A.D. 1200-1300—_continued_.
THE JEWS IN ENGLAND.
Henry III. was a minor when the death of his father, A.D. 1216,
placed him on the throne. Pembroke and his colleagues, who governed
England in his name, began by treating the Jews with greater
mildness. They were released from prison; and twenty-four of the
principal men in every town where they resided[122] were appointed
to act as the protectors of their persons and possessions. They were
declared exempt from spiritual authority, and the property of the
sovereign alone; and the excommunications pronounced by their Rabbins
were to be enforced by law. They were ordered, however, to wear the
badge previously imposed, two strips of white cloth,[123] sewn on a
conspicuous part of their dress, which may, as Milman remarks, have
been intended to mark them as the royal property, and so save them
from injury; but which was nevertheless far more likely to make them
the objects of popular contumely.
In truth, though the kings might pretend to resent affronts and
wrongs offered to them, they were, and all men knew that they were,
unable to extend any real protection to them, even had they been
anxious to do so. All classes of men became, as time went on, more
and more determinedly set against them. The barons, on whose estates
they held heavy mortgages; the merchants, who found the trade of the
country, in spite of all their own efforts, getting into the hands
of the Jews; the common people, who resented Jewish riches, which
contrasted with their own grinding poverty; above all, the clergy,
to whose warnings and threatenings they would not listen—all these
bore a bitter grudge against them, which grew more bitter in every
succeeding generation. Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury,
together with some of his suffragans, put forth a decree, A.D. 1222,
forbidding all Christian men, on pain of excommunication, to sell
the necessaries of life to the Jews.[124] The Crown then issued an
edict, which commanded all men, as loyal subjects of the king, to
refuse obedience to this order; a needless demonstration, as it
would have been impossible to enforce it. But the protection of the
king was merely nominal. When the wars in France engaged the public
attention in 1230, Henry demanded a third part of their movables to
be paid into his exchequer. Two years afterwards he claimed 18,000
marks of them; and again, four years after that, 10,000 marks. A Jew
assured Matthew of Paris that the king had exacted from him alone
30,000 marks of silver and 200 of gold. Other Jews fared no better.
Accusations were for ever being trumped up against them. On one
occasion they were charged with coining false money, at another,
with fraudulently affixing the royal seal to documents, and the
like. The Jews seldom took the trouble to defend themselves. Like the
aristocrats in France during the Reign of Terror, they knew that they
were already condemned when they were brought up for trial. All they
could do was to bribe the judges, or the king himself, as the case
might be, to pardon their imaginary trespasses.
In 1225, the old charge of stealing children, to crucify them at the
ensuing Passover, was again alleged. In this instance the child was
recovered before the act of crucifixion had taken place; and some
penalty—we are not told what—was inflicted. Some years afterwards,
in 1243, the Jews in London were charged with the same offence.
Though in this instance the child had not been stolen, but sold, it
was averred, by the parents, the murder had been committed, and the
corpse was (as usual) discovered by a miracle. A hue and cry was made
after the supposed murderers, but they could not be found.
In 1256, the novel spectacle of a Jewish Parliament presented itself,
and must have caused, one would think, a good deal of amusement to
every one except the unhappy members themselves. Writs were regularly
issued by the sheriffs, requiring the Jews in all the larger towns to
elect six representatives—it being especially stipulated that they
should be the richest men in the place—and two in those towns where
they were fewer in number. The speech from the throne at the opening
had the merit—not always secured in modern times—of being at all
events directly to the purpose. No time was wasted in idle oratory
or personal explanations. They were briefly informed that the king
required a certain sum of them, which they were to agree to pay, and
then they would be straightway prorogued and sent home to fetch it.
If it was not forthcoming very speedily, they were assured that their
goods would be seized and themselves imprisoned. There is a beautiful
simplicity about the entire proceeding, which it is refreshing to
read of in these artificial days.
It was not a very politic step, however. The nation began to consider
whether it would not be desirable to require that the Jews should be
taxed for the benefit, not of the sovereign, but of the nation. If
there was all this money to be had, why should it not go to relieve
the public burdens, which pressed so heavily on the people, rather
than into the pockets of the king only? In the ensuing years, the
sum of 8,000 marks was demanded, and taxes were exacted, not of the
Jewish men only, but of the women and children. In the three years
next following, demands were made to the amount of 60,000 marks,[125]
the king being abetted in his rapacity by some traitorous Jews, and
especially one Abraham of Wallingford.
But these exactions did exhaust the endurance even of the Jews. An
aged Rabbi, named Elias, was deputed to wait on the Earl of Cornwall
(to whom the king had made over the Jews for the sum of 5,000 marks),
and inform him that it was wholly out of their power to meet any
further demands; and if these should be made, they would rather quit
the country than submit to them. The earl received them kindly,
accepted a very small sum, and dismissed them. Probably he was
satisfied that it really was not in their power to pay more. But King
Henry next year recommenced his importunities, alleging the enormous
amount of his debts as a reason why he must persist.
Probably the condition of his finances explains the excessive
severity of his dealings with the Jews, who were accused at this
time of their old offence, but with circumstances of additional
horror.[126] At Lincoln a child, it was said, had been enticed into
the house of a Jew named Copin, where he had been kept on bread and
milk for ten days, and then crucified in the presence of all the
Jews in England, who had been summoned to Lincoln for this purpose!
There had been apparently a set rehearsal of our Lord’s crucifixion,
a Jew sitting in judgment as Pilate. The body had been buried,
but the earth refused to hide so hideous a crime, and cast up the
remains. The Jews thereon were obliged to throw them into a well,
where they were found by the child’s mother.[127]
Such was the tale. Copin, when dragged before Lord Lexington, made
a full confession of all that had been alleged, adding that it was
the regular practice of the Jews so to celebrate their Passover,
whenever they were able to secure the necessary victims. So fierce an
outcry was raised when this was made public, that the king revoked
the pardon granted by Lord Lexington, and Copin was hanged in chains.
But this was far from satisfying the popular demand for vengeance.
All the Jews in the land were declared guilty of complicity in the
murder. Ninety-one persons were committed for trial, of whom eighteen
were hanged, and twenty more imprisoned in the Tower to await the
same fate, though it does not appear that the sentence was carried
out. Hugh, as the child was called, was canonized; pilgrims from all
parts of the world visited his tomb, where miracles were worked;
and the church at Lincoln to which his remains were committed was
rendered rich and famous for centuries to come. _The Prioress’s
Tale_, written by Chaucer a hundred years afterwards, shows that
in his time the story still retained its hold on the memory of the
English people.
Earlier in Henry’s reign, attempts had been made to convert the
Jews to Christianity, and a house, called the _Domus Conversorum_,
was opened for the reception of converts, in Chancery Lane. But
it appears that few of these were made. To be sure, the condition
annexed to proselytism—that the proselyte should by that act forfeit
his whole property[128]—does not seem very well calculated to bring
about such a change. After a few years, however, even these efforts
seem to have been given up. Harder and harder measure was dealt to
the Jews. They were forbidden to have Christian nurses for their
children; they were not allowed to buy or eat meat during Lent; they
could not hold any religious disputations; their very prayers in
the synagogue must be uttered in a low tone, for fear that the ears
of Christians should be polluted by them! But, for all their harsh
usage, they were regarded as being unduly favoured by the king. When
the Barons’ War broke out, five hundred of the richest Jews in London
were seized, in order to extort a subsidy from them; the others were
pitilessly murdered. Similar scenes occurred in the other large
cities. After the battle of Lewes, their condition was in some degree
amended; but to the end of Henry’s reign the same system of merciless
pillage and cruelty continued with no real abatement.
In 1268 an occurrence took place at Oxford, which might have caused
as furious an ebullition of popular feeling as the supposed outrage
at Lincoln. As the chancellor and other officers of the University
were on their way to the shrine of St. Frideswide, a Jew rushed up,
seized the cross that was borne in front of the procession, and
trampled it under foot. He escaped before he could be seized. It is
wonderful that the act did not provoke a massacre. The presence of
Prince Edward, who chanced to be in Oxford, perhaps prevented it. He
ordered that the Jews should, as the penalty of their countryman’s
offence, erect a cross of white marble, with the images of the
Virgin and Child, on the spot where Merton College now stands.
The death of Henry followed a few years afterwards. It might have
been perhaps expected that Edward, one of the greatest and most
humane of our kings, would have reversed the iniquitous policy of his
father towards the Jews. But he did not. He passed a law forbidding
the Jews to lend money on usury on any pretext whatsoever. His
desire seems to have been the same as that of Louis IX. of France,
to oblige them to devote themselves to manual labour. But they, it
appears, had found a different occupation for themselves—clipping and
adulterating the current coin of the realm. Whether this accusation
was true or not, cannot be determined with any certainty. There is a
_prima facie_ likelihood about it. Ground down by exactions, unable
to pursue their own trade, or to work at any other, some of them at
all events might well be driven to such a mode of obtaining the bare
means of living. On the other hand, many were beyond question accused
and condemned who wee wholly innocent. The king was greatly disturbed
at the course things were taking. He could neither conscientiously
condemn nor defend the Jews. It is likely that he took his final
resolve of expelling them altogether from his dominions, as the most
obvious solution of a great and ever-increasing difficulty. When he
had once made up his mind on this point, he was determined enough
in his mode of carrying it out. He confiscated the whole of their
property, except such as they were able to remove, and ordered them
to quit England, on pain of death.
It might be thought that, considering what the condition of the
Jews in England for the last fifty years had been, the prospect of
quitting for ever the scene of their sufferings would have been
welcome rather than otherwise.[129] But such was not the case.
A man’s home is his home, after all; and the effect of hardship
and trial is often to endear the scenes of their occurrence more
deeply to the sufferers. We are told that the last few days before
the departure of the Jews witnessed scenes of the most distressing
description; that they clung to their old haunts with a lingering
affection which, one would think, must have moved the compassion
of all who beheld it, however deep the prejudices of race and
creed.[130] But the stern edict was not revoked. The festival of All
Saints—that day sacred beyond all others to mutual goodwill among all
the children of the great Father above—witnessed the consummation
of the wrongs of the Jewish people. They went forth into penury and
exile from the shores of England, and for nearly four hundred years
they returned no more.
FOOTNOTES:
[122] Some towns, as for example Southampton and Newcastle, had
petitioned that no Jews might be allowed to reside among them. The
request was granted, though it was not found to be any benefit to the
towns in question.
[123] This was altered by Edward I. to yellow.
[124] At the same synod he ordered a deacon of the Church, who had
turned Jew for the love of a Jewess, to be hanged.
[125] It appears to us that it must have been impossible for any
traders, however lucrative their business, to endure such large and
continued exactions. The enormous rate of interest levied by the
Jews, amounting to 50 per cent. and upwards, goes far to explain it.
[126] It has already been intimated that these charges were always
made at times when the kings of England chanced to be in especial
need of money. There is no evidence, that I am aware of, to show that
the present accusation was due to that cause. But it is impossible to
divest one’s mind of the suspicion. Henry’s extreme severity, at all
events, had probably some connection with his urgent need of money.
[127] Milman ingeniously suggests, in reference to these continually
repeated charges of kidnapping and crucifying children, that the
Jews might have brooded over the horrors imputed to them, until they
became so diseased in mind that they actually executed the acts so
persistently imputed to them. This is an ingenious suggestion, but
nothing more. The confessions wrung by torture from the miserable
Jews bear on the face of them the impress of fiction, and resemble
the acknowledgment of witchcraft obtained by similar means.
[128] This extraordinary law, which obtained in France also, is to
be explained by the fact that by becoming a Christian a Jew was no
longer subject to the exactions of the sovereign. And it was argued
that it was not reasonable that his conversion should be at the
king’s expense.
[129] Not long previously to their expulsion he had imprisoned every
Jew of any note, until they had paid him a subsidy of £12,000.
[130] It is remarkable, that although the historians of those times
describe the most heartrending sufferings endured by the Jews, there
is nowhere any expression of pity or horror in their narratives.
_PART II._
FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE FOURTEENTH
CENTURY TO THE PRESENT TIME.