1275-2025: Queenship, Minorities, and Expulsion

The Tower of London, 30 June 2025

Academic historians and members of the public met to hear the most up-to-date research on the expulsions of 1275 and their aftermaths, and to discuss these in the poignant and welcoming space offered by Historic Royal Palaces.

This summary of the conference

has been provided by the JHSE New Generation Group.

Welcome by Andrew Jackson, resident governor and keeper of the Jewel House

I. Queen and their Power

Louise J. Wilkinson (University of Lincoln)

Eleanor of Provence and Eleanor de Montfort: A Queen and her Sister-in-Law’s Relationships with the Jews

As Robin Mundill observed, ‘The [English] royal family’s contact with their Jewish subjects was probably greater than that of most of the population’ in the period we are discussing. This was true of King Henry III’s own wife and controversial consort, Eleanor of Provence (d. 1291), whose antagonism towards the Jews in her widowhood culminated in their expulsion from her dower-towns in January 1275. It was also true, perhaps to a lesser extent, of her sister-in-law, Eleanor, wife of William Marshal junior, earl of Pembroke, and Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, whose second husband had expelled the Jews from Leicester several years before their marriage. This talk examined the two Eleanors’ relationships with members of the Jewish faith before 1275, highlighting how Eleanor of Provence was not only a beneficiary of Henry III’s assault on Jewish wealth, but had also come into personal contact with Jewish administrators and financiers (e.g. members of the Eveske family) in relation to her own financial affairs. Eleanor de Montfort, on the other hand, had a smaller financial base than Henry III’s wife, often faced financial pressures between the 1230s and 1250s, and consequently utilized the services of Jewish moneylenders, entertaining Deusay, son of Isaac of Winchester, Bonevie of Bristol and Lynn of Bristol, for example, at her manor of Newbury in 1232. Interestingly, Countess Eleanor and Earl Simon borrowed only rarely from Jewish financiers; perhaps because Jewish bankers were reluctant to lend to them after Earl Simon’s earlier behaviour in Leicester.

Charles Farris (Historic Royal Palaces)

From 1275 to 1290: Piety, Nationalism and Maternal; Influence in Edwrd I’s Expulsion of the Jews from England

Charles’ paper explored the much-debated question of the Expulsion of 1290, focusing on its religious dimension, and how Edward I’s piety may, or may not, have been a motivating factor. It began by summarising the historiography of the debate, and how political and economic explanations have often been favoured. It then summarised the religious dimension of this history, drawing much on Robin Mundill’s work. It agreed that the period 1287-90 was a crucial turning point in Edward I’s attitudes towards the Jews; and that Gascony provided an important testing phase for the later Expulsion. It then discussed elements of Edward I’s piety which might shed light on the topic. Edward’s pious practices, it emphasised, were much influenced by the mendicant orders, who in likelihood helped shape the king’s attitudes in the years before the Expulsion. The paper assessed that surviving evidence does not suggest Edward I showed much interest in “Blood Libel” cults but does suggest a growing sense of nationalism, which provided an important environmental factor. The paper concluded by identifying several likely influences for Edward I’s piety, who may have provided inspiration for his anti-Jewish policies. These included Henry III, Louis IX, Simon de Montfort, Eleanor of Provence, and Eleanor Castile. The influence of the last two, it asserted, deserve considerable further exploration.

II. Keynote lecture

David Carpenter (KCL)

The English Jewish Community in the Thirteenth Century

In his talk, David Carpenter explored the growing threats to England's Jewish community in the reign of King Henry III (1216-1290), threats which prepared the way for the expulsion of the Jews from the kingdom carried through by Henry's son, Edward I, in 1290. Carpenter thus discussed Henry III's own efforts to convert the Jews to Christianity. These included founding a house for converts in what is now Chancery Lane. He then described the terrible events in Lincoln in 1255 when Henry endorsed the view (the first European ruler to do so) that Jews crucified little Christian boys in perverted parody of the crucifixion of Christ. Nineteen Jews were executed as a result. From execution to massacre. When Simon de Montfort took control of London in 1264, while those to be spared were hurried off to safety in the Tower, around 500 Jews, men, women and children, were killed in cold blood. Meanwhile more general developments over the reign worsened the position of the Jews. Legislation, prompted by fear of contamination, forbad Jews from working for Christians and forced them to wear a distinguishing mark on their clothes. At the same time the taxation levied on the Jews, especially in the 1240s and 1250s, broke the financial back of the community. As a result, with his profits greatly diminished, the king no longer felt the need to protect them. While the

talk also considered more positive aspects of relations between Christians and Jews, the conclusion was that developments during the reign of Henry III made the expulsion at some point in the near future highly likely.

III Expulsion and its Aftermath

Emily Rose

1255, 1275, 1290

It is conventional to view the national expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 as a parliamentary quid-pro-quo: a deal the king made with his barons to expel the Jews in exchange for an unprecedented tax. The expulsion from the dower lands of the queen mother in 1275 is regarded as the private interest of a woman whom Bishop Stubbs called an “inveterate enemy of the Jews.” The two expulsions are therefore characterized differently: that of 1275 is regarded essentially as an individual, personal choice, whereas that of 1290 is considered as deliberate, public and political. I suggest that the elder queen, Eleanor of Provence, mentored her daughter-in-law, Eleanor of Castile, and that both expulsions were deeply personal, similarly motivated by emotional and spiritual considerations shaped by their mendicant confessors. The expulsions of 1275 and 1290 can be understood in large measure as parallel initiatives by royal women rather than as constituent elements of an inevitable progression based on perceptions of Jewish behaviour.

Dean Irwin

What’s Next? Towns and Expulsion(s) of the Jews

Dean started by reflecting on the healthy state of the field of medieval Anglo-Jewish history in 2025. His paper dismissed some of the prevalent ideas about the 1275 expulsions and offered his own version. Dean argued that Eleanor of Provence did not in fact expel the Jews from her dower towns (only Edward I had the authority to do so); that the expulsions were not without precedent, as a dozen other towns had acquired similar orders to remove their Jews, motivated by a desire to ensure urban autonomy from royal oversight; and that Eleanor had limited authority within her dower towns, given the liberties those towns enjoyed. Dean proposed that we need move away from viewing the expulsion orders as having permanent effect, or much effect at all. There is ample evidence that some Jews remained, or soon returned, to those towns. At Cambridge, for example, the archa (the chest that held the records of Jewish business activities), remained active despite orders to the contrary, allowing business with Jews to continue even after 1275. Dean concluded that expulsion did not necessarily mean full exclusion from towns.

Rory MacLellan (The British Library)

The final years of the Jews at the Tower, 1275-90

The period between the 1275 expulsion from the queen mother’s dower towns and the general expulsion from England in 1290, saw the height of Jewish imprisonment at the Tower of London. These arrest took place during the coin-clipping crisis of 1278-79, when at least 600 Jews were held on charges of cutting off the edges of coins to forge new ones or sell the silver. This scare was followed by continued Jewish prisoners right up to the deadline of 1 November 1290. Rory’s paper focused on the presence of

expelled Jews from Marlborough, Gloucester, Worcester, and Cambridge at the Tower after 1275, the strong evidence for continued Jewish-Christian interaction in the Tower’s records after this date, and the Tower’s administrative role in the final 1290 expulsion.

IV. Keynote Lecture

Rowan Dorin (Stanford University)

Eleanor’s Expulsion: A Global Historical Event?

The few historians who have mentioned Eleanor’s expulsion of Jews from her dower towns in 1275 have largely relegated it to a footnote in the history of medieval Anglo-Jewry, or treated it as a mere prelude to the kingdom-wide expulsion that her son would order fifteen years later. But what might we gain if we try to understand 1275 as a notable event in its own right—and furthermore, without instinctively looking ahead to 1290?

In my lecture, I explored some of the consequences of the persistent disjuncture between Jewish expulsions—like those of 1290 (from England), or 1306 (from France), or 1492 (from Spain)—that have earned sustained scholarly attention, versus those—like Eleanor’s expulsion—that have not. For one thing, the focus on 1290, 1306, and 1492 reinforces a strange exaltation of the nation-state, inasmuch as it implicitly foregrounds expulsions from medieval ‘kingdoms’, while sidelining those ordered by the rulers of lordly domains that never coalesced into modern nation-states. This same focus has also fetishized “permanence” as a proxy for historical importance, notwithstanding the fact that none of those ordering or experiencing a given expulsion had any way of knowing whether it would indeed prove long-lasting. Finally, insofar as these thorough, more or less enduring, kingdom-wide expulsions represent our starting paradigm for comparison with other expulsions (whether of Jews or others), then the pool of comparands is extremely small. This, in turn, might explain why so little comparative work has been done on the topic of premodern Jewish expulsion.

If we instead begin from the perspective of expulsion as a town-level event, the pool of medieval comparands explodes in size. Foreigners, beggars, prostitutes, lepers, heretics, dissidents, and many others besides all faced expulsion from towns and cities (and in some instances from larger territorial spaces too). Eleanor’s expulsion can thus be seen as part of a much broader phenomenon in medieval Europe, and likely beyond it. And once we understand Jewish expulsions (of all sorts and sizes) as part of a much more expansive historical phenomenon, we might be better placed to understand what distinguishes any given Jewish expulsion (and perhaps even Jewish expulsions as a whole) within this broader landscape of premodern expulsions and forced migrations.