Thus the Jews, already shut out from the feudal and municipal
organisation of the country, were forbidden by one act of legislation
to follow the pursuit in which the kings of England had encouraged them
for two hundred years.
However, for the hardships imposed by the Christian Church there was
an approved Christian remedy. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest authority
on morals in Europe in the thirteenth century, had written: “If rulers
think they harm their souls by taking money from usurers, let them
remember that they are themselves to blame. They ought to see that the
Jews are compelled to labour as they do in some parts of Italy.”[117]
A Christian king, and one whom Edward revered as his old leader in
arms and as a model of piety, had already acted in accordance with
the teaching of Thomas Aquinas. In 1253 St. Louis sent from the Holy
Land an order that all Jews should leave France for ever, except
those who should become traders and workers with their hands.[118]
And now, when Edward was forbidding the Jews of England to practise
usury, he naturally dealt with them in the fashion recommended by the
great teacher of his time and adopted by the saintly king. “The King
also grants,” said the Statute of 1275, “that the Jews may practise
merchandise, or live by their labour, and for those purposes freely
converse with Christians. Excepting that, upon any pretence whatever,
they shall not be levant or couchant amongst them; nor on account
of their merchandise be in scots, lots, or talliage with the other
inhabitants of those cities or boroughs where they remain; seeing they
are talliable to the King as his own serfs, and not otherwise.... And
further the King grants, that such as are unskilful in merchandise,
and cannot labour, may take lands to farm, for any term not exceeding
ten years, provided no homage, fealty, or any such kind of service, or
advowson to Holy Church, be belonging to them. Provided also that this
power to farm lands, shall continue in force for ten years from the
making of this Act, and no longer.”[119]
The 16,000[120] Jews of England were thus called upon to change at
once their old occupation for a new one, and the task was imposed upon
them under conditions which made it all but impossible of fulfilment.
They were forbidden to become burgesses of towns; and the effect of
the prohibition was to make it impossible for them, in most parts of
England, to become traders, for it practically excluded them from the
Gild Merchant. It is true that some towns professed that their Gild
was open to all the inhabitants, whether burgesses or not, so long
as they took the oath to preserve the liberties of the town and the
king’s peace.[121] But most of the Gilds were exclusive bodies, to
which all non-burgesses would find it hard to gain admission,[122] and
Jewish non-burgesses, though not as a rule kept out by a disqualifying
religious formula,[123] would on account of the unpopularity of their
race and religion, find it trebly hard.[124] As non-Gildsmen, they
would be at a disadvantage both in buying goods and in selling them.
They would find it hard to buy, because, in some towns at any rate, the
Gildsmen were accustomed to “oppress the people coming to the town with
vendible wares, so that no man could sell his wares to anyone except to
a member of the society.”[125] They would find it in all towns hard to
sell, in some impossible. In some towns non-Gildsmen were forbidden to
deal in certain articles of common use, such as wool, hides, grain,
untanned leather, and unfulled cloth; in others, as in Southampton,
they might not buy anything in the town to sell again there, or keep a
wine tavern, or sell cloth by retail except on market day and fair day,
or keep more than five quarters of corn in a granary to sell by retail.
There were even towns where the municipal statutes altogether forbade
non-Gildsmen to keep shops or to sell by retail.[126]
It was almost as difficult for Jews to become agriculturists or
artisans, as to become traders. They were allowed by the statute to
farm land, but for ten years only, and they were far too ignorant
of agriculture to be able to take advantage of the permission. They
could not work on the land of others as villeins, because, even if a
Christian lord had been willing to receive them, they would have been
prevented by their religion from taking the oath of fealty.[127]
Only under exceptional conditions could they work at handicrafts. A
Jew who possessed manual dexterity might, as was sometimes done in the
thirteenth century, have worked for himself at a cottage industry,
and might, though the task would have been a hard one, have gained
a connection among Christians, and induced them to trust him with
materials.[128] But many crafts were at the time coming under the
regulations of craft-gilds. Certainly as early as the beginning of
the fourteenth century, there were in London fully-organised gilds of
Lorimers, Weavers, Tapicers, Cap-makers, Saddlers, Joiners, Girdlers,
and Cutlers.[129] In Hereford there were Gilds for nearly thirty
trades.[130] It was probably very often the case, as it was with the
Weavers’ Gild in London, that a craft-gild existing in any town could
forbid the practice of the craft in the town to all who had not been
elected to membership, or earned it by serving the apprenticeship that
the Gild’s statute required.[131] The period required by the Lorimers’
statute was ten years, by the Weavers’, seven, and in some cases
certainly, and probably in all, the apprenticeship had to be served
under a freeman of the city.[132] The apprentice who had served his
time, was still, in some towns and industries, unable to practise his
craft, unless he became a citizen and entered the frank pledge.[133]
It was difficult for a Jewish boy to become an apprentice, since the
Church threatened to excommunicate any Christian who received into
his house, as an apprentice would naturally be received, a Jew or
Jewess; it was impossible for a Jewish man to become a citizen, for the
king forbade his Jewish “serfs” to be in scot and lot with the other
inhabitants of the cities in which they lived.
Excluded from the trades and handicrafts of the towns, the Jew might
try other means of earning a livelihood. He might attempt to travel
with wares or with produce, from one part of England to another, or
he might be an importer or an exporter. But wholesale trade of this
kind would be open to those alone who had command of a large capital.
And this was not the only difficulty in the way. If the Jew went
about the country with his goods from fair to fair, or from city to
city, he would do so at very great risk. He would have to travel over
the high roads, the perils of which made necessary the Statute of
Winchester, and are recounted in the words of its preamble, _de jour
en jour roberies, homicides, arsons, plus sovenerement sont fetes que
avaunt ne soleyent_.[134] If he survived the dangers of the road and
reached a fair, he would find there an assemblage made up in part of
“daring persons,” such as those, who, in spite of the orderly traders
and citizens, had caused the massacre at Lynn in 1190,[135] or those
who at Boston killed the merchants and plundered their goods, until
“the streets ran with silver and gold,”[136] or those citizens of
Winchester who, in the reign of Henry III., carried on for a time a
successful conspiracy to rob all itinerant merchants who passed through
the country.[137] With his foreign face and striking badge, he would be
the first mark for the hatred of the riotous crowd. And if he escaped
violence and robbery, he had still to fear the officials of the lord of
the fair, who exercised for the time unlimited and irresponsible power,
and who, according to the regulations of some fairs, could destroy the
goods of any trader if their quality did not please them.[138] When he
had managed to escape from the mob and the officials, his difficulties
were not over. He might make his bargains, but there was no court of
justice to which he could appeal to enforce the completion of any
transaction that required a longer time than that of the duration of
the fair. Redress for any injustice committed at a fair, or for the
failure to carry out an agreement made there, could be obtained only
through application made by the municipality of the complainant to that
of the wrong-doer.[139] The Jew had no municipality to present his
claims. If those with whom he had transactions deceived him, or refused
to pay him, he was helpless. There was no power to which he could
appeal.
If instead of going to a fair he tried to sell, in a town, produce
from another country or from a different part of England, he was in
a position of even greater difficulty. In a strange town he was as
much an alien as in a strange country, and there was scarcely any
limit to the vexations and sufferings that on that account he would
have to endure. In London, for example, alien merchants were forbidden
to remain in the city for more than forty consecutive days. While
they were there they might not sell anything by retail, nor have any
business dealings at all with any but citizens. There was a long list
of articles that they were altogether forbidden to buy. They might not
stow their goods in houses or cellars; they had to sell within forty
days all that they had brought with them; they were allowed neither to
sell anything after that time, nor to take anything back with them.
They were continually annoyed by the officers of the city.[140] All
these disadvantages the Jew would have to endure to the full while
competing with many powerful organisations which were engaged in
foreign trade, and had, after long struggles, secured from the king
special charters of privilege. Such were the companies of the merchants
of Germany, who had their steelyard in London and their settlements
at Boston and Lynn; the Flemings, who had their Hanse in London; the
Gascons who enjoyed a charter; the Spaniards and Portuguese; the
Florentines, most powerful of all, and the Venetians, whose enterprise
was, at the beginning of the fourteenth century at any rate, carried on
under the auspices of the Republic.[141]
The last opportunity for the Jews was to take part in the export
of English produce. English wool was the most important article of
international trade in Western Europe. It was brought from monasteries
and landholders chiefly by the rich and powerful companies of Flemish
and Italian merchants, and sent to Flanders and Italy to be woven and
dyed.[142] The Jews had, apparently, long taken some slight part in
wholesale trade,[143] but the amount of capital that it required, and
the power of the rivals who held the field, made it impossible for many
of them to take to it immediately as a substitute for money-lending.
Still it was the only form of enterprise in which they would not be at
a hopeless disadvantage; and some Jews, those probably who had a large
capital and were able to recall it from the borrowers, followed the
example of the Italians, and made to landholders advances of money to
be repaid in corn and wool.[144]