Richard’s policy, or his councillors’, was simple. On the one hand, in
order to encourage rich Jews to continue to make England their home,
he issued a charter of protection, in which he guaranteed to certain
Jews,[22] and perhaps to all who were wealthy, the privileges that
they had enjoyed under his father and great-grandfather. They were to
hold land as they had hitherto done; their heirs were to succeed to
their money debts; they were to be allowed to go wherever they pleased
throughout the country, and to be free of all tolls and dues. On the
other hand he asserted and enforced his rights over them and their
property by organising a complete supervision of all their business
transactions. In 1194 he issued a code of regulations, in which he
ordered that a register of all that belonged to them should be kept for
the information of the treasury. All their deeds were to be executed
in one of the six or seven places where there were establishments of
Jewish and Christian clerks especially appointed to witness them; they
were to be entered on an official list, and a half of each was to be
deposited in a public chest under the control of royal officers.[23]
No Jew was to plead before any court but that of the King’s officers,
and special Justices were appointed to hear cases in which Jews were
concerned, and to exercise a general control over their business.[24]
These arrangements underwent various modifications under Richard’s
successors. The privileges which had at first been granted to certain
Jews by name were extended by John to the whole community[25]; and the
royal hold over them was tightened by an edict, issued in 1219, which
ordered the Wardens of the Cinque Ports to prevent any Jews who lived
in England from leaving the country.[26]
This elaborate constitution did not indeed afford complete security
against a repetition of the massacres of 1189 and 1190, but its
existence was a more solemn and official recognition than had been
given before of the fact that the King was the sole lord and protector
of the Jews, and that he would regard an injury done to them as an
injury to himself. And thus it went far to secure to him his revenue
and to them their safety. From this time forward, the Jews yielded to
the king, not simply irregular contributions, such as the £60,000 they
had paid to Henry II., and the sums they had paid to Longchamp towards
the expenses of Richard’s Crusade,[27] but a steady and regular income.
They paid tallages, heavy reliefs on succeeding to property, and a
besant in the pound, or ten per cent., on their loan transactions; they
were liable to escheats, confiscation of land and debts, and fines and
amercements of all kinds.[28] Their average annual contribution to the
Treasury, during the latter part of the twelfth century, was probably
about a twelfth of the whole Royal revenue,[29] and of the greater part
of what they owed the realisation was nearly certain. Other debtors
might find in delay, or resistance, or legal formalities, a way of
avoiding payment. But the King had the Jews in his own hands. He could
order the sheriffs of the county to distrain on defaulters, and there
was no one between the sheriffs and the Jews.[30] He could despoil
them of lands and debts. He could imprison them in the royal castles.
In the reign of John, all the Jews and Jewesses of England were thrown
into prison by his command, and are said to have been reduced to such
poverty that they begged from door to door, and prowled about the city
like dogs.[31] The only way they had of removing any of their property
from his reach was by burying it. Whereupon the King, if he suspected
that a Jew had more treasure than was apparent, might order him to have
a tooth drawn every day until he paid enough to purchase pardon.[32]
Powerless as the Jews were against royal oppression in England, the
position that was offered to them by Richard and John was no worse
than that of their co-religionists in other countries of Europe. Those
of Germany were the Emperor’s _Kammerknechte_;[33] those of France
had been expelled in 1182, and though they were soon recalled, might
at any time be expelled again.[34] A Jew in a feudalised country was
liable to be the subject of quarrel between the lord on whose estate
he dwelt and the king of the country, and he could be handed about,
now to the one and now to the other.[35] The right to live and to be
under jurisdiction, was everywhere still a local privilege that had to
be enjoyed by the permission of a lord, lay or clerical, and had to
be paid for. In England, the Jews, so long as they were protected by
the King, were at any rate under the greatest lord in the land. The
towns where especially they wished to settle for the purposes of their
business, were, thanks to the policy of William the Conqueror, mostly
on the royal domain. And the royal power acting through its local
officers was used to the full to protect the Jews. The sheriffs of the
counties were especially charged to secure to them personal safety and
the enjoyment of the immunities that had been granted to them.[36]
The arrangement by which Jewish money-lenders received on English
soil the protection of the King against his own subjects was not very
honourable to either of the parties. But the King had no compunction,
and the Jews had no choice. It could endure so long as the royal power
was strong enough to override the objections of barons and abbots to a
measure in favour of their creditors, of the towns to an encroachment
on their privileges, and of the Church to the royal support of a body
of infidel usurers.
At the end of the twelfth century neither towns nor landholders nor
Church were in a position to offer any effectual protest. In the
thirteenth century the strength of the opposition of each of these
three orders grew steadily. But in each it pursued a separate course,
though to the same end, and each order struck its decisive blow at
a different moment. Hence the various forms of opposition must be
separately considered.