From the old Grammar School came, besides Borrow, Sir Edward Coke, who
was born in Norfolk. When only forty years of age he became
Attorney-General, and lived in the reign of Elizabeth, always at
strife with his dangerous and brilliant legal rival, Francis Bacon.
Coke, by his opposition to the royal prerogative of raising money on the
validity of the Court of High Commission, and in taking a considerable
share in the drawing up of the Petition of Right, and in the debates
upon the conduct of Buckingham, earned the dislike of James I. Though
treading on dangerous ground, Coke nevertheless received active
employment, and appears to have got on quite well in spite of royal
displeasure.
Two other scholars were Brooke and Lord Nelson. Brooke entered the East
India Company's army in 1819 at the age of sixteen. In his remarkable
career he assisted the Sultan of Brunti to reduce the marauding Dyak
tribes of Sarawak, and with such success that the Sultan created him
rajah of the province of Sarawak in 1841.
A famous school of landscape painting was that at Norwich. It flourished
in the first part of the nineteenth century, the principal artists of
which were Crome,--who by the way was a native of Norwich,--Cotman,
Vincent, and Stark.
Of recent years the Cathedral has undergone extensive restoration,
namely, in 1892 and 1900.
Before closing this account we think it would be of interest to outline
the causes that embittered the existence of the Jews and led to their
persecution through the disappearance of a Christian boy in 1144 from
Norwich.
We have had occasion, under Lincoln, to mention the attitude adopted by
the citizens towards the Jews. If anything, the feeling was more intense
at Norwich. It is uncertain when they first resided in England, though
it is supposed they visited before the Conquest for purposes of the
slave trade, of which they held a monopoly. The position of the Jews in
a Christian State entirely depended upon the attitude of the Church,
whose stringent measures effectually precluded any Semitic from the
exercise of any public office unless the reception was confirmed by
oaths of a Christian character. As this clause was foreign to the tenets
of the Hebrew religion, and as the Church regarded the means of loans
lent out on interest as prohibited by the Gospel, and as a disreputable
calling and unworthy of a Christian, usury became the only means of
subsistence to the Jew in England. They were not affected by the views
of the Church, and soon made themselves felt. As, however, capital was
needed for the building of monasteries, abbeys, and cathedrals by the
Church, and the kings of England, especially John and Henry III., found
it convenient to extort tallage, the Jews were tolerated. The rate of
interest demanded for what was in the first place a trifling loan in a
few years increased to a formidable debt. The means adopted by the
Christian Church and kings of the middle ages to free themselves from
this bondage in no way reflect any honour. The custom appears to have
been for the king to seize the whole of the estate, both treasure and
debts, of the Jew on his demise, though there may have been sons to
inherit. Another was to burn the proofs of indebtedness after having
slain the creditors, as the attack against the Jews organised by a set
of nobles, who were deep in their debt, is recorded to have taken place
at York. For the Jew being a usurer, the estate fell into the hands of
the King, who might be influenced to cancel the debt for a much smaller
amount. We cannot then wonder that the lower classes followed in the
steps of their superiors. But above all, in the twelfth century the
Church encouraged the circulation of a suspicion that the Jews
sacrificed Christian children in their Passover. However, the suspicion
or "blood accusation," as it was called, first took root with a case in
which a boy of the name of William disappeared at Norwich. This terrible
accusation against the Jews has since been proved to have been founded
on the shallowest pretexts, but at the time the myth was nevertheless
encouraged by the clergy, since it attracted vast numbers of pilgrims to
any cathedral or church which might contain the martyred remains of
these boy-saints. The example of Norwich was followed in the same
century by one at Gloucester and Edmondsbury, whilst in the following
century the supposed martyrdom of Hugh of Lincoln served only to
increase and confirm the popular belief. Hence the intense ill-feeling
between the Christian and the Jew.