But even for those Jews who were rich enough to take part in wholesale
trade, there was still a great temptation to transgress the prohibition
against usury. All the legal machinery that was necessary for the due
execution and validity of agreements between Jews and Christians--the
chest in which the deeds were deposited, and the staffs of officers
by whom they were registered and supervised--were still maintained in
some towns, since they were necessary alike for the recovery, by the
ordinary process, of the old debts (many of which, in spite of the
order for summary repayment in the Statute of 1275, still remained
outstanding)[145] and for the registration of any new agreements that
might be made for the delivery of corn and wool, or for the repayment
of money lent ostensibly without interest. There was no lack of
would-be borrowers to co-operate with the Jews in using this machinery
in order to make agreements on which, in spite of the prohibition of
usury, money might profitably be lent. The demand for loans was great,
far too great to be satisfied, as the Church thought it reasonable
to expect,[146] by money advanced without interest; and owing to the
progress of the change from payment of rents in kind or service to
payment in cash,[147] it was steadily growing. It had been met by the
money of the Italian bankers, of the Jews, of English citizens, and,
as is freely hinted by writers of the time, of great English barons,
who secretly shared in the transactions and the profits of the Jewish
and foreign usurers.[148] The supply had suddenly been checked by the
simultaneous prohibition of all usury whether of Jews or of Christians.
Now a Jew who wished, by collusion with a borrower, to evade the law
against usury, had only to study the methods that had been followed
by the Caursines, and those that were still followed by the Italians
and acquiesced in by the heads of the religious houses with whom
they had dealings. The Caursines, for example, sometimes avoided the
appearance of usury by lending 100 marks and receiving in return a
bond, acknowledging a loan of £100.[149] Sometimes they lent money for
a definite period, on an agreement that they were to get a “gift,”
in return for their kindness in making the loan, and “compensation”
in case it were not repaid in time.[150] Sometimes by a still more
elaborate device, the Italians combined their two professions of
money-lenders and merchants, by inducing a monastery which had borrowed
money, to acknowledge the receipt, not only of the sum actually
received, but also of the price of certain sacks of wool which it bound
itself in due time to supply.[151] The Jews, no doubt, followed the
example of the Caursines and of the Italians. In official registers,
which are still extant, there are mentioned bonds which secured to
Jewish creditors a large payment in money together with a small payment
in kind, and which doubtless represent collusive transactions, in
which the offence of usury was to be avoided by the substitution of a
recompense in kind for interest in money. Other bonds for repayment of
money alone are mentioned in the same registers as having been executed
after 1275, and every one of the kind that was executed between that
date and the date of the amendment of the Statute against usury may
be safely considered to represent a transaction which was an offence,
either veiled or open, against the prohibition.[152]
The temptation to transgress the Statute of 1275 could appeal only to
Jews with capital, but on the poorer Jews other temptations acted with
even more strength and even worse results.
The only reputable careers known to have been open to the
poorer Jews were to become servants in the houses of their rich
co-religionists,[153] or else to imitate in a humble way their
financial transactions, either by keeping pawnshops,[154] or by
carrying on, in towns where there was no recognised Jewry, business
of the same kind as that of the rich money-lenders in the larger
Jewish settlements. To follow these pursuits was now impossible, in
consequence, not only of the prohibition of usury, but also of the
strictness with which Edward enforced the old legislation against the
residence of Jews in towns where there did not exist a chest for the
deposit of Jewish debts, and a staff of clerks to witness and register
them.[155] There was thus nothing to which the poorer Jews could turn.
Crowded as unwelcome intruders into a small and decreasing number of
towns,[156] without legal standing or industrial skill, hated by the
people and declared accursed by the Church, they were bidden to support
themselves under conditions which made the task impossible unless they
could take by storm the citadel of municipal privilege which bade
defiance to the “greatest of the Plantagenets” throughout his reign.
Under such conditions degeneration was inevitable. Some of the Jews are
said to have taken to highway robbery and burglary;[157] some went into
the House of Converts, where they got 1½d. a day and free lodging.[158]
But to the dishonest there was open a far more profitable form of
dishonesty than either of those already mentioned, viz., clipping the
coin.
The offence had long been prevalent. In 1248 such mischief had been
done that, according to Matthew Paris “no foreigner, let alone an
Englishman, could look on an English coin with dry eyes and unbroken
heart.”[159] It was in vain that Henry III. issued a new coinage, so
stamped that the device and the lettering extended to the edge of the
piece,[160] and caused it to be proclaimed in every town, village,
market-place, and fair that none but the new pieces with their shapes
unaltered should be given or taken in exchange.[161] The opportunity
for dishonesty was too tempting. The coins that actually circulated in
the country were of many different issues,[162] they were not milled
at the edges,[163] they were so liable to damage and mutilation of
all kinds that their deficiency of weight had to be recognised and
allowed for.[164] Hence anyone who had many coins passing through
his hands could secure an easy profit by clipping off a piece from
each one before he passed it again into circulation. In the early
part of the reign of Edward I., such was the deficiency in the weight
of genuine coins (an annalist of the period estimates it at 50 per
cent.),[165] and such the amount of false coin in circulation, that
the price of commodities rose to an alarming height, foreign merchants
were driven away, trade became completely disorganised, shopkeepers
refused the money tendered to them, and the necessities of life were
withdrawn from the markets.[166] The King had to promise to issue a
new coinage, but the announcement of his intention only increased the
general disturbance. The Archbishop of Canterbury complained that
in consequence of the disturbance of circulation, he could not find
anyone, except the professional usurers, from whom he could borrow
money on which to live during the interval before the revenues of his
see began to come in.[167] When the King at this period of his reign
went to a priory to ask for money, the first and most cogent of the
excuses that he heard was that “the House was impoverished by the
change in the coinage of the realm.”[168] Public opinion ascribed to
the Jews the greatest share in the injuries to the coinage. “They are
notoriously forgers and clippers of the coin,” says Matthew Paris.[169]
And that the suspicion was not absolutely without justification is
shown by the fact, that early in Henry III.’s reign, the community
made a payment to the King in order to secure as a concession the
expulsion from England of such of its members as might be convicted
of the crime.[170] When inquiries were ordered into the causes of
the debasement, in 1248, it was generally considered that the guilt
would be found to rest with the Jews.[171] The official verdict
included them with the Caursines and the Flemish wool-merchants in its
condemnation.[172]
It was not unnatural that Edward, when the evil reappeared in his
reign, should share the general suspicion against the Jews, seeing
that they had only recently begun to give up dealing in money, while
many of the poorer among them must have become, since 1275, desperate
enough to be ready to take to any tempting form of dishonesty. The
King’s indignation at the suffering that had been caused by the injury
done to the old coinage, and at the expense that was involved in the
preparation of the new issue which had become necessary, prompted him
to act on his suspicions, and to take a measure of terrible severity in
order to make sure of the apprehension of the most probable culprits.
When, in 1278, he was making preparations for an inquiry into the
whole subject of the coinage, he caused all the Jews of England to
be imprisoned in one night, their property to be seized, and their
houses to be searched. At the same time the goldsmiths, and many others
against whom information was given by the Jews, were treated in the
same way.[173]
The prisoners were tried before a bench of judges and royal officers.
There can be no doubt that many innocent men were accused, even if
they were not condemned. At a time when all the Jews in England were
imprisoned, there was a great temptation for Christians to bring
false accusations against those among them whom they disliked on
personal or religious grounds, especially as there was a good chance
of extorting hush-money from the accused, or, in case of condemnation,
of concealing from the escheators some of their property.[174] The
Jews and the King recognised the danger. One Manser of London, for
example, was wise enough to sue that an investigation might be held
into the ownership of tools for clipping that were found on the roof
of his house.[175] The King, anxious that punishment should fall only
on the guilty, issued a general writ, in which the various motives for
false accusation were recited, and it was ordered that any Jew against
whom no charge had been brought by a certain date might secure himself
altogether by paying a fine.[176] Nevertheless, a large number both of
Jews and Christians were found guilty. Of the Christians only three
were condemned to death, though many others were heavily fined. For
the Jews, however, there was no mercy. Two hundred and ninety-three of
them were hanged and drawn in London, and all their property escheated
to the King. A few more had been condemned, but saved their lives by
conversion to Christianity.[177]
The activity with which Jews took part, or were supposed to take part,
in the debasement of the coinage, and in the prohibited practice of
usury,[178] must have aroused in the mind of the King some misgivings
on the subject of his new policy. Nevertheless, he did not as yet
despair of its ultimate success. The crimes of the Jews were no
greater than those of the Christians around them, though they called
forth heavier punishment. Christians clipped and coined; Christians
still lent money on usury.[179] And a certain amount of crime among
Jews could not but be looked for as a natural result of the terrible
difficulties in the way of the social revolution that had been demanded
of them. Edward saw that he had been trying to do too much at once. The
Jews could not change their occupation as suddenly as he had wished.
The country could not do without money-lenders. By making the lending
of money at interest a penal offence, and thus encouraging debtors and
creditors to keep their transactions secret, Edward had weakened the
supervision that had been exercised by the Treasury, since 1194, over
the business and property of the Jews, and thus he had increased the
chance of fraud in the collection of tallages, and in the apportionment
of the share of each estate that had long been claimed by the Crown
as the succession due on Jewish property.[180] But he had not stamped
out usury, though the Statute of 1275 had forbidden it. He had not even
secured the redemption of all pledges of Christians from the hands of
the Jews, though the Statute of 1275 had demanded it. And, therefore,
in order that he might not keep on the Statute Book a law of which the
effective administration was impossible, he mitigated the severity of
the provisions of 1275, and issued, probably a few years later, a new
Statute, in which he prescribed certain conditions under which usury
was to be permitted. He allowed loans to be made under contract for the
payment of interest at the rate of half a mark in the pound yearly,
but for three years only; and, in order to reduce the temptation to
conclude secret transactions, restored legal recognition to all debts
of the value of £20 or upwards that were made under the prescribed
conditions, and were registered before the chirographer and clerk,
and threatened heavy penalties against all who should lend up to that
amount without registration.[181]
Edward was wise in thus substituting for his earlier, harassing
measure, one that allowed for gradual change, and that attempted to
control the evil of which the immediate suppression was impossible. But
the few years’ experience that he had already had ought to have made
him go farther still. It ought to have shown him that it was hopeless
to expect the Jews to give up usury so long as the greater part of them
were practically excluded from all other pursuits, and that, if ever he
was to bring to a successful issue the policy that he had inaugurated,
he would have to find some means of enabling them to work side by side
with Christians, and to compete with them on equal conditions.
Such a task would have been full of difficulties, the greatest of
which resulted from the active hostility with which the rulers and
teachers of the Christian Church in the thirteenth century, unlike
their predecessors, regarded the Jews. The growth and nature of this
hostility must now be considered.