Old London Bridge: showing its wooden houses with projecting stories.
The classic pages of Sir Walter Scott's romances contain much which illustrates the popular antipathy against the Jews. The pictures he draws are, perhaps, somewhat over-coloured for the purpose of romance, but that they were not without foundation in fact is evident from the following curious incident relating to a Jew in London, narrated in the Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, under the date 1256:—
"Thys yere a Jew felle in to a drawte on a satorday, and he wolde not be draune owte that day for the reverens of hys sabbot day, and sir Richard Clare, that tyme beynge erle of Gloucseter, seynge that he wolde not be drawne owte that day, he wolde not suffer hym to be drawne owte on the sonday, for the reverens of the holy sonday, and soo thus the false Jue perished and dyde therein."
Although there was a good deal of prejudice against the Jews, there is reason to think that the idea of anything approaching general ill-treatment of the race is erroneous. The Jews were useful to the King, and therefore, in all cases before the expulsion, excepting during the reign of King John, they enjoyed royal patronage and favour.
The evil of clipping or "sweating" the coin of the realm grew to such an extent during the latter half of the thirteenth century that strong measures had to be taken for its suppression. In November, 1278, the King gave orders for the immediate arrest of all suspected Jews and their Christian accomplices. They were brought to trial, and the result was that nearly three hundred Jews were found guilty and condemned to be hanged. This was during the mayoralty of Gregory de Rokesle (probably Ruxley, Kent), the chief assay master of King's mints, a great wool merchant, and the richest goldsmith of his time. This Mayor passed a series of ordinances against the Jews, including one to the effect that the King's peace should be kept between Christians and Jews, another forbidding butchers who were not freemen of the city buying meat from Jews to resell to Christians, or to buy meat slaughtered for the Jews and by them rejected. Still another ordinance provided that "No one shall hire houses from Jews, nor demise the same to them for them to live in outside the limits of the Jewry."
By the time of Edward I. the need for the financial aid of the Jews was no longer felt, and from that moment their fate in England was fixed. The canon law against usury was extended so as to include the Jews. They were henceforth forbidden to lend money on interest, and, as has been explained, owing to their religion they could not hold lands nor take up any trade. The expulsion followed as a matter of course in a few years.
In order to rearrange the national finances, Italians who had no religious difficulties were substituted for the Jews. Certain Jews, it is known, from time to time returned to London disguised as Italians, but it was not until the time of the Commonwealth, when Cromwell took a more tolerant view of the outcast Jews, and when the State recognised the legality of difference of creed, that the return of the Jews became possible. This event is fixed with some precision by the lease of the Spanish and Portuguese burial-ground at Stepney, which bears the date of February, 1657.
London as a Walled Town
It is not by any means easy to imagine the present London as a walled town. The multiplicity of streets, the lofty and pretentious character of its buildings, and the immense suburban area of bricks and mortar which surrounds it, render it an extremely difficult task to picture in the mind's eye what the ancient city looked like when all the houses were enclosed by a lofty and substantial wall, largely of Roman masonry, and when admission could only be obtained by strongly defended gateways, approached by means of drawbridges spanning the encircling moat of City Ditch.