of the Crown. Now, impoverished as they were, their utility could be overlooked. Accordingly, Henry III's policy of restricting Jewish activities, and the Church's of suppressing usury, were combined and carried to their logical conclusion, in an attempt to prevent the Jews from lending money at interest on whatever security, and to divert their energies into productive channels. The conception was not altogether a new one. Forty years before, when the Jews had been expelled from Leicester by Simon de Montfort, a movement had been set on foot by the Countess of Winchester and other landowners to admit the refugees to their estates, where they would be encouraged to work with their hands. This proposal was submitted to Robert Grosseteste, afterwards bishop of Lincoln, whose approval it received; but it does not seem to have had any practical outcome. 4 More recently Thomas Aquinas had urged similar action upon the Duchess of Brabant. 'If rulers think they harm their souls by taking money from usurers', he wrote, '. . . they should see that the Jews are compelled to labour.' 5 The same idea had entered the mind of Louis IX of France, who in 1253 sent home instructions from the Holy Land that all Jews should leave his dominions, except those who became traders or took up manual toil. 6 This project does not seem to have been carried into effect. It was therefore left for Edward I to attempt to apply, for the first time, a radical solution to the Jewish problem in accordance with the ideas of his day. The Statutum de Judeismo was issued at Worcester in the Common Council of the Realm in 1275. 7 By it Jews were absolutely forbidden, as Christians were, to lend money at interest. Any person of whatever faith entering in future into a usurious contract, whether as borrower or lender, would be liable to punishment, and such agreements would no longer be enforceable at law. Outstanding transactions were to be wound up as soon as possible and pledges in Jewish hands redeemed by the following Easter, while no interest might henceforth be charged on former loans. Stringent rules were laid down limiting the right of distraint on land, no recovery being permissible on account of interest, and only one-half of the debtor's property (which even so might not include his chief residence) for the principal. As a further precaution the alienation of real estate by Jews without special licence was forbidden. 8 The prohibition of usury left them without any means of livelihood. The restrictions were therefore accompanied by concessions. For the first time in English history they were empowered to become merchants and artisans, and for this purpose (though for no other) to enter into free intercourse with Christians. They were, moreover, authorized (though this licence was to expire after fifteen years) to lease lands for tillage and farming for terms not exceeding one decade. Simultaneously, as though to impress the fact that these concessions did not imply any improvement in general status, various intolerant restrictions were renewed. Jews were to be allowed to live only in towns under direct royal authority, and only where chirograph-chests (now superfluous) had formerly existed. The obligation to wear the badge of shame was extended to all persons, of either sex, from the age of seven upwards 9 while those above twelve years of age were to pay annually at Eastertide a poll-tax of three pence. Immediately after the promulgation of the Statute the representatives of the Jewish communities of the realm met together to consider its effects, and drew up a long petition imploring the king and Council to modify certain details. It was inequitable, they pleaded, that if a debtor died without heirs and his estate devolved upon the overlord, or if he had nothing to offer as security save his principal residence, the right of distraint should be restricted. Notwithstanding the new prohibition poor Jews ought to be allowed to dispose of their houses to their wealthy co-religionists, rather than be forced to tear them down for the sake of the building-material. As far as the licence to trade was concerned, it was meaningless. Jews could not travel about safely, as Christians could, nor was there any likelihood that they would be paid if they gave credit. Hence they would have to buy dearer and sell dearer than other men, and in such circumstances could not hope to make a living. The petition closed with a pathetic plea for mercy, that the supplicants might continue to live peaceably under Edward as they had done under his predecessors since the Conquest. 10 This carefully reasoned appeal had no effect, except perhaps in some relative trivialities. (There is some evidence, for example, that outstanding transactions were not immediately wound up after all.) For it was not in its details, but rather in its spirit, that the Statutum de Judeismo was impracticable. On the surface it was a well-meaning and indeed conscientious attempt to emancipate the Jews economically. Yet it did not go far enough. Under medieval no less than under modern conditions, economic emancipation was impossible without social emancipation. Men cannot transact business unless they meet as equals; merchants cannot make a living if there is a lack of understanding with their customers; artisans need a friendly environment in which to serve their apprenticeship, to practise their craft, and to dispose of their productions. All this was expressly excluded by the terms of the Statute, which affirmed and extended (instead of modifying) the former discrimination, and forbade the Jews to be 'levant and couchant' amongst the general population. In the towns, buying and selling was confined to burgesses. For Jews to be admitted to their number was already highly exceptional; 11 but it was now expressly forbidden, on the ground that they were the king's vassals. To enter the Gild Merchant which controlled trade, or the Craft Gilds which controlled industry, was similarly out of the question; for these bodies, besides having a definite religious aspect, presupposed feelings of social sympathy absent between Jew and Christian. Moreover, the Jews were deliberately and expressly excluded from the protection given to merchants, native and foreign, by the famous Statute of Acton Burnell in 1283. 12 In farming, these precise difficulties did not apply. Nevertheless, rural solitude had no attraction for men whose lives were under constant menace, while any sense of security and permanence was made quite impossible by the limitation of the experiment to a period so short that it would barely have sufficed for the necessary training. The restriction of residence to a few urban centres constituted yet another obstacle, which should have been obvious enough: yet it was aggravated by periodical orders, beginning in 1277, for the arrest of those persons not living in the handful of authorized Jewries 13 (perhaps in consequence of the report of Hugh of Digneueton, who in that year was commissioned to investigate how far the new regulations were being obeyed). 14 To change in short the Jew's manner of life while he remained subject to the same insecurity, the same prejudices, and the same differentiation as before was an impossible task. Moreover, notwithstanding his pious resolve to renounce the source of revenue so profitably exploited by his father, the king continued to impose extraordinary levies on his Jewish subjects as though their wealth were undiminished. Almost simultaneously with the enactment of the Statutum de Judeismo, on November 24, 1275, instructions were issued to seal the chirograph-chests, as a preliminary to the exaction of a last tallage on the old basis. Ruined by the new legislation, the greater number of the Jews were unable to pay, though the amount was comparatively moderate. In the following year all those whose dues were outstanding were imprisoned once again, their chattels sold for the benefit of the Treasury, and their wives and children deported overseas. 15 Notwithstanding the difficulties on this occasion, in 1277-8 a further tallage of 3,000 marks was imposed, and others followed at intervals. The Justices of the Jews were kept in being, rapaciously active; and the new poll-tax, rigorously exacted, was no negligible burden for the poor. For the Jews to obtain money to satisfy these demands by the economic activities to which they were now confined by law was impossible. Edward's well-meaning experiment hence ended in failure. A number of the wealthier financiers were able to turn to wholesale trade in corn and wool—commodities on which they had previously been accustomed to make advances, and in which they had traded when forced to foreclose. In provincial centres this branch of activity proved particularly attractive, Jews of Bristol, Canterbury, Exeter, and Hereford engaging largely in the corn-trade, while at Lincoln, Norwich, and Oxford they were interested also in wool. 16 Licences to trade were issued also to a number of notable Londoners. It was relatively easy, too, for some of the former pledge-brokers to deal in trinkets and jewellery, as they had doubtless done previously when the occasion offered. But only a very few persons rented lands for the stipulated period, and if the case of the ill-fated Abraham fil' Deulecresse of Norwich was typical, it was for the sake of wood-cutting rather than agriculture. 17 The poorer, however, were in many cases faced with starvation, finding their old source of livelihood cut off and the substitutes offered illusory. Some are said to have taken to highway robbery. Others, less adventurous, were driven to apostasy, the number of inmates of the Domus Conversorum in London rising suddenly to nearly one hundred. 18 Large numbers saw no alternative but to carry on their old profession Clandestinely, availing themselves of the devices invented by Christian usurers to evade canon law—the 'false chevisaunce', or making out agreements for larger sums than had actually been lent, or veiling the nature of the transaction by stating it in terms of commodities, or charging a 'courtesy' instead of interest. Many, on the other hand, forbidden to make any profitable use of their capital in a legal fashion, endeavoured to eke a living out of it illegally by 'clipping' the coinage: that is, filing the edges and putting it back into circulation while melting the clippings into bullion. It was an offence of which the Jews of northern Europe were not infrequently accused in the Middle Ages: for as the chief owners of money they were tempted to indulge disproportionately in this type of dishonest practice. 19 Nevertheless, though they were punished more savagely than others if clipped coins were found in their hands, they received only incidental mention in the Assize of Money and other regulations of the reign of John concerning the currency 20 and in 1238 offered the king £100 for an impartial inquiry into the abuse and the banishment of those guilty, a commission of Jewish magnates going on circuit with the Justices to take part in the investigation. Ten years later, an official inquiry placed no more responsibility on the Jews than on their Cahorsin competitors and the Flemish wool-traders, the other classes through whose hands large sums of money passed. 21 With the enactment of the Statutum de Judeismo, however, and the cutting off of what had formerly been their solitary channel of livelihood, conditions changed. Prosecutions became more frequent, 22 until at last the king took drastic steps and appointed a special judicial commission to look into the matter. On November 17th, 1278, the Jews throughout the country were arrested, and a house-to-house search was made in their quarters in each city. Those against whom any evidence could be found were sent for trial to London, where 68o were imprisoned in the Tower. Their punishment was drastic, no less than 293 being hanged in the capital in the following year, besides some in other cities: their property, of course, escheating to the king. Amongst the victims were some of the most noteworthy figures in English economic life, who can hardly have needed to resort to such paltry dishonesty—persons like Benedict fil' Licoricia, one of the most prominent Jews of Winchester, and Belaset, daughter of Master Benedict of Lincoln, who herself had been engaged in business on a large scale. 23 A few more saved their lives by a timely realization of the verity of Christianity. The Christians implicated in the crime were treated more leniently, only three being condemned to death, though many others were heavily fined. That prejudice had entered into the proceedings was obvious even to contemporaries. 24 The initial imprisonments had provided ample opportunity for personal enemies to introduce evidence of guilt into their houses; and some Jews, who had the courage to sue for an investigation into the ownership of tools for coin-clipping discovered among their property, were duly acquitted. 25 Similar petty persecutions and new accusations followed all over the country, keeping the Jews everywhere in a constant state of alarm. At length, on May 7th, 1279, an order was issued sharply prohibiting proceedings of this type without the fullest substantiation. 26 This drastic action must have put an end to large-scale offences against the coinage. This very fact is likely to have driven the poorer class of Jew into the less culpable crime of clandestine usury. It became increasingly obvious that the attempt to effect a sudden revolution in the economic life of the English Jews had ended in failure. Theological odium, during the past decades, had increased more and more. Here and there throughout the country (particularly in Lincoln and Norwich) the shrines of reputed boy-martyrs, who were said to have been put to death by the Jews, were receiving universal veneration. At Oxford, there was near Merton College a cross, erected at the expense of the local community in expiation of the act of one of their number who, in a sudden frenzy, had thrown down a crucifix at that spot when it was borne in solemn procession to the shrine of St. Frideswide on Ascension Day in 1268. 27 All the anti-Jewish enactments fulminated by successive popes during the past century had been obeyed in England more promptly and more implicitly than in any other country of Europe. Nowhere was the Jewish badge more rigorously enforced. The Statute of Pillory, of 1267, forbade Christians to purchase meat which the Jews found ritually unfit. In 1272 (as once before, in 1230) the principal London synagogue was confiscated, on the pretext that the chanting disturbed the service in the neighbouring chapel of the Friars Penitent, to whom it was now assigned. 28 Worship was henceforth carried on in the private oratories which some of the wealthier Jews maintained in their houses. However, ten years later, John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, ordered the confiscation and dismantling of these also, with one exception. His instructions were carried out with an excess of zeal by the Bishop of London, who would allow no reservations, and was with difficulty persuaded by his ecclesiastical superior to permit the reopening of a single Bethel, in a private house. 29 In the provincial centres matters were no better; at Bristol, for example, certain Jews were put under the ban by the Bishop in 1275 on a charge of having insulted the chaplain of St. Peter's when he came to administer the Holy Eucharist to a sick person in Jewry; 30 while at Hereford Bishop Swinfield broadcast excommunications on both sides when some of his flock attended a Jewish wedding despite his prohibition. 31 Meanwhile, the Holy See took advantage of the favourable atmosphere to urge on its repressive policy, assured in most other countries of only theoretical obedience. In November 1286, in a letter addressed to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Pope Honorius reaffirmed the decisions of the Lateran Councils. He pointed out the evil effects of free intercourse between Jews and Christians in England (which he depicted in exaggerated terms), the pernicious consequences of the study of the Talmud, and the continual infringement of the canon laws on the subject. As though this were the most pressing business which confronted Christendom, he sternly called for countermeasures, including sermons and spiritual penalties, to end this improper state of affairs. 32 His communication was taken into consideration at the Diocesan Synod of Exeter in the following year, which obediently reinforced all the ancient canonical strictures against the Jews, with a severity rarely paralleled. 33 They were forbidden to employ Christian servants, to hold public office, to feast with true believers, to attend them in the quality of physicians, to build new synagogues, to venture into churches, to leave their houses or even keep their windows open at Eastertide, to neglect the wearing of the Jewish badge, or to withhold the payment of tithes on the lands which they had begun to till. The king, too, had taken a hand, the unenlightened fanaticism expressed in his edicts regarding the Jews proving him a true son of his father, and showing his character in its least admirable, and least familiar, aspect. Henry III's virulent compendium of anti-Jewish legislation, the 'Provisions concerning the Jewry' of 1253 (partially repeated in his restrictive law of 1271) had been categorically renewed in the Statutum de Judeismo. In 1276 the king was personally responsible for reviving an allegation of ritual murder which had been hanging over the London community since the close of the previous reign, when the body of a boy, bearing what were supposed to be tokens of crucifixion, was discovered in the Thames. 34 On Good Friday, 1279, a further accusation of the same sort was made at Northampton, whence several persons were taken in chains to the capital and cruelly put to death. 35 That same year the Justices on Eyre were instructed to have public proclamation made in all places in which Jews lived, warning them under penalty of death not to offend Christianity 'by saying or doing any detestable error in blasphemy of the crucifix of the Catholic faith or of St. Mary the Virgin or of the Church Sacraments', and threatening converts who returned to Judaism with the same punishment. 36 At the same time, the wearing of the Jewish badge by women, and the prohibition against employing Christian servants, were reaffirmed, as they were once again in 1281, with other restrictions of the same sort. 37 New devices, too, were sometimes found. On June 9th, 128o, Edward attended in person a General Chapter of the Dominican Order held at Oxford by which (in accordance with the provisions of the Papal Bull Vineam Sore of the previous year) conversionist sermons were instituted in England. This innovation was reinforced shortly after by the full weight of royal authority, in a decree ordering all Jews to attend the discourses that were to be arranged for their benefit during the coming Lent. 38 To encourage conversions, moreover, Edward waived for a seven-year period his legal claim on the property of those who left their faith. From now on they might retain one-half of what they previously owned, though amassed in sin, the remainder (with certain other income from Jewry, including the proceeds of the recently instituted poll-tax) being devoted to the upkeep of the Domus Conversorum in London. 39 Though now reduced to the lowest depth of misery and degradation, the Jews continued to be harassed administratively as well. On February 6th, 1283 a special commission was set up under Hamo Hauteyn, one of the Justices of the Jews, to investigate the charges made against certain of them who were suspected of selling foreign merchants plate made of clippings or of silvered tin. 40 But the administrator of justice was himself far from impeccable, and three years later he was removed from office, after an inquiry held by the Earl of Cornwall, for gross peculation in the discharge of his functions. 41 On May 2nd, 1287 there was a sudden reversion to the harsh methods of past reigns, all the Jews of the kingdom being simultaneously arrested and thrown into prison. They were not released until they had paid a fine of 20,000 marks—a levy which must have completely exhausted their remaining slender resources. 42 Meanwhile, the Jewish arch-presbyter had once more come into unpleasant notoriety, for the instrument of the royal exactions could not be over-scrupulous in his methods. Hagin, son of the learned Master Moses of London, whose election by the communities of the realm in succession to Elias le Eveske had received royal sanction in 1258, had a troubled term of office. After the London massacre in 1264 (when he had saved his life by fleeing to the Tower) he took refuge in Normandy. Some time after his return he was accused of having concealed the death of an infant child of Cok fil' Aaron, the most illustrious victim of the massacre. 43 To escape the consequences he again fled to the Continent. Not long after, hoping that the scandal had died down, he ventured to return, but was immediately thrown into prison again. Further accusations and imprisonments continued intermittently until his death in 1280. He was succeeded in the following year by Cok Hagin fil' Deulecresse of London. The latter had not long before been excommunicated by his co-religionists for refusing to bear his share of the tallage, and owed his rehabilitation and present position to the influence of the queen-mother, in whose favour he stood high. 44 It was in his house alone that public worship was permitted after the destruction of the London synagogues in 1283. His seven-year tenure of office was destined to be the most tragic of all. This was the condition of affairs when, in the summer of 1289, Edward returned to England from a prolonged visit to his continental possessions. His attempt to solve what he regarded as the Jewish problem had manifestly ended in failure: he had only succeeded in adding illegality to its other complications. Three possibilities were left. One was to extend to the Jews that social emancipation the absence of which made their economic emancipation an impossibility. This, however, was a conception which could not have occurred to the mind either of Jew or of Christian in the thirteenth century. The times were not ripe for it; neither side probably would have accepted it; and the extreme attitude which had been taken up during the king's absence both by the pope and by the English Church finally placed it beyond the bounds of feasibility. The second possibility was a confession of failure—to return to the previous state of affairs and to legitimize moneylending once more. This solution was certainly taken into consideration. To the period just before the king's departure probably belongs a draft of a law in Norman French, setting forth the manner in which the Jews had flouted the various restrictions on their activity. To avoid this in future, they were to be authorized to lend money again henceforth, under the strictest control and at a specified rate of interest. 45 It does not appear that this measure, though formally drafted, was ever put into execution. All that was done apparently was to reopen the chirograph chests in the various Jewish centres in order to control the liquidation of former transactions, and to register those in which they were now engaged, presumably with the intention of checking the worst irregularities. 46 Only one possible method of coping with the issue remained: to sweep away the problem which it had been impossible to solve. The banishment of the Jews was by no means a new conception. It had been employed all over Christian Europe as early as the seventh century. On the royal demesne in France, it had been effected by Philip Augustus, a century before, in 182, and again decreed by St. Louis (though the order relating to it was never apparently carried into execution) in 1249. In England a similar idea is stated to have crossed the mind of Henry III, while in 1281, according to one report, parliament had endeavoured to persuade the king to drive the Jews out of the country, offering a levy of one-fifth by way of inducement. On this occasion the danger had been averted, it is said, by a higher offer on the part of the victims. 47 Locally, matters had gone further. As we have seen, there were many cities in England from which the Jews had been expelled in the previous reign. The precedent had been followed under Edward—a striking instance (1273) was Bridgnorth, where only a year before they had been specifically committed to the protection of the sheriff. 48 In 1275 there had been a wholesale measure of the sort when the queen-mother obtained letters patent expelling them from her dower-towns, including Marlborough, Gloucester, Worcester, and Cambridge. 49 More recently still, the king had ordered their removal from the royal borough of Windsor (1283). 50 Even during the period of consolidation that followed the Barons' Wars, when the Jews timidly attempted to extend their area of settlement, they were harshly expelled time after time from those places where no chirograph chests were functioning. 51 The citizens of Newcastleon-Tyne as early as 1234, and those of Derby in 1260-1, had gone so far as to purchase the 'liberty' of excluding Jews from residence within their boundaries in perpetuity, the latter city carefully specifying Jewesses as well; and in 1284 the charters of the newly created boroughs of North Wales followed this model. At present, communities existed in fewer than twenty cities in the kingdom, all on the royal demesne, as against at least twice that number where they had at one time been found. In many cases these expulsions had been effected at the request of the burgesses, or were in conformity with their known desires; for (religious considerations apart) the latter had little liking for this alien element, who were in the town but not of it. The increase in population in those few Jewries which were now tolerated, and the perpetual influx of needy refugees from the centres whence they had been expelled, must necessarily have increased local animosity; and such occurrences as the riot of 1274 at Southampton, when the sheriff came to distrain for a debt owing to a Jew, or at Bristol in 1275, when fire was set to the Jewry and many houses were sacked, were becoming increasingly common. 52 Ill-feeling had been stimulated as well by the obvious insincerity of most of the recent neophytes, prompted by convenience rather than conviction, and the reported return of a few of them to Judaism. Officially, indeed, the expulsion of the Jews from England (like the greater tragedy in Spain two hundred years later) was partially justified, if not actuated, by this consideration. 53 It was not altogether a fictitious plea. In 1274, for example, a number of prominent London Jews were accused of having abducted a woman convert and coerced her to go overseas in order to revert to Judaism; 54 and as late as 1290 the Oxford Jews assaulted a convert who had the temerity to come among them to collect taxes. 55 Meanwhile the Gascon authorities complained to the chancellor of England that the Inquisitors in Languedoc had ordered them to dispatch to Toulouse for trial certain Jews from England who were accused of having relapsed after conversion. 56 About the same time acause celebreof a more startling nature, which evoked universal scandal, occurred in the capital. Robert of-Reading, a Dominican friar, had been stimulated by his study of Hebrew literature to embrace Judaism assuming the name of Haggai and marrying a Jewish wife. 57 It was this event, according to some Chroniclers, which was responsible for the oppressive regulations included in theStatutum de Judeismoand for the even more serious consequences which were to follow. From the purely selfish point of view there was no reason for Edward to refrain from carrying his intention into effect. The Jews were no longer of primary importance to the Exchequer. A century before, their average annual contribution to the royal income in ordinary taxation has been estimated at about £3,000, or approximately one-seventh of its total: now it was reduced to some £700, which represented little more than one-hundredth of the amount to which the revenue had by now increased. Economically, too, the function they performed was no longer essential. Not only was the country better developed than at the time of their settlement, when the native middle class had been almost non-existent; but in addition the Cahorsin and Italian usurers, working under the highest patronage but concealing their activities by ingenious subterfuges, made their presence superfluous. If the state desired to borrow money the sums which could be provided by these foreign consortia, specializing in government loans, made the resources of the Jews appear negligible. On the other hand, their operations with private individuals were more of a danger than a benefit to a king who was endeavouring to build up a strong central authority. The middle tenants and lesser baronage had formerly been the Jews' most profitable clients, and the ultimate result of these operations had frequently been (as we have seen) the reversion of the estates pledged with them to the Church or the tenants-in-chief, the increase in whose power was one of the problems that engaged Edward's attention throughout his reign. Now that the Jews were no longer important to the Exchequer, no reason of state prevented him from supplementing his attack upon the barons by ridding the country of their instruments. The pope and the Church were appealing for action. The king himself, from otherwise unsuspected religious motives, was naturally inclined to obey. His queen was indeed notoriously availing herself of the medium of Jewish financiers and their activities to acquire fresh estates. 58 His mother on the other hand had plainly indicated her prejudices on more than one occasion, and is even reported to have instigated the final step from the nunnery whither she had now retired. The experimental period of fifteen years during which the Jews had been empowered to lease farms by the Statutum de Judeismo expired in 1290, shortly after the king's return to England. Not many months later, giving up both the attempt at radical reform and the idea of restoring the former state of affairs, he set about applying to the Jewish problem the only solution which logically remained. The fatal step was taken on July i8th, 1290 by an act of the king in his Council. It happened to be (as was long after remembered with awe) the fast of the ninth of Ab, anniversary of manifold disasters for the Jewish people, from the destruction of Jerusalem onwards. 59 On the same day writs were issued to the sheriffs of the various English counties, informing them that a decree had been issued ordering all Jews to leave England before the forthcoming feast of All Saints (November 1st); any who remained in the country after the prescribed day were declared liable to the death penalty. The news was greeted by the general population with joy, and the Parliament which had assembled only three days before indicated its approval by prompt assent to the royal demand for a fifteenth of movables, and a tenth of the spiritual revenue, in taxation. The edict was executed with scrupulous fairness, and almost humanity, unlike subsequent proceedings of the sort on the Continent. Public proclamation was made in every county that no person should 'injure, harm, damage, or grieve' the Jews, in the time which was to elapse until their departure. Those who chose to pay for it were escorted to London. The Wardens of the Cinque Ports were instructed to see that the exiles were provided with safe and speedy passage across the sea and that the poor were enabled to travel at cheap rates. 60 Individual safe-conducts were issued to some of the more important. 61 They were allowed to take with them all cash and personal property in their possession at the time of the edict, together with such pledges deposited by Christians as were not redeemed before a fixed date. Their bonds and real estate however, including their cemeteries and synagogues, escheated to the Crown. Nevertheless, a few individuals who enjoyed especial favour (such as Cok Hagin, the last arch-presbyter) were allowed to dispose of their houses and fees to any Christian who would buy them. 62 On the morrow of St. Denis's Day (Tuesday, October io 1290) 63 the London Jews of the poorer sort started on their way to the coast 'under the custody of the Lord King', bearing their Scrolls of the Law. 64 Many of the richer had embarked at London, with all their property. At Queenborough, at the mouth of the Thames, anchor was cast at ebb-tide, and the ship grounded on a sandbank. The master then invited his passengers to disembark with him to stretch their legs. When the tide began to rise, he ran back to the side and climbed back on deck, recommending the unhappy Jews to call upon their prophet Moses, who had rescued their fathers at a similar juncture in the past. The whole party, without exception, was drowned, and the property left on board divided amongst the sailors. However, the news got about and after their return to England the culprits were tried and hanged. A tradition was long current that, however calm the weather, at the spot where the outrage took place the waters of the Thames are never still. But these were not the only victims. 65 A considerable body of exiles, numbering 1,335 in all, and consisting largely of the poorer class, were transported to Wissant near Calais, at a charge of fourpence for each person. 66 It was the stormiest season of the year. Some of the vessels were lost with all aboard: others of the passengers were cast destitute upon the coast. Despite a papal protest, a number of the refugees were allowed by the French king to settle in Amiens, and others in Carcassonne. In the following year the 'Parlement de la Chandeleur' decreed that all those who had arrived from the English possessions should leave the country by the middle of the following Lent. 67 Thus these asylums were broken up. The ultimate fate of the exiles is obscure. Notwithstanding this harsh enactment, it is probable that many of the fugitives from England, speaking as they did the language of the country, were able to remain in France undisturbed. In a roll of Paris Jewry, dating from four years after the Expulsion from England, several names appear with the addition of ‘l’Englesche' or ‘l’Englois', while isolated individuals are encountered at Vesoul and elsewhere. 68 A little group was settled in Savoy: 69 while the Clerli family of Venice, long after traced its descent legendarily to English exiles. The surname Ingles was found occasionally amongst the Jews of the obscure island of Gozzo, near Malta. 70 Hebrew manuscripts Written in England found their way to Germany, Italy, and Spain. The title-deeds of an English monastery were discovered in the lumber-room attached to the ancient synagogue at Cairo—obviously brought there by an English refugee. 71 Except for such random recollections, English Jewry of the Middle Ages became entirely assimilated in the greater body of their co-religionists overseas. 72 In England the traces left were inconsiderable. On the departure of the Jews, certain categories of their property, as we have seen, fell into the hands of the king. This comprised their synagogues and cemeteries, their houses, and their bonds—partly for the repayment of money, partly for the delivery of wool and corn. The annual income of the real estate, after all allowances had been made, came to about £130. The value of the debts, as shown in the register made by the officers of the Exchequer, was a little over £9,000. However, the king would only touch the original capital of this amount, piously waiving his right on any interest that might have accumulated. 73 Naturally there was a good deal of evasion, which affected even the highest circles. On his way home from the Papal Curia at Rome in 1292 John le Romeyn, archbishop of York, encountered in Paris his old acquaintance Bonami the Jew, and acquired from him his claim to a debt of £300 outstanding from the monastery of Bridlington, which he did his best to exact. The episode became known, and in the following year the Primate was impeached for his action. 74 In the event, the amounts due to the Crown were not fully collected. Payment was permitted to be deferred. Renewal of the renunciation of interest in 1315, and again in 1327, shows how long some of the debts remained outstanding. Finally, in response to a petition of the Commons in this year, Edward III gave up all claim to the payment of amounts still owing to him. 75 Originally it had been intended to devote to pious uses the value of the houses which had escheated to the Crown. In fact a considerable proportion was given away to the king's favourites. 76 Till the sixteenth century at least, certain property was still designated in the conservative legal phraseology as being in the king's hands 'through the expulsion of the Jews'. In the popular mind the impression left was slight. In the greater cities throughout the country, the old Jewries continued to be designated by their former names. In many places stone houses remained to recall the former owners' legendary skill as builders. In Lincoln an authentic synagogue has survived to the present day. Here and there newly granted borough charters, imitating those of an earlier date, automatically excluded the Jews, regardless of the fact that they were no longer tolerated in the country. 77 The cult of the hypothetical boy-martyrs continued till the period of the Reformation, commemorated in numerous ballads and still strong enough to poison the mind of the gentle Geoffrey Chaucer a century later. English cathedrals—Rochester, Salisbury, probably others—displayed in the conventional fashion a symbolic statue of the blindfold and dejected Synagogue, in contrast to the triumphant Church. Equally slight were the effects of the Expulsion upon the life of the country generally, though the momentary shortage of capital which ensued may have been responsible in part for the financial crisis of 1294. A further consequence deserves consideration. Impoverished though the Jews were, their potential importance to the Treasury even in the last years was not negligible. It was not without its importance in the development of the English constitution that this uncontrolled, and uncontrollable, source of royal revenue was finally removed. From this date the detailed regulation of finance by the representatives of the people became possible. It is thus not without its significance—though the importance of the fact should not be exaggerated—that the Model Parliament of Edward I assembled, and the English constitution received its shape, four years after the Expulsion of the Jews. 78 For nearly four centuries England disappears almost entirely from the horizon of the Jewish world. References to her in Hebrew literature are sparse, and the accounts of English events subsequent to the period of the Third Crusade are garbled to a degree. 79 In the chronicles the name of the country remained a prototype of cruelty and oppression. The reputation was undeserved. Nevertheless, England had played an important and unenviable role in the martyrdom of the Jewish people. It was here that the Ritual Murder Accusation, which subsequently proved responsible for such widespread misery, first reared its head. At no other time in the blood-stained record of the Middle Ages were the English horrors of 1189-90 surpassed. And there was one other aspect, which Jewish writers fully appreciated. The final tragedy of 1290 was the first general expulsion of the Jews from any country in the medieval period. Local precedents only had been known before. But it was Edward I who set the example for the wholesale banishment of the Jews, which was followed with such deadly effect in France sixteen years after, by Philip le Bel, and two centuries later by Ferdinand and Isabel of Spain, in the culminating tragedy of medieval Jewish history. FootnotesChapter 4
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