The history of the Jews: From the war with Rome to the present time

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.

PART II.

FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE FOURTEENTH
CENTURY TO THE PRESENT TIME.