A.D. 1196. At this period the rich and the noble of the land were chiefly of the Norman race, and the poor almost all Saxons, who were ground down to the earth by the tyranny and oppression of their masters, to which they submitted with a sullen dogged obedience, having still within them that spirit of freedom which animated the breasts of their ancestors previous to the Norman Conquest. Richard Cœur de Lion was king, and had just been liberated from his captivity. He ruled the kingdom with a high hand, and had said on one occasion, when remonstrated with for raising money by unconstitutional means, "Have I not a right to do what I like with my own? I would sell London itself if I could find a purchaser." At this juncture up rose a lawyer, one William Fitzosbert, otherwise called Longbeard, who seems to have been a designing character, and desirous of currying favour with the people, he proclaimed himself the advocate of the poor, the redresser of their wrongs, and the unflinching enemy of their oppressors. He soon had a gathering around him of the penniless and discontented serfs, amounting eventually to 50,000 men, armed with bows and arrows, rudely fashioned pikes, clubs, axes, hedge stakes, and other similar weapons. This army—or rather mob—went about offering insults to the rich, breaking open their houses and plundering them in broad daylight. The Corporation had then but little authority and power, and were not able to cope with so formidable an insurrection; and Archbishop Hubert, the chief justiciary, summoned the leader to appear before him, who came, however, so numerously attended, that it was deemed wise to dismiss him with a rebuke. After this the outrages of the insurgents became more barefaced and open, as well as more numerous; whereupon more vigorous measures were taken, and after murdering an officer sent to apprehend him, Fitzosbert, with a concubine and a few followers, took refuge in the church of St. Mary-le-Bow, and fortified it against his pursuers, defying them for some time, many persons being killed in the assault, until at length a fire of damp straw was lighted beneath, the smoke of which compelled the garrison to issue forth, and after a fight in the street, they were captured and carried to the Tower, before the judges, who condemned them to death. "And then," says Stow, "he (Fitzosbert) was by the heels drawn to the Elmes in Smithfield and there hanged with nine of his fellows, where because his favourers came not to deliver him, he forsook Mary's son (as he termed Christ our Saviour), and called upon the devil to help and deliver him. Such was the end of this deceiver, a filthy fornicator, a secret murderer, a pollutor of concubines, and (amongst his other detestable acts) a false accuser of his elder brother, who had brought him up in learning, and done many things for his preferment." The people, however, looked upon him as a martyr, secured his body, carried away the broken-up gibbet and the bloodstained earth as relics, and reports were afterwards spread abroad of sundry wonderful miracles which had been worked by their sacred influence.
A.D. 1236. An aspect of a very different and much more pleasing character was that which Cheapside assumed on one occasion in this year. King Henry III. had in January married with great magnificence at Canterbury, Eleanor, second daughter of Raymond, Earl of Provence, and it was when she passed through the City, on her way to Westminster to be crowned, that a civic display was made in Cheapside, which surpassed in pomp and splendour everything which had preceded it, and which is the earliest of which we have any detailed account. The street was hung with arras, silk and cloth draperies of gay colours, and banners and pennons floating from the housetops and windows, accompanied by many strange devices, and pageants on scaffolds along the route. Andrew Bockrel, the mayor, with the sheriffs and aldermen, and a following of 360 citizens, rode forth to meet the king and queen, and escort them through the City to Westminster. They were all clad in long robes, lavishly embroidered with gold; their other garments were of silk, diversified in colour, and their horses were covered with trappings reaching to the ground, covered with embroidery and blazonry of arms. Each man carried in his hand a gold or silver cup, emblematic of the Lord Mayor's right to serve the office of chief butler at the coronation feast, and they were preceded by trumpeters. In the evening the city was illuminated with lamps, cressets, and other lights "without number," Cheapside presenting a most brilliant effect, with the bonfires blazing up from the ground, lights of different kinds gleaming from the frontages of the houses, from end to end of the street, and multitudes of men, with lighted cressets on their shoulders, marching hither and thither, and mingling with others bearing torches, a scene infinitely more picturesque than the commonplace gas illuminations of the present.
A.D. 1249. In this year King Henry III. made a raid upon the shopkeepers of Cheapside, who, true to their instinctive abhorrence of regal interference with their liberties, presented so formidable an opposition to his demands that he was fain to give way. Stow thus narrates the occurrence: "This year the King kept his Christmas at London, with the meanness of spirit worthy of himself, for he begged, as it were, large new year's gifts of the citizens. But the money on that occasion not being deemed sufficient, Henry soon after sent and imperiously demanded much greater sums. This message occasioned a great alarm amongst the citizens, who justly complained that no regard was had to honour, justice, conscience, nor religion; and that their liberties, which they had so often dearly bought, and had so many times been confirmed and sworn to, were not able to protect them from being treated as the worst of the slaves; yet, notwithstanding these great truths, they were compelled to pay the tyrant the sum of £2,000, a very great sum at that time. Nor did these wicked proceedings stop here, for many shopkeepers in the City were spoiled of their goods (especially those for the use of the kitchen) by the order of that iniquitous prince." We may fancy the commotion that would be excited in Cheapside when the king's officers appeared and seized the goods which were displayed on the bunks for sale, and can only wonder that the valorous 'prentices did not raise their usual war cry, seize their clubs, and drive the officers back with a sound thrashing to their master who sent them. Whether they did attempt to defend their master's property in this their usual fashion is not recorded, but Stow adds: "These diabolical oppressions caused many of the most eminent citizens to retire into the country, choosing rather to cohabit with brutes than to dwell in the capital of so wicked a tyrant.... Henry, being at last conscious of his having frequently and unjustly imposed upon the citizens of London by many heavy and intolerable exactions, resolved to reconcile himself with them; and, in order thereunto, commanded them to attend him at Westminster, where, being assembled in the great hall, he, in the presence of his nobility, solemnly promised that for the future they should live happily under his government, and not be liable to such grievous taxations as formerly."
A.D. 1257. Sir Hugh Bigot, an itinerant judge, held a court in the City, although contrary to the ancient rights and liberties of the citizens, and made an example in Cheapside of certain bakers guilty of malpractices such as giving short weight and supplying an inferior article, "by setting them upon a tumbrell or dung-cart, wherein they were exposed in the streets as bawds usually were,"—a very wholesome punishment, which might be revived with advantage in the present day as an example to the adulterators of food.
A.D. 1262 and 1264. At the eastern end of Cheapside is a street called the Old Jewry, a name formerly applied to a limited district westward of Lothbury, and so called from being the principal Jews' quarter of the early race of Jews, who were banished the kingdom temp. Edward I., and where they had a synagogue. Here they lived, as well as about Jewin Street, and in a Jewery near the Tower, and then, as now, made great wealth by the practice of usury, and despoiling the Gentiles by means of hard bargains and crafty sharp practice in money dealings, which gave rise to a great deal of ill-will between the two races, much maltreatment, massacres, and unjust demands of money from the Jews, by the kings and other authorities, and the frequent pillaging of their houses by mobs.
In 1189, a general massacre of the Jews took place at the coronation of Richard I., the survivors living in constant peril of murder and confiscation, an instance of the latter occurring in 1241, when the Jews of London were fined 20,000 marks because the Jews of Norwich had circumcised a Christian child.
In 1262, a fierce quarrel broke out between a Christian and a Jew, in the Church of St. Mary Cole, in the Poultry, relative to some money transactions, which proceeded from words to blows, and the Jew, having dangerously wounded his adversary, fled into the Jewry for refuge, pursued by a mob of idlers who had witnessed the fray, and of 'prentices from the shops, nothing loth to join in a Jew-hunting frolic. The Jew was captured in his own house, dragged forth, and bludgeoned to death. Not satisfied with that, the mob fell upon the inhabitants of the quarter and murdered them indiscriminately, afterwards plundering and burning their houses.
Two years afterwards the mob was again in arms, arising out of an attempt on the part of a Jew to extort more than the legal interest (twopence per week) for £20, which he had lent to a Christian. They attacked the "Jewery" in great force, destroyed the synagogue—the first erected in England—massacred 500, or according to another authority, 700 Jews, male and female, and "spoiled the residue of their property."
In the Westminster Parliament of 1273, laws were enacted to restrain their exorbitant rates of usury, and in 1290, by an Act of the Parliament assembled at Northampton, they were banished the realm, and all their immovable property confiscated. The number who were thus driven forth amounted, according to Matthew of Westminster, to 16,160, and thus ended the first race of Jews in England, from which period until the middle of the seventeenth century, although there might be individuals, there was no organised body of Jews in the land.
A.D. 1269. In this year, the 53rd of the reign of Henry III., a great fight took place between the Goldsmiths and the Taylors Companies, which is thus graphically described by Fabyan: "In this lili. yere in ye moneth of November fyll a very aulnce atweene the felys-shyppes of Goldsmythes and Tayloures of London, whiche grewe to makynge of parties, so that with the Goldsmythes take partie the felyshep or craft of—and with the Tayloures held ye craft of Stayners; by meane of this moche people uyghtly gaderyd in the streetes in harneys, and at length as it were prouyded, the thirde nyght of the sayd parties mette upon the number of V. C. men on both sydes and ran togyder, with such vyolence, that some were slayne and many wounded. Then outcry was was made that ye shyreffes, with strengthe of other comers, came to the ryddynge of theym, and of theym toke certayne persones and sent them into dyvers prysons and upon the morrowe such serche was made, yt the moste of the chief causers of that fray were taken and put in warde. Then vpon the Fryday followynge Saynt Katteryn's daye, sessyons were kepte at Newgate by the Mayre and Lawrence de Broke, iustice, and others; where xxx. of the sayd persones were arregned of felony, and xiii. of theym caste and hanged."