CHAPTER SEVEN.

Vidua post mortem mariti sui statim et sine difficultate habeat maritagium et hereditatem suam, nec aliquid det pro dote sua, vel pro maritagio suo, vel hereditate sua quam hereditatem maritus suus et ipsa tenuerint die obitus ipsius mariti, et maneat in domo mariti sui per quadraginta dies post mortem ipsius, infra quos assignetur ei dos sua.

No amount of forethought on the part of a Crown tenant, setting his house in order against his decease, could rescue his widow from the extremely unfortunate position into which his death would necessarily plunge her. He must leave her without adequate protection against the tyranny of the king, who might inflict terrible hardships by a harsh use of rights vested in him for the safeguard of the feudal incidents due to the Crown as overlord. Newly deprived of her natural protector, she was under the immediate necessity of conducting a series of delicate negotiations with a powerful opponent fortified by prerogatives wide and vague. She might indeed, if deprived of her “estovers,” find herself for the moment in actual destitution, until she had made her bargain with the Crown; she had a right, indeed (under normal circumstances) to one-third of the lands of her late husband (her dos rationalis) in addition to any lands she might have brought as a marriage portion, but she could only enter into possession by permission of the king, who had prior claims to hers, and could seize everything by his prerogative of primer seisin.^[414] This chapter provides a remedy. Widows shall have their rights without delay, without difficulty, and without payment.

I. The Widow’s Share of Real Estate. Three words are used:—dos, maritagium, and hereditas.

(1) Dower. A wife’s dower is the portion of her husband’s lands set aside to support her in her widowhood. It was customary from an early date for a bridegroom to make adequate provision for his bride on the day he married her. Such a ceremony, indeed, formed a picturesque feature of the marriage rejoicings, taking place literally at the door of the church, as man and wife returned from the altar. The share of her husband’s land thus set apart for the young wife was known as her dos (or dowry), and would support her if her husband died. In theory the transaction between the spouses partook of the nature of a contract by which they arranged the extent of the provision to be given and accepted. The wife’s rôle, however, was a passive one; her concurrence was assumed. Yet, if no provision was made at all, the law stepped in, on the presumption that the omission had been unintentional on the husband’s part, and fixed the dower at one-third of all his lands.^[415]

John’s Magna Carta contents itself with the brief enactment “that a widow shall have her dower.” The Charter of 1217 goes farther, containing an exact statement of the law as it then stood:—"The widow shall have assigned to her for her dower the third part of all her husband’s land which he had in his lifetime (in vita sua) unless a smaller share had been given her at the door of the church." Lawyers of a later age have by a strained construction of the words in vita sua, made them an absolute protection to a wife against all attempts of her husband to defeat or lessen her dower by alienations granted without her consent during the subsistence of the marriage.^[416] Magna Carta contains no warrant for such a proposition, although a later clause (chapter 11) secures the dower lands from attachment by the husband’s creditors, whether Jews or others.

(2) Maritagium. It was customary for a land-owner to bestow some share of his property as a marriage portion upon his daughters, that they might not come to their husbands as empty-handed brides. The land so granted was usually relieved from all burdens of service and homage. It was hence known as liberum maritagium, which almost came to be recognized as a separate form of feudal tenure. Grants for this purpose could be made without the consent of the tenant’s expectant heirs, although early English law absolutely prohibited alienation of lands for any other purpose without their consent. Maritagium was thus “a provision for a daughter—or perhaps some other near kinswoman—and her issue.”^[417] The husband of the lady was, during the marriage, treated as virtual owner for all practical purposes; but on his death the widow had an indisputable title to lands brought with her “in free marriage.”^[418]

The obvious meaning, however, has not always been appreciated. Coke^[419] reads the clause as allowing to widows of under-tenants a right denied (by chapter 8) to widows of Crown tenants—namely “freedom to marry where they will without any licence or assent of their lords.” This interpretation is inherently improbable, since the barons at Runnymede desired to place restrictions on their enemy, the king, not upon themselves; and it is opposed to the law of an earlier reign, as expounded by Bracton.^[420]

Daines Barrington^[421] invents an imaginary rule of law in order to explain a supposed exception. An ordinary widow, he declares, could not in the normal case marry again before the expiry of a year after her first husband’s death. Some widows, however, were specially privileged. Maritagium was a right conferred on widows of land-owners to cut short the period of mourning imposed on others. This is a complete inversion of the truth; the possession of land always restricted, instead of extending, freedom of marriage. Several later authorities follow Barrington’s mistake.^[422]

Such mistakes when made by recent writers are the more inexcusable in view of the clear explanation given a century ago by John Reeves,^[423] who distinguished between two kinds of marriage portion: liberum maritagium, whence no service whatever was exigible for three generations, and maritagium servitio obnoxium, liable to the usual services from the first, although exempt from homage until after the death of the third heir.^[424]

(3) Hereditas. The first two words are thus readily understood: but what is hereditas? Is it simply another name for one of these, or is it something different? It is possibly used to denote estates acquired by the wife, not as a marriage portion, but in any other way, for example by the opening of a succession on the death of someone, her father or other relative, of whom she is the heir.

II. The Widow’s Share of Personal Estate. The chapter of the Charter at present under discussion says nothing as to the widow’s right to any portion of her deceased husband’s goods and chattels. Chapter 26, however, confirms the existing law which secured to her, in the normal case, one third of her husband’s personal estate, as will be more fully explained hereafter.

III. Provision for the Widow’s immediate Needs. Many intricate questions might arise before it was possible to divide the land into aliquot portions and so “assign” the exact one-third due to her. Meanwhile, temporary provision must be made for her support. This was of two kinds: (1) Quarantine. Magna Carta confirmed her right to remain in the family home for a space of forty days. This was known to later lawyers as the widow’s quarantine.^[425] The Charter of 1216 notes an exception to the general rule, on which John’s Charter is silent: if the deceased husband’s chief place of residence had been a castle, the widow could not stay there; feudal strongholds were not for women. In such cases, however, so the reissue of 1216 carefully provided, another residence must be immediately substituted. In later days, widows unlawfully deprived of their quarantine were provided with a remedy by means of a writ, known as “de quarentina habenda,” directing the sheriff to take summary procedure to do her right.^[426]

(2) Estovers of Common. The widow required something more than the protection of a roof; for, until her dower lands had been delivered to her, no portion of the produce of her late husband’s manors could be strictly called her own. The estate was held “in common” between her and her husband’s heir (or between her and the “guardian” of that heir’s estates). It was only fair that, until her rights were ascertained, she should be allowed a reasonable share of the produce. Neither John’s Charter nor the first issue of Henry III. said anything on this head. The reissue of 1217 supplied the omission, expressly confirming the widow of a Crown tenant in the right to rationabile estoverium suum interim de communi. Many explanations of the word estovers (generally used in the plural) might be cited: from Dr. Johnson, who defines it broadly as “necessaries allowed by law,” to Dr. Stubbs, who narrows it to “firewood.”^[427] It was the right to use certain parts of the natural produce of land or other property for the supply of one’s personal or domestic wants. Such rights varied in extent, however; from the general right to a full supply of all things necessary for the maintenance of life, down to the restricted right to take one kind of produce for one specific purpose only.^[428]

It seems natural to infer that in this passage of Magna Carta the word bears its wider signification. Such was Coke’s view,^[429] who held that it implied the widow’s right to “sustenance” of every kind, including the right to kill such oxen on the manor as she required for food. Estovers “of common” should thus be read as extending the widow’s right of consumption for her own and her household’s use over every form of produce held “in common” by her and the heir’s guardian prior to a final division.^[430]

Nulla vidua distringatur ad se maritandum dum voluerit vivere sine marito; ita tamen quod securitatem faciat quod se non maritabit sine assensu nostro, si de nobis tenuerit, vel sine assensu domini sui de quo tenuerit, si de alio tenuerit.

Wealthy ladies, who were wise, were glad to escape with their children from John’s clutches by agreeing to buy up all the Crown’s oppressive rights for a lump sum. In the very year of Magna Carta, Margaret, the widow of Robert fitz Roger, paid £1000;^[431] and a few years earlier Petronilla, Countess of Leicester, expended as much as 4000 marks.^[432] Though the circumstances of each of these cases seem to have been peculiar, the Pipe Rolls contain numerous smaller sums; in 1206 Juliana, widow of John of Kilpec, accounts for 50 marks and a palfrey.^[433] Horses, dogs, and falcons were frequently given in addition to money fines, and testify eloquently to the greed of the king, the anxiety of the victims, and the extortionate nature of the whole system. In return, formal charters were usually obtained, a good example of which is one granted to Alice, countess of Warwick, dated 13th January, 1205,^[434] containing many concessions; among others that she should not be forced to marry; that she should be sole guardian of her sons; that she should have one-third part of her late husband’s lands as her reasonable dower; and that she should be quit from attendance at the courts of the shire and of the hundred, and from payment of sheriff’s aids during her widowhood. Another charter of 20th April, 1206, shows what a widow had to expect if she failed to make her bargain with the Crown. John granted to Richard Fleming, an alien as his name implies, and presumably one of his not too reputable mercenaries, the wardship of the lands of the deceased Richard Grenvill with the rights of marriage of the widow and children.^[435]

Magna Carta sought to substitute a general rule of law for the provisions of these private charters purchased by individuals at ruinous expenditure. It contained no startling innovations, but only repeated at greater length the promises made (and never kept) by Henry I. in the relative part of clause 4 of his coronation charter. No widow was to be constrained to marry again against her will. This liberty must not be used, however, to the prejudice of the Crown’s lawful rights. Although the widow need not marry as a second husband the man chosen by the king without her consent, neither could she marry without the king’s consent the man of her own choice. Magna Carta specially provided that she must find security to this effect, an annoying, but not unfair, stipulation. The Crown, in later days, compelled the widow, when having her dower assigned to her in Chancery, to swear not to marry without licence; and if she broke her oath, she had to pay a fine, which was finally fixed at one year’s value of her dower.^[436]

CHAPTER NINE.

Nec nos nec ballivi nostri seisiemus terram aliquam nec redditum pro debito aliquo, quamdiu catalla debitoris sufficiunt ad debitum reddendum; nec plegii ipsius debitoris distringantur quamdiu ipse capitalis debitor sufficit ad solucionem debiti; et si capitalis debitor defecerit in solucione debiti, non habens unde solvat, plegii respondeant de debito; et, si voluerint, habeant terras et redditus debitoris, donec sit eis satisfactum de debito quod ante pro eo solverint, nisi capitalis debitor monstraverit se esse quietum inde versus eosdem plegios.

The Charter now passes to another group of grievances. Chapters 9 to 11 treat of the kindred topics of debts, usury, and the Jews, and should be read in connection with each other, and with chapter 26, which regulates the procedure for attaching the personal estate of deceased Crown tenants who were also Crown debtors. The present chapter, although quite general in its terms, had special reference to cases where the Crown was the creditor; while the two following chapters treated more particularly of debts contracted to Jews or other money lenders.

The fact that John’s subjects owed debts to his exchequer did not, of course, imply that they had borrowed money from the king. The sums entered as due in the Rolls of the Exchequer represented obligations which had been incurred in many different ways. What with feudal incidents and scutages, and indiscriminate fines, so heavy in amount that they could only be paid by instalments, a large proportion of Englishmen must have been permanently indebted to the Crown. At John’s accession most of the northern barons still owed the scutages demanded by Richard. John remitted none of the arrears, while imposing new burdens of his own: the attempts made to collect these debts intensified the friction between John and his barons.^[437] It was, further, the Crown’s practice wherever possible, to make its debtors find sureties for their debts, thus widening the circle of those liable to distraint, while the officers who enforced payment were guilty of irregularities, which became the cloaks of grave abuses.

Three equitable rules were laid down. (1) The personal estate of a debtor must be exhausted before his real estate or its revenues were attacked. To take away his land might deprive him ultimately of his means of livelihood, since the chattels left to him could not yield a permanent revenue.^[438] The rule here laid down by Magna Carta has not found a place in modern systems of law, which usually leave the option with the creditor. (2) The estate (both real and personal) of the chief debtor had to be exhausted before proceedings could be instituted against his sureties. Magna Carta thus enunciated in English law a rule which has found favour in most systems of jurisprudence. The man who is only a surety for another’s debt is entitled to immunity until the creditor has taken all reasonable steps against the principal debtor. Such a right is known to the civil law as beneficium ordinis, and to modern Scots law as the “benefit of discussion.” (3) If these sureties had, after all, to pay the debt in whole or in part, they were allowed “a right of relief” against the principal debtor, being put in possession of his lands and rents. This rule has some analogy with the equitable principle of modern law, which gives to the surety who has paid his principal’s debt, the right to whatever property the creditor held in security of that debt.

Even when the Crown’s bailiffs obeyed Magna Carta by leaving land alone when chattels were available, they might still wantonly inflict terrible hardship upon debtors. Sometimes they seized goods valuable out of all proportion to the debt; and an Act of 1266^[439] forbade this practice when the disproportion was “outrageous.” Sometimes they attempted to extort prompt payment or to ruin their victim by selecting whatever chattel was most indispensable to him. Oxen were taken from the plough and allowed to die of starvation and neglect. The practice of the exchequer, in the days of Henry II., had been more considerate; oxen were to be spared as far as possible where other personal effects were available.^[440] John’s charter has no such humane provision,^[441] and the abuse continued. The Act of 1266, already cited, forbade officers to chase away the owner who came to feed his impounded cattle at his own expense. The Articuli super cartas^[442] went further; prohibiting the seizure of beasts of the plough altogether so long as other effects might be attached of sufficient value to satisfy the debt.^[443]

Si quis mutuo ceperit aliquid a Judeis, plus vel minus, et moriatur antequam illud solvatur, debitum non usuret quamdiu heres fuerit infra etatem, de quocumque teneat; et si debitum illud inciderit in manus nostras, nos non capiemus nisi catallum contentum in carta.

The taking of usury, denied by law to Christians, was carried on by Jews under great disadvantages and risks; and the rates of interest were proportionately high, ranging in normal cases from two to four pence per pound per week; that is, from 43⅓ to 86⅔ per cent. per annum.^[446] During his nonage a ward had nothing wherewith to discharge either principal or interest, since he who had the wardship drew the revenue. At the end of a long minority an heir would have found the richest estates swallowed up by a debt which had increased automatically ten or twenty-fold.^[447]

Magna Carta prevented this great injustice to the ward; but, in doing so, inflicted, according to modern standards, some injustice on the money-lenders. During the minority no interest at all, it was provided, should accrue to Jew or other usurer; while, if the debt passed to the Crown, the king must not use his prerogative to extort more than a private debtor might; he must confine himself to the principal sum specified in the document of debt. The provision that no interest should run during minorities was confirmed by the Statute of Merton,^[448] which made it clear, however, that its provisions should not operate as a discharge of the principal sum or of the interest which had accrued before the ancestor’s death. The Statute of Jewry, of uncertain date,^[449] made interest irrecoverable by legal process. All previous acts against usury were repealed by the statute 37 Henry VIII. c. 9, which, however, forbade the exaction of interest at a higher rate than 10 per cent., and this remained the legal rate until reduced to 8 per cent, by 21 James I. c. 17. Money-lending and the usury laws are subjects closely bound up with the repressive measures against the Jews.

I. The History of the Jews in England. The policy of the Crown towards those aliens of the Hebrew race who sought its protection varied at different times, and three periods may be distinguished. From the Norman Conquest to the coronation of Richard I. the Jews were fleeced and tolerated; during the reigns of Richard and John and the minority of Henry III. they were fleeced and protected; and finally they were fleeced and persecuted, this last stage extending from the formation of the alliance between Henry and Innocent IV. down to the ordinance of 1290, which banished in perpetuity all Jews from England. The details of this long story of hardship and oppression, tempered fitfully by royal clemency, which had always to be well paid for, can here be glanced at only in the barest outline. There were Jews in England before the Norman Conquest; but the first great influx came in the reign of Rufus, whose financial genius recognized in them an instrument for his gain, and who would the more gladly protect them, as likely to prove a thorn in the side of his enemy the Church. A second influx resulted from the persecution of Israelites on the Continent of Europe, consequent on the failure of the first Crusade. This new alien immigration seems to have excited mistrust in England, and led to the disarming of all Jews in 1181, a measure which left them at the mercy of the Christian rabble.

Accordingly, when a disturbance occurred at the coronation of Richard I., on 3rd September, 1189, owing to the imprudence of some officious Jews, a general massacre took place in London, while York and other towns were not slow to follow the example. The king was moved to anger, not so much by the sufferings of the Jews, as by the destruction of their bonds, since that indirectly injured the Crown; for the more the Jews had, the more could be extorted from them, and when the written bond had been burned, no evidence of the debt remained. Richard, returning from his captivity a few years later, in urgent need of money, determined to prevent a repetition of such interference with a valuable source of revenue. His motive was selfish, but that was no reason why the Israelites should not pay for a measure designed for their own protection. Assembled at Nottingham they granted a liberal aid, in return for a new expedient devised to secure their bonds. This scheme, for the details of which Richard was probably indebted to the genius of his great justiciar, archbishop Hubert Walter, was of a comprehensive and practical character. In London, York, and other important cities, offices or bureaus were established under the Crown’s protection, containing treasure chests, called archae, fitted with triple locks, to be opened only at stated intervals in the presence of special custodians, known as chirographers, who kept the keys. These custodians were usually four in number, two Christians and two Jews, chosen by juries specially summoned for that purpose by the sheriff of the county, and they were obliged to find sureties that they would faithfully perform their important functions. Only in their presence could loans be validly contracted between Jews and Christians; and it was their duty to see the terms of all such bargains reduced to writing in a regular prescribed form in duplicate copies. No contract was binding unless a written copy or chirograph had been preserved in one or other of those repositories or arks, which thus served every purpose of a modern register, and other purposes as well. If the money-lender suffered violence and was robbed of his copy of the bond, the debtor was still held to his obligations by the duplicate which remained. If the Jew and all his relatives were slain, even then the debtor did not escape, but was confronted by a new and more powerful creditor, the king himself, armed with the chirograph. Lists of all transactions were preserved, and all acquittances and assignments of debts, known from their Hebrew name as “starrs,” had also to be carefully enrolled.^[450] Minute and stringent rules, codified by Hubert Walter in the terms of a written commission, were issued to the judges when starting on their circuit in September, 1194.^[451]

If this cunningly-devised system prevented the Christian debtor from evading his obligations, it also placed the Jewish creditor completely at the mercy of the Crown; for the exact wealth of every Jew could be accurately ascertained from a scrutiny of the contents of the archae. The king’s officials were enabled to judge to a penny how much it was possible to wring from the coffers of the Jews, whose bonds, moreover, could be conveniently attached until they paid the tallage demanded. The custom of fixing on royal castles as the places for keeping these arks, probably explains the origin of the special jurisdiction exercised over the Jews by the king’s constables (“qui turres nostras custodierunt”).^[452] In the dungeons of their strongholds horrible engines were at hand for enforcing obedience to their awards. Such jurisdiction, however, extended legitimately over trivial debts only.^[453] All important pleas were reserved for the officials of the exchequer of the Jews, a special government department, which controlled and regulated the whole procedure. Evidences of the existence of this separate exchequer have been traced back to 1198, although no record has been found of a date prior to 1218.^[454] John, while despising the Jews, was not slow to realize that in them the Crown possessed an asset of great value. It was his policy to protect their wealth as a reservoir from which he might draw in time of need, contenting himself meanwhile with comparatively moderate sums. Thus, by a charter dated 10th April, 1201, he took 4000 marks in return for confirming their privileges; and he obtained a second payment of a similar amount after his rupture with Rome. The charter of 1201 was only a confirmation of rights already enjoyed by all English Jews in virtue of the liberal interpretation put upon the terms of an earlier charter which had been granted by Henry I. to a particular father in Israel with his household, but subsequently extended, with the tacit concurrence of the Crown, to the whole Hebrew race. Under John’s charter they enjoyed valuable and definite privileges, which, while leaving them completely in the royal power, exempted them from all jurisdictions except those of the king and his castellans; while, if a Christian brought a complaint against a Jew, it was to be judged by the peers of that Jew.^[455]

When a repetition of the massacre which had disgraced his brother’s coronation threatened to take place in 1203, John promptly ordered the mayor and barons of London to suppress all such attempts. In terms contemptuous alike to the Londoners and to the Jews his writ declared that his promise of protection, “even though granted to a dog,” must be held inviolate.^[456] Protection was accorded to them, however, only that they might furnish a richer booty to the Crown, when the proper occasion arrived. Suddenly John issued orders for a wholesale arrest of the Jews throughout England. The most wealthy members of their community were brought together at Bristol, and, on 1st November, 1210, were compelled to give a reluctant consent to a general tallage at the enormous sum of 66,000 marks. Apparently this amount had been fixed as the result of an exaggerated estimate of the contents of the archae, and was more than they could afford to pay. The methods adopted by John’s castellans to extort the arrears of the amount are well-known, especially in the case of the unfortunate Jew of Bristol, from whom seven teeth were extracted, one each day, until he consented to pay the sum demanded.^[457]

It was doubly hard that the race thus plundered and tortured by the king should be subjected to harsh treatment by the king’s enemies on the ground that they were pampered protégés of the Crown. Yet such was the case: on Sunday, 17th May, 1215, when the insurgents on their way to Runnymede entered London, they robbed and murdered the Jews, using the stones of their houses to fortify the city walls.^[458] It is not to be wondered then that the same insurgents in forcing on King John the demands which formed the basis of Magna Carta, included provisions against usury.

The advisers of the young Henry in 1216 omitted these clauses, but not from love of the Jews. They were unwilling to impair so useful a financial resource, which has been compared to a sponge which slowly absorbed the wealth of the nation to be quickly squeezed dry again by the king. The Jews were always willing to disgorge a portion of their gains in return for protection in the rest, even of a contemptuous and intermittent kind; but their lot became hard indeed when Henry III., urged by popular clamour and the wishes of the Pope, began a course of active persecution, without relaxing the rigour of those royal exactions which had previously been the price of protection. In 1253, a severe ordinance inflicted a long list of vexatious regulations on the Hebrews, almost converting their quarters in each great city into ghettos, like those of the Continent of Europe. This was merely the commencement of a series of oppressive measures, the natural outcome of the growing hatred with which Christians regarded Jews,—a result partly of the heated imagination of the rabble, ready to believe unauthenticated stories of the crucifixion of Christian children, and partly of the fact that rich Jews, in spite of all persecution, had possessed themselves of the landed estates of freeholders and nobles and claimed to act as lords of Christian tenants, enjoying wardships, escheats, and advowsons, as any Christian baron might have done. The scope of this enquiry excludes any detailed account of the stages through which repressive legislation passed, until the lot of the Jews in England became intolerable. The Statute of Jewry, however,^[459] was of exceptional importance; taking from usurers the right to recover interest by legal process, and limiting execution for the principal to one half of the debtor’s lands and chattels. In return some temporary concessions were granted. One by one, all these privileges were withdrawn, until the end came in 1290 with the issue of a decree of perpetual banishment by Edward I., who was compelled to sacrifice the cherished right of keeping a royal preserve of Jews in deference to the culmination of national prejudice in a storm of unreasoning hate.

II. Legal Position of the Jews. All through these vicissitudes of fortune the legal status of the Jews had remained unchanged in all essentials. Their position was doubly hard; they were plundered by the Crown and persecuted by the populace. If John saved them from being robbed by his Christian subjects, it was that they might be better worth the robbing by a Christian king. Yet, for this protection, at once fitful and interested, the Jews had to pay a heavy price; not only were they liable to be tallaged arbitrarily at the king’s will, without limit and without appeal, but they were hated by rich and poor as the king’s allies. Such feelings would of themselves account for the unsympathetic treatment accorded to money-lenders by Magna Carta; two other reasons contributed. All usury was looked on in the Middle Ages as immoral (although illegal only for Christians), while excessive interest was habitually exacted.

The feudal scheme of society had no place for Jews and afforded them no protection. Not only did they share the disabilities common to all aliens, but these were not in their case mitigated by the protection extended to other foreigners by their own sovereigns and by the Church. As exiles in a foreign land, exposed to the attacks of a hostile mob, they were forced to rely absolutely on the only power strong enough to protect them, the arm of the king. The Jews became the mere serfs, the perquisites or chattels of the Crown, in much the same way as the villeins became the serfs or chattels of their lords. Rights they might have against others by royal sufferance, but they had no legal remedy against their master. In the words of Bracton,^[460] “the Jew could have nothing of his own, for whatever he acquired, he acquired not for himself but for the king.” His property was his merely by royal courtesy, not under protection of the law. When he died, his relations had no legal title to succeed to his mortgages, goods, or money; the exchequer, fortified by an intimate knowledge of the extent of his wealth (for that consisted chiefly in registered bonds), stepped into possession and could do what it pleased. The king usually, indeed, in practice contented himself with one-third of the whole; but if the relations of the deceased Jew received less than the balance of two-thirds, they would be well advised to offer no remonstrance. The Crown did not admit a legal obligation; and there was no one either powerful enough, or interested enough, to compel the fulfilment of the tacit understanding which restricted the royal claims. Whatever the Jew had amassed belonged legally and potentially not to him but to the Crown. Magna Carta, in striking at money-lenders, was striking at the king.