Henry the Third became King of England on the death of John, a.d. 1216: he was quite a child when his father died; but those who governed for him, set the Jews who were in prison at liberty; and ordered that they should be protected against the violence of the Crusaders. Still, during the whole of Henry's long reign, which extended far into the latter half of the thirteenth century, the Jews were subject to great oppression and ill-usage in England.
As a privilege and favour to the citizens of Newcastle, the king commanded that no Jew should be allowed to dwell in their city.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Bishops of Lincoln and Norwich, took a sure way of driving the Jews out of their dioceses; for they forbade all Christians to sell them any provisions whatever.
The Prior of Dunstable, on the other hand, gave the Jews leave to reside in those places over which he had any control, on condition of their paying him every year two silver spoons.
The Jews were at this time accused of committing all sorts of dreadful crimes; how far these accusations were true or false, we do not know. They were human creatures, and the cruel treatment they met with, might well lead them into the commission of many wrong acts, which would, of course, be exaggerated by the hatred of their enemies; who believed them guilty, upon the slightest suspicion, and compelled them, in consequence, to pay heavy fines.
In the middle of the century, when Henry the Third demanded fresh supplies of money for the purposes of war, the Jews, irritated by such repeated oppression, wished to leave England, and seek some more hospitable country, in which they might dwell: the king refused to allow them to leave the country, and forced them to pay the tax demanded. The next year, the king again applied to them, declaring that in spite of the taxes he had already levied, he continued to be greatly in want of money, and must raise it from any quarter, and by any means.
The unfortunate Jews truly declared that they could not pay the taxes now demanded of them; upon which Henry the Third actually sold them and their possessions to his brother, to raise the sum required! It was now expected that the Jews would be completely robbed of everything they possessed, in order to repay the prince the money for which he had bought them; but he, being convinced that they really could not have furnished the sum required, had compassion upon them, and left them in peace.
To such a height had hatred of the Jews risen in this reign, that when (about 1264) the barons took up arms to force the king to agree to their demands, they could think of no better way of gaining the favour and help of the people, than by killing the Jews; and 700 were accordingly massacred. The pretence for this massacre was, that one of the Jews had tried to force a Christian to pay an enormous and unfair interest for a loan of money: supposing this to have been true, the crime of one man should not have caused the death of hundreds. At the same time, houses were plundered, and the magnificent synagogue, built in the beginning of Henry the Third's reign, was burnt to the ground: it was afterwards rebuilt; but in 1270, the king most unjustly took it from the Jews, and gave it to a body of friars, who lived near it, and complained that their devotions were disturbed by the howling of the Jews during their worship.
The fact was, that the chapel belonging to the friars was small and dark, and they coveted the fine large synagogue close by their dwelling; and as no ideas of justice ever interfered with the treatment of the Jews, they begged the king to give them this synagogue, and furnished him with an excuse for doing so.