William the Conqueror brought them to England because he had found that in Normandy they had been good for business; in particular they provided access to the silver of the Rhineland. The Jews of Rouen may also have helped to finance his invasion of England, in return for the chance to work in a country from which they had previously been barred. Another reason can be given for the favour they found with the king. Since Christians were not allowed to lend money at interest, some other group of merchants had to be created. The Jews became moneylenders by default, as it were, and as a result they were abused and despised in equal measure. But they did not only lend money; they were also moneychangers and goldsmiths. They exchanged plate for coin. They provided ready money, a commodity often in short supply.
The Norman kings of England, therefore, found them to be very useful. They could borrow from them but, more profitably, they could tax them. They could levy what were known as ‘tallages’, and succeeding kings were able to take between a third and a quarter of the Jews’ total wealth at any one time. As a result the Jews, in the twelfth century, were afforded royal protection. No Jew was allowed to become a citizen, or to hold land, but the neighbourhood of the Jewry was like the royal forests exempt from common law; the Jews were simply the king’s chattels, who owed their life and property wholly to him. They were granted the protection of the royal courts, and their bonds were placed in a special chamber of the royal palace at Westminster. A Jewish exchequer was established there, with its own clerks and justices.
In return for royal favour the Jews brought energy and prosperity to the business of the realm; their loans helped to make possible the great feats of Norman architecture, and the unique stone houses of Lincoln and Bury St Edmunds are credited to them. Jacob le Toruk had a grand stone house in Cannon Street, in the London parish of St Nicholas Acon. The Jews also introduced the more advanced forms of medical learning, and were able to serve as doctors even to the native community. Roger Bacon himself studied under rabbis at Oxford.
More dubious legal tactics were also enforced. William Rufus decreed, for example, that Jews could not be converted to Christianity; he did not want their number to fall. That may not have been a very Christian act, but William Rufus was never a very good Christian. He supported the Jews partly because it offended the bishops; he enjoyed causing affront to his churchmen.
That royal protection did not necessarily extend very far. At the time of the coronation of Richard I, in 1189, some Jews were beaten back from the front row of spectators; the crowd turned on them, and a riotous assault began upon the London quarters of Jewry. The incident became the cause of fresh outrages as the news of the attack spread; it emboldened native hostility, and gave an excuse for further carnage. 500 Jews, with their families, took refuge in the castle at York where they were besieged by the citizens; in desperation the men killed their wives and children before killing themselves. Richard was even then making preparations for his crusade to the Holy Land; violence and religious bigotry were in the air. His successor, John, renewed his protection in exchange for large sums of money. In 1201 a formal charter was drawn up, giving the Jews their own court. They were allowed to live ‘freely and honourably’ in England, which meant that they were here to make money for the king. Nine years later John took over all the debts of the Jews, living or dead, and tried to extract the money from the debtors for his own benefit. It was another reason for the barons’ revolt that led to the sealing of the Magna Carta.
Anti-Semitism was part of the Christian condition throughout Europe. The Jewish people were abused for being the ‘killers of Christ’, with convenient forgetfulness of the fact that Jesus himself was a Jew, but other more material reasons accounted for the racial hatred. By the middle of the twelfth century several prominent Jewish moneylenders had extended very large loans to some of the noblest men in the kingdom; men like the famous Aaron of Lincoln were the only ones with resources large enough to meet the obligations of the magnates. If they could be attacked or killed, and their bonds destroyed, then the great ones of the land would benefit. The myth that they were engaged in the ‘ritual murder’ of Christian infants became common at times of financial crisis, when the populace could be incited to take sanguinary vengeance. It is a matter of historical record that England took the lead in the execration of the Jews. The first rumour of a ritual crucifixion emerged in 1144, with the story of the death of William of Norwich, and thereafter the tales of ritual murder spread through Europe. England was also the first country to condemn all Jews as criminal ‘coin-clippers’, and the iconography of anti-Semitism is to be found on the west front of Lincoln Cathedral.
In 1239, during the reign of Henry III, a great census of the Jews and their debts was carried out. The representatives of all the Jews in England were then obliged to convene at Worcester and agree to pay over 20,000 marks to the king’s treasury. This measure effectively bankrupted some of them, which meant that their usefulness had come to an end. Fourteen years later, Henry III ordained a Statute of Jewry that enforced a number of disciplinary measures, including the compulsory badge of identification. This was a token or tabula of yellow felt, 3 inches by 6 inches (7.5 by 15 centimetres), to be worn on an outer garment; it was to be carried by every Jew over the age of seven years. Two years later Henry investigated the death of a boy, Hugh, in Lincoln; he believed or professed to believe that this was a crime of ritual murder and, as a result, 19 Jews from that city were executed and 100 despatched to prison in the castle.
Edward I was even more ferocious. He ordered that certain Jews, who had been acquitted of the charge of ritual murder, be retried. In November 1278, 600 Jews were imprisoned in the Tower of London on charges of tampering with the currency; 269 of them were hanged six months later. In 1290 he expelled all of the remaining Jews from his kingdom; they were now approximately 2,000. He did not take this step out of misplaced religious zeal; it was the measure demanded by the parliament house before they would agree to fresh taxation. In fact the expulsion was seen by many chroniclers as one of the most important and enlightened acts of his reign. The anti-Semitism of the medieval English people is clear enough. Some have argued that, in subtly modified forms, it has continued to this day.
21
The favourites of a king
The new king, Edward II, had been born in 1284 on the site of his father’s new castle at Caernarfon; Eleanor’s labour came to an end in temporary accommodation beside the castle that had only been begun in the previous year. She may have been brought to the spot in a deliberate move by the king to lay claim to this part of the island. In later life the new king was known as ‘Edward of Caernarfon’ and in 1301 he was acclaimed as ‘prince of Wales’, the first heir of the throne to be thus designated.
He did not care much for his principality. In 1305 he sent a letter to his cousin, Louis, count of Evreux, in which he promised to send ‘some misshapen greyhounds of Wales, which can catch a hare well if they find it asleep, and running dogs which can follow at an amble. And, dear cousin, if you would care for anything else from our land of Wales, we will send you some wild men, if you like, who will know well how to give young sprigs of noblemen their education.’ If nothing else, he had a sense of humour.
He was brought up in a military household, and was engaged in his father’s last Scottish wars. After the defeat of the English army by Robert Bruce at Loudoun, he vowed that he would not spend two nights in the same place until he had exacted revenge. He never kept the promise. He was not in any case as bellicose or as overbearing as his father. He always disliked taking part in tournaments. The writer of a contemporary life of the king, Ranulf Higden, remarked that ‘he did not care for the company of lords, but preferred to mingle with harlots, with singers and jesters’. He also was most at ease with ‘carters and delvers and ditchers, with shipmen and boatmen, and with other craftsmen’. It is hard to interpret this last remark, except as a general indication that the young prince was not particularly interested in royal pursuits. This was the rebuke that followed him in succeeding years. He did not behave like a king.