Old and New London, Volume I / A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places

by Walter Thornbury

CHAPTER XXXVII

OLD JEWRY

The Old Jewry—Early Settlements of Jews in London and Oxford—Bad Times for the Israelites—Jews' Alms—A King in Debt—Rachel weeping for her Children—Jewish Converts—Wholesale Expulsion of the Chosen People from England—The Rich House of a Rich Citizen—The London Institution, formerly in the Old Jewry—Porsoniana—Nonconformists in the Old Jewry—Samuel Chandler, Richard Price, and James Foster—The Grocers' Company—Their Sufferings under the Commonwealth—Almost Bankrupt—Again they Flourish—The Grocers' Hall Garden—Fairfax and the Grocers—A Rich and Generous Grocer—A Warlike Grocer—Walbrook—Bucklersbury.

The Old Jewry was the Ghetto of mediæval London. The Rev. Moses Margoliouth, in his interesting "History of the Jews in Great Britain," has clearly shown that Jews resided in England during the Saxon times, by an edict published by Elgbright, Archbishop of York, A.D. 470, forbidding Christians to attend the Jewish feasts. It appears the Jews sometimes left lands to the abbeys; and in the laws of Edward the Confessor we find them especially mentioned as under the king's guard and protection.

The Conqueror invited over many Jews from Rouen, who settled themselves chiefly in London, Stamford, and Oxford. In London the Jews had two colonies—one in Old Jewry, near King Offa's old palace; and one in the liberties of the Tower. Rufus, in his cynical way, marked his hatred of the monks by summoning a convocation, where English bishops met Jewish rabbis, and held a religious controversy, Rufus swearing by St. Luke's face that if the rabbis had the best of it, he would turn Jew at once. In this reign the Jews were so powerful at Oxford that they let three halls—Lombard Hall, Moses Hall, and Jacob Hall—to students; and their rabbis instructed even Christian students in their synagogue. Jews took care of vacant benefices for the king. In the reign of Henry I. the Jews began to make proselytes, and monks were sent to several towns to preach against them. Halcyon times! With the reign of Stephen, however, began the storms, and, with the clergy, the usurper persecuted the Jews, exacting a fine of £2,000 from those of London alone for a pretended manslaughter. The absurd story of the Jews murdering young children, to anoint Israelites or to raise devils with their blood, originated in this reign.

Henry II. was equally ruthless, though he did grant Jews cemeteries outside the towns. Up till this time the London Jews had only been allowed to bury in "the Jews' garden," in the parish of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. In spite of frequent fines and banishments, their historian owns that altogether they throve in this reign, and their physicians were held in high repute. With Richard I., chivalrous to all else, began the real miseries of the English Jews. Even on the day of his coronation there was a massacre of the Jews, and many of their houses were burnt. Two thousand Jews were murdered at York, and at Lynn and Stamford they were also plundered. On his return from Palestine Richard established a tribunal for Jews. In the early part of John's reign he treated the money-lenders, whom he wanted to use, with consideration. He granted them a charter, and allowed them to choose their own chief rabbi. He also allowed them to try all their own causes which did not concern pleas of the Crown; and all this justice only cost the English Jews 4,000 marks, for John was poor. His greed soon broke loose. In 1210 he levied on the Jews 66,000 marks, and imprisoned, blinded, and tortured all who did not readily pay. The king's last act of inhumanity was to compel some Jews to torture and put to death a great number of Scotch prisoners who had assisted the barons. Can we wonder that it is still a proverb among the English Jews, "Thank God that there was only one King John?"

RICHARD PORSON. (From an Authentic Portrait.)

The regent of the early part of the reign of Henry III. protected the Jews, and exempted them from the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts, but they were compelled to wear on their breasts two white tablets of linen or parchment, two inches broad and four inches long; and twenty-four burgesses were chosen in every town where they resided, to protect them from the insults of pilgrims; for the clergy still treated them as excommunicated infidels. But even this lull was short—persecution soon again broke out. In the 14th of Henry III. the Crown seized a third part of all their movables, and their new synagogue in the Old Jewry was granted to the brothers of St. Anthony of Vienna, and turned into a church. In the 17th of Henry III. the Jews were again taxed to the amount of 18,000 silver marks. At the same time the king erected an institution in New Street (Chancery Lane) for Jewish converts, as an atonement for his father's cruelty to the persecuted exiles. Four Jews of Norwich having been dragged at horses' tails and hung, on a pretended charge of circumcising a Christian boy, led to new persecution, and the Jews were driven out of Newcastle and Southampton; while to defray the expense of entertaining the Queen's foreign uncles 20,000 marks were exacted from the suffering race. In the 19th year of his reign Henry, driven hard for money, extorted from the rich Jews 10,000 more marks, and several were burned alive for plotting to destroy London by fire. The more absurd the accusation the more eagerly it was believed by a superstitious and frightened rabble. In 1244, Matthew of Paris says, the corpse of a child was found buried in London, on whose arms and legs were traced Hebrew inscriptions. It was supposed that the Jews had crucified this child, in ridicule of the crucifixion of Christ. The converted Jews of New Street were called in to read the Hebrew letters, and the canons of St. Paul's took the child's body, which was supposed to have wrought miracles, and buried it with great ceremony not far from their great altar. In order to defray the expenses of his brother Richard's marriage the poor Jews of London were heavily mulcted, and Aaron of York, a man of boundless wealth, was forced to pay 4,000 marks of silver and 400 of gold. Defaulters were transported to Ireland, a punishment especially dreaded by the Jews. A tax called Jews' alms was also sternly enforced; and we find Lucretia, widow of David, an Oxford Jew, actually compelled to pay £2,590 towards the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey. It was about this time that Abraham, a Jew of Berkhampstead, strangled his wife, who had refused to help him to defile and deface an image of the Virgin, and was thrown into a dungeon of the Tower; but the murderer escaped, by a present of 7,000 marks to the king. Tormented by the king's incessant exactions, the Jews at last implored leave to quit England before their very skins were taken from them. The king broke into a fit of almost ludicrous rage. He had been tender of their welfare, he said to his brother Richard. "Is it to be marvelled at," he cried, "that I covet money? It is a horrible thing to imagine the debts wherein I am held bound. By the head of God, they amount to the sum of two hundred thousand marks; and if I should say three hundred thousand, I should not exceed the bounds of truth. I am deceived on every hand; I am a maimed and abridged king—yea, now only half a king. There is a necessity for me to have money, gotten from what place soever, and from whomsoever."