Chapter XXIV: Jews in England. (1066‒1210.)

=1. The First Seventy Years.=――Beyond a rare mention in the Saxon Chronicles, there are no records concerning English Jews till after the Conquest (1066), when Jews from France and Germany, seeking happier homes, may have crossed the Channel in the train of William the Norman, on the chance of finding such. They were probably accepted by William’s new subjects as one of the many consequences of the invasion, and Jews gradually gained a tolerably comfortable and secure position in the towns in which they settled. London and Oxford became head-quarters. The selection of London, the capital, is sufficiently explained. The attraction of Oxford was, in all likelihood, its scholarly reputation. King Alfred’s idea of making Oxford a seat of learning was already being realised in the eleventh century, and although none of the colleges bear much earlier date than that of the thirteenth, yet the names of some of these――Moses-Hall and Jacob-Hall, for instance――give silent evidence of the presence of Jews and of the growth of Jewish teaching, and, it may be, of Jewish trading influences in Oxford. Little colonies of Jews established themselves also in York, and in Lincoln, and in Norwich, and in various other towns, and set up small businesses, and always managed, however poor they might be at first, to find some small room which would serve as a meeting-place for prayer and for school work. In London they were soon numerous enough and prosperous enough to gain the great privilege of being allotted a ‘burying place for their dead.’ This first בֵּית חַיִּים of the Jews in England was situated in St. Giles, Cripplegate. Thus things went well for a time. William I. was a conqueror, but not an oppressor; William Rufus, though dissolute and dishonest, was yet a mediæval sort of gentleman, who, having once promised protection, kept his word, and Henry I. was a scholar, and had some sympathy with the historic race who were so bravely and patiently accommodating themselves to altered circumstances. It was in the reign of Stephen (1135‒1154) that the troubles of the Jews in England began.

=2. ‘Saints’ and Supplies.=――The civil wars, consequent on the disputed succession after Henry’s death, had drained the country of money. The wealth of the Jewish traders was in close and awkward contrast with the poverty of the Christian knights. An evil eye was cast on these riches, and as the conscience of the country was scarcely yet hardened to the open and unprovoked plunder of Jews, men cast about them for a plausible excuse for robbing them. Nothing more original was found, nor was perhaps necessary, than the one which had so often served on the Continent――the accusation of child-killing for Passover purposes. One day, in the town of Norwich, a certain small boy, named William, was missing, and straightway he was declared to have been murdered, and the Jews were accused of having murdered him. It is not even certain that the body of the little lost boy was ever found. William of Norwich, however, was made into a saint, and added to the muster-roll of miracle-working martyrs, whilst the supposed perpetrators of a never committed crime were hanged, and the English Jews generally were taxed to the estimated, and somewhat fancy, value of the sainted child. The real martyrs in the affair were certainly the Jews, and the real miracle was the easy raising of vast sums of money through such manifestly ridiculous charges. The Jews had to submit to be plundered, and it was better for them, perhaps, that their goods should be ‘confiscated’ at the order of the king, than at the mercy of the populace. The fashion that Stephen set was found to be a convenient and ready mode of raising supplies. St. William of Norwich was the first saint that the Jews in England contributed to the calendar, but he was, during the Middle Ages, the type of a class of what might be called the patron saints of impecunious kings, and lazy priests, and ‘chivalrous’ nobles. These so-called saints always managed to fill the empty coffers of their devotees, and to that extent miraculous powers may certainly be conceded to them. The most celebrated of them all is a certain Hugh of Lincoln, who is said to have lived and died in the reign of Henry III. The local celebrity of this small saint was secured by the hanging of twenty Jews of that town, the imprisonment of more than a hundred, and a general confiscation of Jewish property in Lincoln. The literary interest attaching to the little Hugh, which has outlasted the religious, was ensured by Chaucer selecting him for the hero of one of his famous Canterbury Tales.[25]

=3. Accession of Richard.=――In 1189, Richard the Lion-hearted, the hero of so many romantic stories, ascended the English throne. The Jews, who had been growing more and more unpopular all through the long reign of Henry II., thought that the accession of this, the most hopeful of his sons, might bring about a favourable change in their position. So to the coronation ceremony there came a little body of Jews, selected by their co-religionists as representatives, from every town in England where Jews had settled. The members of this deputation were all of the richest and most respected class. They were grandly dressed, and were the bearers of rich gifts, which were to be presented to the king in the name, and with the loyal congratulations, of the whole Jewish community in England. They never got the chance of making their contemplated pretty speeches, nor of offering their handsome propitiatory presents. Possibly the sight of so much wealth, brought as a free-will offering, suggested the idea of plunder. If Jews could give so generously, unasked, what might they not give with a little pressure? In this way reasoned the populace, and the result was that the deputation never reached the palace. It was pitilessly set upon and robbed, and one of the number, a Jew from York, named Benedict, was so badly hurt in the course of the rioting, that he reached home only to die of his wounds. In his fright, this Benedict had even submitted to be baptized, but the poor man’s cowardice availed to save neither his life nor his fortune. Perhaps his ‘conversion’ became the means of attracting more attention to him and his neighbours, for although the London outrage was rivalled in various parts of the kingdom, it was at York, on this occasion, that the Jews suffered most of all. History is said to repeat itself, and certainly the story of the fortress of Masada, in 72,[26] has a grim counterpart in that of the castle of York a thousand years later. In that terrible coronation month, the Jews of York had shut up their houses, and tremblingly taken refuge in the castle. The mob surrounded the walls, and resistance became hopeless. Then the Jews of York, in wild fear of the English, like the Jews of Masada in wild fear of the Romans, set fire to the unsheltering walls of the fortress, and headed by their Rabbi, and by an eloquent co-religionist named Joachin, killed first their wives and children, and then themselves. Thus the English in the eleventh century, like the Romans in the first, conquered a citadel, to find it garrisoned by corpses. Some say 500, and some say 1,500 Jews were massacred in York alone, in that year 1189. A commission of inquiry was subsequently held, and some punishments were inflicted on the ringleaders. But not on account of the massacres. In the course of the sacking of the Jews’ houses, various deeds and titles to property, of which the value had not been recognisable at a glance, had been burnt or destroyed. The owners were presumably dead. By the law of the land in those days, all such ownerless property reverted to the Crown. The massacre of the missing owners was a fault that leant to virtue’s side, but the careless destruction of the missing records was fraud on the exchequer――a very grave crime indeed.

=4. Treatment by Richard.=――Richard, probably, showed himself altogether averse from such riotous proceedings. He had lost his coronation presents through it, and the intermittent plundering which went on during his crusading expeditions, he must have reflected, was all a distinct and further loss to the treasury. On his return from captivity he put the whole thing on a legal footing. The Jews were registered as chattels of the Crown, and a special court in the king’s exchequer was set apart for the management of Jewish matters. The amount of every Jew’s property throughout the kingdom was ascertained as nearly as it was possible, was duly entered on the books, and then a scale of tolls and taxes was drawn up in accordance with this list, and an efficient staff of Jews and Christians appointed to act as responsible collectors. It was a hard system, but it was open and to-be-reckoned-upon robbery, and the Jews were infinitely the gainers by it. Richard was not cruel, nor capricious, nor persecuting. He constituted them ‘his Jews,’ and it was his interest, and it probably was his pleasure, to protect them, and to permit no extra nor unauthorised plunder at the hands of priests or barons or populace. It was unfortunate for the Jews of England that Richard only reigned ten years.

=5. Under John.=――The dissolute, unprincipled, and untrustworthy John of Anjou succeeded his brother in 1199. During Richard’s frequent absence from England, John had plotted for the crown, and had found Jews very useful in supplying the wherewith for him to keep up the character he had assumed of a liberal, open-handed prince. He had been lavish in profession and in promises of good-will, and the grateful Jews had sought by good offices to keep and deserve the favour of their future sovereign. Lulled into a sense of security by his fair speeches, they had even persuaded many of their rich Continental co-religionists to come to England, and in the first years of John’s reign, so encouraged, the Jews began to hide their money a little less, and to enjoy it a little more. It may be that in their security they were even a trifle ostentatious. And it is possible that the populace had grown irritated at the royal favour shown to the despised Jews, and somewhat jealous of the wealth they now displayed, and of which, for many years past, royalty alone had reaped the benefit. Or it may be that such favour as John had bestowed was wholly capricious, and that he had played with his victims as a cat with the mouse she means to devour. At any rate, his mood changed, and in 1210, quite suddenly, without warning or provocation of any sort, all the Jews in the kingdom were imprisoned, and their goods declared to be confiscated. Those who would not disclose the whereabouts of their treasures were tortured, and John is said to have himself stood over a certain Jew in Bristol, seeing tooth after tooth extracted, till a ransom was agreed on for the victim’s right to retain the two or three that were left in his head.