PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS
Mr. Turner has collected (Hist. Eng.) many curious facts relative to the condition of the Jews, especially in England. Others may be found dispersed in Velly's History of France; and many in the Spanish writers, Mariana and Zurita. The following are from Vaissette's History of Languedoc:—It was the custom at Toulouse to give a blow on the face to a Jew every Easter;—this was commuted, in the twelfth century, for a tribute. At Beziers another usage prevailed—that of attacking the Jews' houses with stones, from Palm Sunday to Easter. No other weapon was to be used; but it generally produced bloodshed. The populace were regularly instigated to the assault by a sermon from the bishop. At length, a prelate, wiser than the rest, abolished this ancient practice, but not without receiving a good sum from the Jews.
THE GATHERER.
Crusades.—Mr. Hallam, in his excellent History of the Middle Ages, (vol. iii. p. 359), gives the following view of these misconceived glories of history:—"The crusades may be considered as martial pilgrimages on an enormous scale; and their influence upon general morality seems to have been altogether pernicious. Those who served under the cross would not indeed have lived very virtuously at home; but the confidence in their own merits, which the principle of such expeditions inspired, must have aggravated the ferocity and dissoluteness of their ancient habits. Several historians attest the depravation of morals which existed both among the crusaders, and in the states formed out of their conquests."
Slave Trade in England.—In England it was very common, even after the conquest, to export slaves to Ireland; till, in the reign of Henry II., the Irish came to a non-importation agreement, which put a stop to the practice. William of Malmesbury accuses the Anglo-Saxon nobility of selling their female servants as slaves to foreigners. In the canons of a council at London, in 1102, we read—"Let no one from henceforth presume to carry on that wicked traffic, by which men of England have hitherto been sold like brute animals." And Giraldus Cambrensis says that the English, before the conquest, were generally in the habit of selling their children and other relations, to be slaves in Ireland, without having even the pretext of distress or famine, till the Irish, in a national synod, agreed to emancipate all the English slaves in the kingdom.
Opulent English Merchants.—Some idea of the ancient commercial wealth of Great Britain may be gathered from a glance at the rapid increase of English trade from about the middle of the fourteenth century. Thus, in 1363, Ricard, who had been lord mayor, some years before, entertained Edward III. and the Black Prince, the Kings of France, Scotland, and Cyprus, with many of the nobility, at his own house in the Vintry, and presented them with handsome gifts. This eclipses the costliest entertainments of our times, at the public expense. Philpot, another eminent citizen in Richard II.'s time, when the trade of England was considerably annoyed by privateers, hired one thousand armed men, and dispatched them to sea, where they took fifteen Spanish vessels with their prizes. We find Richard obtaining a great deal from private merchants and trading towns. In 1379, he got 5,000l. from London, 1,000 marks from Bristol, and in proportion from smaller places. In 1386 London gave 4,000l. more, and 10,000 marks in 1397. The latter sum was obtained also for the coronation of Henry VI. Nor were the contributions of individuals contemptible, considering the high value of money. Hinde, a citizen of London, lent to Henry IV. 2,000l. in 1407, and Whittington one half of that sum. The merchants of the staple advanced 4,000l. at the same time. Our commerce continued to be regularly and rapidly progressive during the fifteenth century. The famous Canynges, of Bristol, under Henry VI. and Edward IV. had ships of 900 tons burden.
Gold-beating.—Reaumur asserts, that in an experiment he made, one grain of gold was extended to rather more than forty-two square inches of leaf-gold; and that an ounce of gold, which in the form of a cube, is not half an inch either high, broad, or long, is beat under the hammer into a surface of 150 square feet. The process is as follows:—The gold is melted in a crucible, and taken to the flattening mills, where it is rolled out till it becomes of the consistence of tin; it is then cut into small square pieces, and each piece is laid between a leaf of skin (known by the name of goldbeaters-skin); two parchment bands are then passed over the whole, and each band is reversed; it is then hammered out to the size of the skin, taken out, cut and hammered over again, and so on till it is sufficiently thin; when it is placed in books, the leaves of which are rubbed with red ochre, to prevent the gold adhering to them. There are gold leaves not thicker, in some parts, than the three hundred and sixty thousandth part of an inch. BURTON.