The Anatomy of Medieval Anglo-Jewry

<plain_text><page sequence="1">The Anatomy of Medieval Anglo-Jewry VIVIAN D. LIPMAN, M.A., D.Phil. The time is a winter's day at the turn of the year 1289-1290. The scene: a street in the Jewish quarter of Oxford, just south of Carfax. A group of Jews are assaulting a Christian cleric, whose mission is primarily the collection of money but also, indirectly, of statistics. The Jews of medieval England were sometimes more bellicose than is commonly believed. But in this case they had special reasons for their pug? nacity. The cleric, William by name, had come to collect the poll tax levied on all Jews of 12 and upwards. He was, as his name le Convers implied, himself a convert from Judaism and the poll tax he was collecting was intended to support the house for converted Jews in London; although the returns for the poll tax also provide us with invaluable statistical informa? tion about medieval Anglo-Jewry. And, thirdly, William le Convers was himself by origin a Jew of Oxford, so he was collecting this particular tax from his former neighbours and coreligionists.1 This story indicates that the collection of material on medieval statistics can be a risky occupation; and, although I have not to run the peculiar hazards of William le Convers, it is with some trepidation that I begin this attempt to assemble the statistics and portray the social structure of medieval Anglo-Jewry. To form an idea of the numerical strength of medieval Anglo-Jewry we need first some general idea of the total population of England in the Middle Ages. Yet even this is very difficult to estimate with any degree of accuracy. There are only two sources which present information covering the country as a whole: Domesday Book in 1086 and the Poll Tax returns of 1377 ?one too early and the other too late for our purpose, which is to study the population of Anglo-Jewry between the early twelfth century and the Expulsion in 1290. As Austin Lane Poole wrote: 'It is an idle task to attempt any? thing like an exact estimate of the population during the Middle Ages. ... If a census of the population had to be taken in any year of the twelfth century, it would probably have ranged, at a rough guess, around the two million mark. The natural tendency to grow was to some extent counteracted by unsanitary conditions, by plague, pestilence and famine; and though there are perceptible signs of increase during the period [i.e., to 1215], the population can scarcely ever have exceeded 1\ million souls'.2 For the remainder of the thirteenth century the increase would no doubt have continued at a fairly steady rate. The major check to population growth was not to come until the Black Death in 1348.3 Within a total population of 2 to 2\ millions, the urban population would have been pro? portionately smaller than in modern times. Medieval cities were relatively small; cities with famous names had populations quite low by modern standards. The most recent estimate of London's medieval population suggests that it grew from about 20,000 in 1200 to 40,000 in 1340.4 The capital thus had between 1% and 2 % of the total population of the country, instead of around 20% as today. Nor were cities on the Continent much larger?Ghent, Milan, Venice, Florence and Naples were probably more populous than London. But their populations were only of the order of 50,000 and they were the greatest cities of Europe in their day.5 A major provincial city in England like Norwich would, I estimate, have had a population of the order of 10,000.6 It is against this background that we can consider the size of medieval Anglo-Jewry. The English chroniclers, with both precision and near-unanimity, place the number of Jews expelled in 1290 at around 16,000: Walter of Hemingburgh, for instance, puts the figure at 15,060, another chronicler at 17,511, a third at 16,511.7 Yet these figures indicate that precision can be spurious. They must be compared with the figures drawn from the chevage or poll tax already mentioned. This was imposed on all Jews (apparently females as well as males) of the age of 12 and over. The tax was at the rate of 64</page><page sequence="2">The Anatomy of Medieval Anglo-Jewry 65 3d. per head. On this basis, the figures of total collections suggest that it was paid by 1,179 persons in 1280, 1,154 in 1281, 1,135 in 1282 and 1,151 in 1283. In 1280 ?11 3s. 9d. is stated to be the poll tax from 895 individuals, exclusive of the Jews and Jewesses of London and Canterbury, who would thus have numbered 284 liable to tax.8 It has been suggested that the annual amounts of about ?14 which are given as the total product of the poll tax in these years are a net figure, i.e., after allowance has been made for deducting the cost of collection; and that therefore the total number of poll-tax payers was proportionately higher. But I think this unlikely, because the poll tax was later farmed out for ?11, afterwards for ?12; and this would indicate that ?2 or ?3 represented the cost of collection. Therefore ?14 would be the gross figure for the product of the tax. If we add to these figures of around 1,100 or 1,200 souls an allowance for children under 12, we cannot get a figure above 2,000 at the total. To this must be added those who avoided or, like the Jews of Oxford, forcibly resisted payment; and those who were too poor to pay even 3d. But even after making these additions, we must clearly accept the estimate of Georg Caro that the total Jewish population cannot have exceeded 2,500 or 3,000 at the most at the period before the Expulsion.9 This, of course, is a figure less than one-fifth that estimated by the chroniclers. In 1278, 12 years before the Expulsion, when a large number of Jews were imprisoned on charges of clipping the coinage, it is said that all the Jewish householders in the country were imprisoned, 680 in all. Mr. Richardson has suggested that this was a gross exaggeration, as was another figure of 293 Jews hanged in the same year.10 On the other hand, I can show that in Norwich at least 16 Jews were executed, forfeit, or had to flee in 1278 or 1279.11 If this were representative of the country as a whole, then a figure of 300 victims for the whole country in 1278 would be about right; and therefore the figure of 680 householders imprisoned does not look so unreasonable. At any rate, if there were 680 householders in Anglo-Jewry in 1278, and we allow four or five persons per household?which is the common ratio adopted in calculation of medieval population?this would confirm a total Jewish population in about 1280 of some 2,500 to 3,000.12 A Jewish population of this order was con? siderably lower than the figure would have been earlier in the thirteenth century. Communities which then show lists of 100 or more names have only a handful of householders in the lists of Jewish property at the Expulsion. Many Jews were executed, particularly as a result of the coin-clipping charges of 1278; others lost their lives in the civil warfare and disturbed con? ditions of the 1260s; many other fled to the Continent, particularly in the earlier years of Edward Fs reign.13 If the Jewish population at the Expulsion was around the 2,000 figure, then earlier in the century it must have been at least 4,000 or 5,000. This would mean that Jews represented about one-quarter of 1% of the total population. On the other hand, they would have represented an appreciably higher propor? tion of the urban population?perhaps 1 % or 2%. Certainly about 2% seems right for cities where we can form estimates of both the general and the Jewish population; and I have in mind in particular London and Norwich. How were these 4,000 or 5,000 medieval Anglo-Jews distributed geographically? It seems reasonably safe to assert that the great majority of them lived in, or were associated with, a limited number of organised com? munities in the major urban centres of the time. The general pattern of medieval Jewish life?the need to live together for worship and for safety?would suggest this a priori; and it is confirmed by the fact that, where there is evidence showing the distribution of medieval English Jews for taxation or similar purposes, they are all grouped in communities under towns; and individuals living outside those communities appear as exceptions in the lists. In the thirteenth century, residence outside an established community seems to have required special royal licence, and the Statute of the Jewry of 1275 provided that Jews should not reside outside those cities or royal boroughs where there was an archa or chest for the registration of bonds. The span of medieval</page><page sequence="3">66 Vivian D. Lipman Anglo-Jewish history from the first recorded settlement to the Expulsion in 1290 is one of little more than two centuries. For settlement outside London, the period is even briefer? about a century and a half. The first con? temporary evidence for Jews in provincial towns, such as Norwich, shows them as settled there from the reign of Stephen, i.e., after about 1135.14 We can get some idea of the distribu? tion of communities in the mid-twelfth century, and of their relative importance or wealth, as measured by taxable capacity, from the con? tributions to the tax or donum levied by Henry II in 1159. This shows London assessed at 200 marks, Norwich at 72^-, Lincoln at 60, Cam? bridge and Winchester at 50, Thetford at 45, Bungay 22^, Northampton the same figure, Oxford at 20, and small sums levied on com? munities in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire. The list shows the concentration to be mainly in the east and south-east of the country; at that period, there seems not to have yet been a community at York.15 For the next 100 years, it is possible to establish a list of some 20 communities and to get some idea of their relative importance and how this changed from time to time. London continues to hold the primacy, accounting generally for a third, occasionally a half, of the total of the contributions. York and Lincoln have moved up to rank immediately after the capital; less important are Canterbury, Win? chester, and Northampton, Norwich now takes a lower place, together with Gloucester, Cambridge, Colchester, Oxford, Bristol, Here? ford, Nottingham, Worcester, Exeter, and probably Stamford. These are all communities whose existence can be traced continuously for about 100 years.16 There were other com? munities of shorter life. Dorchester in Oxford? shire had a community in the mid-thirteenth century, as did later Devizes, Ipswich, and Huntingdon. In some cases, we can trace the extinction of a community. Exeter seems to have been virtually extinct as a community by the time of the Expulsion; and the Jews had been ordered to leave Cambridge for Huntingdon, Gloucester for Bristol, Marlborough for De? vizes, and Worcester for Hereford in 1275.17 If we take this list of some 20 towns in which there were important Jewish settlements in the thirteenth century, and compare them with lists of the important boroughs of the period, what do they tell us about the sort of town in which one could expect to find a Jewish community? Three points are out? standing. In the first place, these communities were in the more populous parts of the country, as evidenced by Domesday and the 1377 Poll Tax returns. Secondly, the main communities were all (with the exception of Bristol) in county towns, i.e., those towns which were the headquarters of the sheriff, the King's repre? sentative. Even the smaller communities were almost without exception in towns with a royal (as distinct from a baronial) castle.18 As regards the major communities, where there is more than one major town in a county, the Jews are almost always in the county town and not in the alternative centre. Thus in Hamp? shire the community was in Winchester and not in Southampton; in Norfolk, it was in Norwich and not in Yarmouth; in Lincolnshire, it was in Lincoln and not in Boston. This seems only natural when we remember the importance of the functions of the sheriff or castellan of a royal castle in regulating and protecting the lives of the Jews, because of their special relationship to the Crown. Thirdly, Jews as a rule did not live in major ports. It is significant that the only town out of the 12 most important boroughs in Henry IPs time in which there was no permanent Jewish community was the then very important port of Dunwich (which has now disappeared beneath the sea).19 Again, the five most important ports in 1204, arranged in order of the volume of their trade, were London, Boston, Southamp? ton, Lincoln, and King's Lynn.20 The London community was there not because it was a port but because it was the capital. Lincoln had a major community because it was an adminis? trative centre. The Southampton Jewish settlement was of minor importance; King's Lynn had a community destroyed in 1190 which seems never to have been re-established. Finally, I would wish to draw your attention to the curious incident of the Jews of Boston. But, you will say, research has not been able to discover any Jews in medieval Boston. That</page><page sequence="4">The Anatomy of Medieval Anglo-Jewry 67 indeed, if I may paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, is the curious incident. Boston is of particular interest because not only was it an important borough but in the thirteenth century it held the dominant position as a port for export in the wool trade. With the possible exception of Bristol, therefore, one may say that Jewish communities were not found in towns which were important only as ports. From this we can deduce that, whatever part Jews may have played in internal trade, they could have played little or no part in the foreign trade of medieval England. While the geographical distribution of Anglo-Jewry is thus relatively clear, it is not so easy to form any precise idea of its numerical distribution between the different communities. What evidence we have is drawn from lists of tax payments to the Crown or tax assessments on the communities. In some cases the lists of tax-payers are obviously incomplete, in others they may be; and even the assessments may not represent the true distribution of wealth, let alone the distribution of population. However, this fiscal evidence suggests that, in terms of taxable capacity, London represented about 30% of the community, York varied between 10% and 20%, Lincoln and Canterbury be? tween 6% and 13%. In the range between 2% and 10% come Northampton, Gloucester, Winchester, and Cambridge. Between 1 % and 5 % are Norwich and Oxford; Bristol, Notting? ham, Worcester, Hereford, and Exeter being rather smaller. If we apply these percentages to a population of, say, 5,000 or 6,000, they will produce for London a community of 1,500 to 1,800. This is obviously much too high by con? temporary standards. As Baer says:21 'Even the largest Jewish communities in Spain, which were undoubtedly the largest in Europe [at this period] never consisted of more than 200 to 400 families.' In the thirteenth century the great community of Toledo, not only the greatest in Spain but possibly in Europe also, numbered only about 350 families; Barcelona had 200 families, Burgos 120 to 150 families. Going northwards, and still confining our? selves to population figures of about the thirteenth century, we find the very important community of Perpignan with about 200 males and a total population of only a few hundreds, and Narbonne, often considered the largest community in the South of France, with 140 adult males in 1305.22 In the Rhineland there were 200 Jewish inhabitants in Frankfort; in Cologne, there were 48 houses in Jewish occu? pation in 1170 and 70 in 1325.23 A London Jewish community of 1,500 or more souls would therefore be quite out of accord with what we know of the populations of the other Jewish com? munities in Europe at this period. London may well have represented 30% of the wealth or tax? able capacity of medieval Anglo-Jewry; but it could not have had 30% of the population. This is quite understandable when we bear in mind that many of the communal magnates would have resided in London and thus dispropor? tionately increased its taxable capacity. I do not think the London Jewish community can have exceeded about 1,000 souls at the very peak, and was probably down to about 500 just before the Expulsion. In the same way, I think that the major provincial communities such as York and Lincoln were over-represented in terms of taxable capacity, and their popula? tions, which on taxable capacity would seem to have been in the 300 to 600 range, were probably not in excess of 200 to 300. We have, for example, a list, probably an assessment list, of 114 Jewish names in Lincoln in 1240 (80 males, 34 females);24 examination of this list suggests that they cannot have represented more than about 60 families at the outside. On this basis, one would get a total community of about 300. The middle-sized communities like Norwich or Oxford would be in the range from 100 to 200, or even less, and other com? munities like Exeter would probably have been within the 50 to 100 range. In addition to the established communities, however, there were a large number of towns and villages in which a few Jewish individuals lived at one time or another. We know this generally by references in the names of Jewish individuals?because Isaac is called Isaac of Yarmouth or Joseph son of Benedict is called Josce son of Benedict of Tickhill. Probably the very fact that a man is known as 'of Yarmouth* or 'of TickhilP suggests that he was no longer resident there, but his former place of residence</page><page sequence="5">68 Vivian D. Lipman was used to distinguish him within the com? munity in which he now lived. On the other hand, it has been suggested that many of these names represent places around an established Jewish community to which a Jew would go for business purposes and open, as it were, a branch office for a few days a month, while re? taining his place of residence in the main established community.25 Be this as it may, nearly 200 places have been identified as having had Jews associated with them during the Middle Ages.26 And I think we could take it that, in the first half of the thirteenth century at any rate, Jews would be resident, as in? dividuals or in family groups, in anything up to 100 towns and rural villages. If therefore we look at the community of 5,000 or 6,000 as a whole, we might say that 20% of them were living in the capital: another 20% in three or four large provincial com? munities such as York and Lincoln, with between 200 and 300 souls; 40% in about 20 other established communities with populations ranging from under 100 to about 200; and up to 20% scattered as individuals or in small family groups in isolated settlements. Can we now form some idea of the class structure of medieval Anglo-Jewry? Seventy years ago, on 21 April 1895, Sir Lionel Abrahams, in a paper on Jewish property at the Expulsion, suggested that medieval Anglo Jewry consisted of three classes: 4A small class of comparatively well-to-do money-lenders and traders forming the chief families of each local congregation; the second class somewhat larger, but still forming a minority, of money? lenders and traders of moderate means, who carried on the same kind of business as the members of the richer families, but on a much smaller scale; and, thirdly, a large majority, composed of persons who did not lend money and of whom we can say with confidence that it was because they did not have it to lend.'27 I think Abrahams was misled in laying so much stress on trading; and that he dismissed too lightly the possibility of the poorer class being involved in some way in moneylending. But the picture of a few rich capitalists, with a more numerous middle class and a much larger class of the poor, is borne out by other evidence. I have taken one particular medieval Anglo Jewish community?that of Norwich?which, with a population between 100 and 200 souls, is typical statistically of medieval Anglo-Jewry. For the period between 1220 and 1240 there are extant at least seven lists containing the names of 70 Norwich Jews and Jewesses with sums owed to or, in one list, paid by each.28 Each one of these lists by itself is incomplete and inconclusive evidence. But it is possible to take the material contained in the lists together and form a synoptic view. From this we can get some picture of the stratification of a typical medieval Anglo-Jewish community in terms of wealth and business activity. At the top, there is one dominant family whose transactions in scale far outrank those of anyone else; the figures run into thousands of pounds?a fantastic sum when one realises that figures have to be multiplied by 100 or more to get current values; and no-one else appears in the lists for figures much above ?100. Below this family come half a dozen well-to-do families whom I would designate upper middle class. Then there are perhaps another dozen of ordinary middle-class families. Below them are a few individuals with only trifling financial details recorded. Several of the latter are women, and it may be that these are members of families already mentioned but whose family relationship I have not been able to identify. But to arrange a number of families in order of wealth does not help us to get the total numbers, unless we can form some idea of the size of the medieval Jewish family. The lists help negatively to the extent that they show no evidence of families with more than two or three children old enough to be able to engage in even occasional financial transactions. The Shetaroth help with a little more information, since some of these family documents relate to children not yet adult. The general picture from the Shetaroth, so far at any rate as Norwich is con? cerned, seems to be of families with two or three children, with three families of five children and perhaps one of six. This fits in with Dr. Roth's findings in his Jews of Medieval Oxford, where a similar community had three families of five, the other families all being smaller. For comparison, I would cite an analysis I have</page><page sequence="6">The Anatomy of Medieval Anglo-Jewry 69 made of the names of the martyrs in the Wurzburg Memorbuch. These comprise 262 households, including single-person households, married couples without children, etc. In calculating the number of children, I have in? cluded adult children with families of their own in order to arrive at the total number of their parents' offspring. On this basis, 136 families had no children mentioned, 45 had one child, 30 had two children, 18 had three, 13 had four, 7 had five, 4 had six, 1 had seven, 2 had eight, 1 had nine; and 5 had an unspeci? fied number of children. This evidence from a medieval community probably not dissimilar in circumstances from medieval England suggests that a family of more than three or four children must have been a rarity and the figures are comparable with those for Norwich or Oxford, when one takes into account the smaller size of those two English communities. The Norwich information contains the names of 65 adults (44 males, 21 females) living in Norwich between the years 1220 and 1240. It is probably as complete a list of adults as one can hope for at a given period from the evidence available. It seems to include the names of only two married couples. It is therefore necessary to add the wives of the other adult males who were married. Out of 44 adult males probably 30 or so were married; there were evidently a number of adolescent or young adult sons in the list and possibly some widowers. If the 30 married couples had on average two children each?which is probably an over-estimate? then we must add 60 children. Thus, on the basis of the list, we can assume that the Norwich community did not exceed 65 + 30+60 = 155 at this period, and the likelihood is that on the basis of these figures the total was between 100 and 150. From a total of 150, one can assume that one family, numbering with married children and grand? children up to 10, were very wealthy indeed; perhaps another 30 souls were in the upper middle-class bracket, and perhaps another 60 in the ordinary middle class, with the remaining 50, or a third of the total, among the poor. We can now examine more closely the composition of these three main classes. So far as the wealthiest were concerned, we may fairly term them a medieval Anglo-Jewish patriciate. For not only were they men of great wealth, but we can also, so far as our evidence allows, trace their hereditary succession in families; they often held positions of recognised importance in relation to the State; and they seem often to have been patrons of scholarship, and indeed in some cases scholars themselves. It is not difficult to think of the names of some of the outstanding plutocrats of medieval Anglo-Jewry. In the twelfth century Aaron of Lincoln and Jurnet of Norwich; in the thirteenth century, Jurnet's son Isaac, Aaron of York and his brother Leo of York, H?mo of Here? ford, David of Oxford, Benedict Crespin of London. The scale of their financial operations was immense, even by modern standards. When Aaron of Lincoln died in 1186, his estate was so great that his heirs were not permitted to succeed on payment of the cus? tomary third of the estate to the Crown; but what was in effect a Government Department ?the Exchequer of Aaron?was set up to administer his assets for the benefit of the King. The outstanding debts due to him amount to ?15,000?a sum which we must multiply by 100 at least to get its modern equivalent? owed by about 430 people scattered all over England.29 Isaac of Norwich, while not approaching Aaron of Lincoln in wealth, still left credits totalling ?3,668?again multiply by 100 at least?according to one list compiled about five years after his death; there were no doubt other credits besides.30 When David of Oxford died, the relief, or death duty payable by his heirs, which was usually fixed at a third of the property of the deceased Jew, was finally fixed at 5,000 marks?well over ?3,000; the corresponding sum paid on the estate of Leo of York in 1244 was 7,000 marks, or over ?4,000.31 These figures will give some idea of the immense scale of the financial operations of the small class of super-plutocrats. Great wealth was often accompanied by official position within the community. In this connection we can cite the office of Arch Presbyter. This was not a spiritual office but the principal Jewish post at the Exchequer of the Jews, the Government Department concerned with Jewish affairs and in relation to</page><page sequence="7">70 Vivian D. Lipman Jewish matters generally. The holder was also, in a sense, the spokesman of Jewry vis-?-vis the Crown: what in later times would have been called a Shtadlan. He was generally a wealthy magnate. Among the six holders of the position were Josce f. Isaac, the son of Isaac f. Rabbi, the great financier and head of the London community; Aaron of York; Hagin f. Rabbi Moses of Lincoln, a member of the greatest scholarly family of medieval Anglo-Jewry; and Cok Hagin f. Deulecresse, another magnate and favourite of Queen Eleanor and himself a nephew of one of his predecessors. The importance of wealth was also recognised in assessment for taxation. There is evidence that certain at least of the tallages were as? sessed by committees representative of the three economic classes in the community? the richest, the middle, and the poor. But the leading role was undoubtedly played by the representatives of the rich; for 1219, we have the names of the six majores appointed to carry out the assessment for the tallage: Aaron of York, Leo of York, David of Oxford, Aaron f. Abraham of London, Aaron Blundus, also of London, Benedict Crespin of London. Almost all of these names are those of men famous for their very great wealth.32 Yet it would be wrong to characterise this elite class of medieval Anglo-Jewry solely in terms of wealth. They were also men of culture, who supported learning, and some indeed men of great learning themselves. The Arch Presbyters, even though not ecclesiastical officers in the modern sense, must have been men of adequate Jewish knowledge, for they would be called upon in the course of their duties to advise on matters of Jewish law and custom. It is perhaps significant that when, after the apostasy of the Arch-Presbyter Elias PEveske, the community was allowed for the first time to choose their own nominee for Arch Presbyter, the choice fell on Hagin son of Master Moses, a member of the most dis? tinguished scholarly family in medieval Anglo Jewry. Several among the magnates received the title of HaNadib, the conventional term in the period for a patron of scholarship. Those so styled include Jurnet of Norwich, his son Isaac, and his two grandsons Moses and Samuel; Aaron of York, the Arch-Presbyter, and at least one member of the most dis? tinguished Anglo-Jewish scholarly family, Jacob of Oxford, himself the brother of the Arch-Presbyter Hagin son of Magister Moses.33 If we have to choose the representative ideal figure for medieval Anglo-Jewry?so to speak, the Sir Moses Montefiore or Frederick David Mocatta?could we not say that it was Elijah Menahem of London? A scholar and a scion of scholars, he was also a wealthy financier, if not in quite the same class as Aaron of Lincoln or Aaron of York. He left credits and effects worth about ?450, besides rents bringing in nearly ?20 a year and his own house worth ?5 a year?this at a time when an ordinary middle class Jewish house had an annual value of perhaps 6s. 8d. or 10s. a year. He was the leading Rabbinical authority in England of his day, the author of several works, including a commentary on the Mishnah. Finally, he was a physician of such reputation that he was summoned by the Count of Flanders, Guy de Dampierre, in 1280 to attend his stepbrother's son, Jean, Count of Hainault. Thus we can regard the medieval Anglo-Jewish patriciate as being not merely a plutocracy but also, to a considerable extent, an aristocracy of intellect.34 When we turn to the middle class in Anglo Jewish society, it may be more illuminating, instead of taking a large number of random examples, to examine what is known of a typical family. To find such a typical family, we must first look at a representative community. As we have already seen, the provincial community of between 100 and 200 souls was probably the sort of community in which the majority of medieval Anglo-Jews lived. I have therefore turned to such a community, Norwich, and picked out a family who on the evidence of their financial transactions in the period between 1220 and 1240?a period for which information of this kind is particularly compre? hensive?could be regarded as in the ordinary middle class with perhaps a dozen other local families. The family I have chosen is that of a man named Eliab in Hebrew, or Jurnin in Norman French. Eliab, or Jurnin, was the son of Jacob of Oxford (not, of course, the famous Jacob of Oxford)3 5 and was probably brought</page><page sequence="8">The Anatomy of Medieval Anglo-Jewry 71 up in the Oxford Jewry, since his wife, Gentil, was the daughter of Isaac of Oxford. He first appears in Norwich in 1225.36 This movement from Oxford to Norwich was typical of move? ments of Anglo-Jewish families of the period. One is always coming across families in one community whose names indicate that they recently originated in another?families from Warwick and York, for instance, are prominent in Norwich. Movement of this kind between local communities must have been frequent, though the reason for it is not clear. It cannot be attributed solely to expulsions from particu? lar towns or to the tendency to move from smaller to larger centres. Eliab, or Jurnin, the son of Jacob of Oxford, was a man of some local importance, since in 1241 he was one of the bailiffs appointed by the King for collecting the tallage of 20,000 marks.37 He seems to have spent about 30 years in Norwich, where he died, probably in 1250.3 8 He left a widow, Gentil, and three sons, Jacob, Judah, and Solomon, and two daughters, Hannah and Sarah. In leaving five children, Jurnin may have been exceptional?a family of this size seems rather larger than that normally found in medieval Anglo-Jewry. Jacob married Jessica, the widow of Elias Cochab; Judah married Golombe, one of a Levitical family in Norwich, and Solomon married Ziona, whose father was Yomtob son of Moses. Hannah's husband was named Moses.39 The names are interesting, particularly as they show a tendency to use Norman French names for the women, and these are found even in the Hebrew documents. Eliab, or Jurnin, owned four houses. In one of these he lived, and the other three he held presumably for investment purposes. We do not know how he acquired them?they may have been originally acquired as security for loans. But it could be expected that a middle-class family might have one or more houses in addition to their own residence. The one in which he lived is referred to as his 'big house'. After his death, his sons undertook to let their mother live in the 'big house' and to pay her a sum of 5 marks?that is, ?3 6s. 8d.?at Succoth, for her support and sustenance and to make further provision for her should she be F reduced to poverty.40 Five marks for sustenance works out at about 2d. a day. Judged by what we know of the allowances made for food to members of the royal household at this period, this looks rather on the low side even for food alone. But we have evidence that Gentil, like so many Jewish women, continued in business after her husband's death. The brothers also undertook, within three years of their father's death, to find a 'nice, sweet partner' (Zui na'eh u'matuq) for their sister Sarah; to present her with a dowry of 10 marks, to provide her with a trousseau (clothing and jewels), and to meet all the expenses of the wedding ceremony and feast. This dowry of 10 marks (?6 13s. 4d) I think may be regarded as the standard middle-class dowry. Sarah's brother Solomon, who was betrothed in 1249 to Ziona, was promised by the bride's father 10 marks at his wedding, but to be followed by a further five marks a year later. This suggests that Solomon made a slightly better match than his sister could offer. On the other hand, we know that a Lincoln betrothal contract of 1271 provided for a dowry of 20 marks.41 But in this case, the bride's mother, Bellassez, daughter of Rabbi Benedict of Lincoln, was of a much more famous and illustrious family than that of Jurnin of Norwich, and she lived in the stone house still to be seen in Steep Hill in Lincoln. Under Ziona's betrothal contract, her father also undertook to provide Ziona and Solomon with clothes and shoes for Sabbaths and festivals, to give them board and lodging in his own house for a year, to pay their taxes, and to engage a teacher for the bridegroom. If we may make the comparison again with the Lincoln betrothal contract, we find that Bellassez promised her son-in-law, in addition to the dowry, 'the 24 books of the Bible properly provided with punctuation and the Masora, and written upon calfskin; on every page there are six columns, and the Targum of the Penta? teuch and of the Hqftaroth are all written separately therein.' In mentioning the dowries, we must dis? tinguish between them and the Ketubah, used in the sense of the marriage settlement or jointure, which the bridegroom or his family had to settle</page><page sequence="9">72 Vivian D. Lipman on the bride. This was ?100 'according to the custom of the isle'.42 This seems an immense figure for a middle-class family?equivalent to about ?10,000 in our money?but may have been a conventional sum like the sum mentioned in the modern Ketubah. We have a good deal of evidence that a substantial Ketubah was settled on the bride and that it often took the form of house property. There are frequent references to a wife coming before a Beth Din and either surrendering a house, which was her marriage jointure, to her husband so that he could sell it, or, as a widow, having the right to a house, as part of her Ketubah, confirmed by the Beth Din.43 We have examples of this practice in the family of Eliab and Gentil. Some of Eliab's four houses were left to different sons and each gave them in turn to his wife as part of her jointure. We can follow the fate of Eliab's children almost up to the Expulsion. Judah seems to have done better financially than his brothers. We find him buying up two houses from Jacob which the latter had inherited from his father. We find Solomon buying half a house from Judah and lending 60s. to his brother Jacob. Jacob, if apparently less successful at first, seems to have made good later, because he became chirographer, or keeper of the archa, in 1263 and again in 1274.44 This is a position which would have been held only by a reasonably wealthy member of the community. In 1261 Solomon and Judah, at this time referred to as Leo, together with Solomon's wife, were among a number of Norwich Jews ordered to be taken to London and to be kept in prison pending appearance before the Justices of the Jews; and their property was also to be taken into custody.45 They both, however, seem to have survived this danger. But Solomon was executed in 1279 as one of the victims of the charges of clipping the coinage at that time,46 As a sufferer from these persecutions, in which at least 15 other Norwich Jews were fellow-victims, Solomon was unfortunately sym? bolical of so many of the Jews of his age and class. In turning to consider the third class of the medieval Anglo-Jewish population?whom we can regard as the proletariat?we come up against the question of how they earned their living. It is accepted that the documentary sources deal almost exclusively with Jews as moneylenders or taxpayers. Scholars have regarded it as inconceivable that an entire community could have subsisted on money lending and, in particular, that Jews who lived in very small towns or in villages or in rural areas could have made a living in this way. It is assumed, therefore, that, apart from such scanty evidence as is available, Jews must have engaged in trade, in handicrafts, or even in agriculture and horticulture in order to survive. What evidence have we of medieval Anglo Jewish occupations other than moneylending ? First, there were the economic dependants of their richer brethren, although not all of these dependants would have been persons of low economic status. The major financiers had their assistants and agents and clerks. We know that, for instance, Isaac of Norwich employed Moses son of Isaac, otherwise known as Mosse Mokke, as his agent or assistant; but Mosse was, to judge by his own transactions and taxpaying capacity, a member of the middle class. Elijah Menahem of London had an assistant, whom he terms mon ju, Abraham Motun,47 and the latter had at one time been in business on his own account, since Elijah Menahem purchased some of his debts. There were also, of course, genuine household servants. For instance, we come across Joia, a famula at Lincoln in 1240.48 Secondly, there are those engaged in what we may call the service trades. Apart from doctors,49 teachers, and at least one Shohet,50 which one can regard as professional rather than proletarian occupations, we know of vintners, at least two cheesemongers?these presumably dealt in Kasher wine and cheese respectively? and a fishmonger; although there is some evidence that Jews provided wine for non Jewish consumption as well. It has even been suggested that there was an ironmonger (at least, that is how Mr. Richardson interprets le Ronmangur).51 In the third group could be put traders in commodities, if we could be really sure that the apparent evidence from contracts about Jewish trading in corn and wool was genuine. My examination of the Norwich evidence has con? vinced me that after 1275, when moneylending</page><page sequence="10">The Anatomy of Medieval Anglo-Jewry 73 was virtually forbidden, these are camouflaged moneylending contracts; and before 1275 the amounts of corn and wool to be supplied are small enough to be for personal consumption rather than resale. There is, however, evidence from the responsa to suggest that Jews did indulge in at least some trading. For instance, Elijah Menahem of London deals with the case of one of two partners who is held to ransom while returning from market with merchandise; and another case refers to an agent employed to dispose of an object on commission.52 These suggest trading activities, which are certainly implied by a third res ponsum mentioning dealers who displayed cloth for sale at the market but who, if very strict, spread the cloth over a piece of wood, lest by spreading the material against their own bodies they might bring it into forbidden juxtaposition with material in their own garments. There is also a reference to tailors who worked for non Jews and who were faced with the same problem.53 Fourthly, pawnbroking is an occupation to which we have several references in general terms but which did not leave anything like the same volume of detailed records as lending money on the security of property. References to pawnbroking are generally only concerned with universal permissions or prohibitions, such as that in the grant of 1201 that it is lawful for Jews to receive and buy all things brought to them 'except those which pertain to the Church and of blood-stained cloth'.54 The repeated prohibitions on taking Church ornaments into pledge are some indication that even these were frequently pawned with Jews. We know also that armour and weapons were pawned; so were various items of clothing and jewellery. There seems to have been no system of registration of pawnbroking in the way that moneylending generally was registered at the archae. In individual cases, we get only incidental references, such as that of the man who states that he came to borrow 3s. upon a bowl of mazer wood with a silver foot and two silver buckles55 or the goldsmith who said that he pledged a bowl of silver encrusted with gold, value ?3 6s. 8d., for 20s., although the Jewish pawnbroker was able to show that in fact it had been pledged for 46s.56 The relatively limited number of cases of pawnbroking which are recorded must have been, like the tip of an ice? berg, indicative of a vast number of which we do not know. Pawnbroking also implies that the pawnbroker must have some means of disposing of the unredeemed pledges and, it has been suggested, of repairing the various items of jewellery and plate, clothing, or armour, in order to realise their maximum value. Finally, in seeing what means of liveli? hood were open to the ordinary poor Anglo Jew of the Middle Ages, we should not exclude too readily the possibility that he did some moneylending. There are quite a large number of persons whose names occur only once or twice in connection with financial transactions, generally in some comprehensive list of all the bonds in the archa at a given date. Such persons could probably add to their income by negotiating the occasional loan, possibly with quite a small debtor. We have a large amount of evidence about partnership between two or more Jews in a debt or the transfer of a debt from one Jew to another. The explanation may be that when a non-Jew wanted to borrow money, he did not necessarily go straight to the wealthiest Jewish lender but to some Jew he knew or merely came across. The latter would undertake responsiblity for the loan but might have to get backing for it, either at the time or subsequently, from other Jews. This would explain the documents to which I have referred, since the second Jew might put up the greater part of the cash; where a debt was transferred from one to another, it would be transferred from the one who had negotiated it to the one who actually provided the finance. If the second Jew took the debt over, he might allow the original negotiator to retain a small part of the debt as commission. In some cases, the operation might be carried out by a loan between Jews, but to get round the Halachic prohibitions on such loans involved cumber? some camouflage; and a machinery of shared debts and transfers of debts would be simpler. Further, this would provide the explanation for the mysterious Bursa Communis, the common fund or purse which is mentioned in a Norwich list kept in the archa about 1240.5 7 This Bursa</page><page sequence="11">74 Vivian D. Lipman Communis was said to contain debts owing to 14 Norwich Jews (including five women) who are all persons of whom we have very little or no other knowledge. The Bursa Communis might be a sort of communal fund intended to finance loans which these small people had managed to negotiate. The size and scale of Jewish moneylending of this kind can be more readily comprehended if we get away from the idea that in medieval England it was mainly concerned with feudal aristocrats or great clerics or religious houses who borrowed large sums from substantial Jewish creditors. Very little study has so far been made of the kinds of people who borrowed money from Jews, or of how much they borrow? ed and why. It is difficult?with the exception of the so-called Norwich Day Book, which records every transaction over a period of about two years?to make sure that the lists of debts which we have are really representative of the run-of-the-mill borrowing. Even the Day Book is not as helpful as it might be, because it is very difficult to identify borrowers even broadly by their social class or as townsmen or villagers. Professor Emery's study of the Jews of Per pignan in the thirteenth century, which is based on the notarial registers of debts, rests on much fuller information about the borrowers.5 8 This shows loans to villagers formed almost two-thirds of all the new loans to Christians by Jews recorded in the surviving registers of Perpignan of that time. The 30 per cent of the loans made to townsmen included a very substantial number made to craftsmen, as distinct from merchants; loans to the clergy and to the feudal aristocracy constituted a very small part of Jewish moneylending in Per? pignan. Such evidence as the Day Book affords tends to confirm this picture for medieval England as well. Assuming that in the Day Book we have a really representative sample of about 300 debtors, it is significant that the names of great noblemen or of religious houses form only a very small proportion of the total. Most of the loans seem to be to the rural gentry, although there are some of which we can unhesitatingly say that they were incurred by villagers, who, while presumably free, were of nothing like manorial status?there was a strong class of freeholding yeomen in East Anglia. The smith of Long Stratton, for example, who borrows 7s. 6d., or Peter le talliur of Hemingston (Suffolk) and Walter Roc and Godard Allius of the same vill (eiusdem villae) were obviously ordinary villa? gers. The part thus played by the medieval Jew in the day-to-day economic life of the English countryside must have provided scope for livelihood for a large number of ordinary Jews. This would explain why it was possible for Jews to subsist in a large number of isolated places without our having to postulate that they had other means of support than the lending of money. In view of the guild restrictions of the time, I cannot see the ordinary Jew engaged in merchandise or crafts, except as a by-product of pawnbroking, or, I fear in some cases, the receiving of stolen property. For, while the ordinary financial records tell us very little about Jews other than those in the wealthy or middle classes, records of court cases have something to say about all classes in society. Many of the accusations, particularly those concerned with clipping the coinage, were probably baseless. But there seem to be a number where the accusations had some foundations. Grimes of violence, in which even women were involved, were far from unknown. Two Jewish women of Huntingdon were con? victed of having violently assaulted a Christian man and, with the aid of the husband of the younger woman, robbing their victim. In 1278 two Jews of Bristol were accused of causing the death of a Christian woman. There are several other charges of murder or assault; we hear of brawls in the Jewry and various accusations of fraud and forgery.59 Details of such cases have long been published and are relatively well known. I should like, however, to summarise the details of a ease of 1230, recently published in the Curia Regis Rolls (No. 1027), since it has not, I think, previously been examined in detail and it throws some light on the sort of activities we have been considering. Two Flemish merchants laid a complaint against three London Jews: Deodatus of Northampton; Bonefey or Bonenfant of Bedford, son of Josce; and Jacob of Northampton. The</page><page sequence="12">The Anatomy of Medieval Anglo-Jewry 75 merchants said they were walking home through the London Jewry when Deodatus accosted them and offered to sell them a cup of maple wood, or mazer, for 12d. They accompanied Deodatus to his house to pay the money. But when Hugh the merchant produced the money, Deodatus said it was counterfeit. Hugh denied this but offered other money. But when he then took out his purse, in which were 11 marks and 40 pence, Deodatus took him by the throat, Bonefey took the purse, and Jacob put his thumb in Hugh's mouth. Hugh said he would have been strangled if the other Fleming had not called out and a number of Jews and Christians, including Hugh, the Serjeant of the Jewry (Serviens de Judaismo), and Peter, Serjeant of the Receipt, had not run up. The three ac? cused Jews then fled, leaving 46 shillings and 3 pence on the herbarium in the courtyard, where there was also blood. The money was handed over to the Constable of the Tower (who was responsible for the London Jewry). The three Jews admitted meeting the merchants and the offer to sell the mazer. But they said the money offered was counterfeit and they were trying to detain the Flemings for passing false coin while they sent Deodatus's son for the Serjeant Hugh and another King's Serjeant, Geoffrey l'Especer; and they asked for trial by a mixed jury of Christians and Jews. Geoffrey, however, and the Jewish witnesses (Benedict l'Eveske, Vives brother of Aaron, Abraham son of Muriella, and Aaron Pinche) said that they all had come because they heard the uproar, thus contradicting the story of the three accused Jews. Josce the Presbyter (pre? sumably the Arch-Presbyter of the time), 'according to the practice and custom of his law, having taken with him 10 Jews, ex? communicated all those who should hide the truth and speak falsehood about the matter'. Afterwards the Jews came and offered the King 60 marks of silver, for which the whole com? munity of Jews (tota communa) made themselves responsible, to have a respite of justice until the King returned to London. The only decision we have is that Deodatus and Bonenfant were to be kept in custody but Jacob of Northampton was released on bail under pledges. After? wards the Jews offered 100 marks that the two in custody should be allowed to abjure the realm, that is, to go into exile. There are many points of interest in this story. For instance, apparently it was the Arch-Presbyter, even though his office was of a secular rather than religious character, who imposed the herem with a minyan; and the reference to a herbarium?which I think must mean a plot of grass or a garden, rather than a medicinal herb-garden, within the courtyard of a house in the Jewry. But it looks as if the Jews were guilty, since otherwise they would not have asked to go into exile, and the evidence of their fellow-Jews, as well as that of the Serjeant, was opposed to them. We cannot, I think, cite this case as evidence that Jews were openly engaged in buying and selling. The mazer was being offered very cheaply, having regard to the prices put on such objects in other thirteenth-century sources, and these maple-wood cups were very highly prized. It seems more likely that Deodatus was trying to dispose of what at the best was an unredeemed pledge and at the worst might have been stolen property; or he may have used the offer of a mazer at a very low price merely to decoy the two foreign merchants into his house. I have so far been unable to trace any other references to these three Jews. Their names do not occur, for instance, in the lists compiled in 1221 of Jews who contributed to the aid on the marriage of the King's sister. There is a Bonenfant of Bedford, who had a feud with another Bedford Jewish family in 1262,60 but that appears to be too late. I think that we have here a reference to three Jews of the half-world as distinct from the more respectable Jewish citizens who gave evidence, some at least of whose names are well known and appear in the 1221 list. I have gone into this case in some detail not only because of its intrinsic interest but also because, on examination, it does not support any suggestion that Jews were engaged in normal retail trade. My own picture of the proletarian Anglo-Jew of the Middle Ages is of one scraping a living by occasionally negotiating a loan, taking articles on pledge, and then furbishing up and hawking a miscellaneous collection of unredeemed pledges.</page><page sequence="13">76 Vivian D. Lipman In this lecture, I have dealt with the social structure and economic life of the Jews of medieval England, with the material and at times even with the sordid. But, just as we must not conclude a Scriptural reading with words of sorrow but must end on a note of hope and consolation, so I feel it would be wrong to con? clude this lecture without reference to the intellectual and spiritual values with which medieval Anglo-Jewry were associated. I have already referred, however briefly, to their scholarship and cultural life. But we must remember also their devotion to their ancestral faith, their loyalty to it in circumstances of difficulty and hatred, and the occasions on which so many of them were ready to face martyrdom for its sake. In these days, when thoughts of Masada have been brought vividly to our minds, we may remember that medieval Anglo-Jewry had its own Masada, at York in March 1190, when the Jews of that city pre? ferred death at their own hands to dishonour or apostasy. I should like to read a few lines from the account which the unfriendly chronicler William of Newbury gives of the speech which he attributes to the scholar Yomtob, who, as he said, 'had come from parts beyond the sea to teach the English Jews'?that Yomtob who has been identified with Yomtob of Joigny, one of whose hymns is still recited in Ashkenazi synagogues on the eve of the Day of Atone? ment, In this speech, which William of Newbury may well have composed from the similar address which Josephus records as given by Eleasar at Masada, he pictures Yomtob as saying: 'God to whom none shall say "Why dost Thou so?" orders us to die now for the Law. And behold our death is at the door. Unless, perchance, which God forbid, you think of deserting the sacred Law for this brief space of life, and choose a fate harder than any death to honest and manly minds, namely, to live as apostates at the mercy of impious enemies in the deepest dishonour. And so, since the life which the Creator gave us He now demands back from us, let us willingly and devoutly render it up to Him with our own hands. For to us this life on earth is now thought nothing of through our love of the Law of our fathers'. I would repeat 'through our love of the Law of our fathers'. It was this love of the Law which characterised the lives of our predecessors in medieval Anglo-Jewry. Despite their short? comings, let us remember this and honour them. %* This paper was delivered by Dr. Lipman as his Presidential Address on 10 November 1965. NOTES 1 P.E.J., p. 113; P.R., 1290, p. 397. Cf Roth, Jews of Medieval Oxford, p. 162. 2 Domesday Book to Magna Carta (1951 edn.), p. 36. 3 J. G. Russell, British Medieval Population (1948). 4 Gwynn Thomas, Medieval London: from Com? merce to Capital (1963). 5 Cambridge Economic History of Europe, in, pp. 38-9. 6 See Hudson and Tingey, Selected Records of the City of Norwich, n. pp. ii-ix, for discussion of the figures. 7 Roth, History of the Jews in England, p. 276. 8 M. Adler, Jews of Medieval England, pp. 302-3. 9 Sozial und Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Juden, Ii, pp. 63-4; H. G. Richardson, English Jewry under Angevin Kings, p. 216. 10 Richardson, op. cit., p. 219. 11 Eight are named in an unpublished list in the P.R.O. (Chancery Misc. Bundle 9, No. 50); others are in Pat. R. 1280, pp. 377, 411, and in Roth MS. 270 (the 'Hake' MS.). 12 Professor Baron, in Vol. xi of his Social and Religious History of the Jews (p. 8), suggests that 'a total of some 10,000 Jews in the British Isles at the time of the explusion and a somewhat larger number during the middle of the century seems most likely'. In support of this estimate, so much higher than that of Caro or Roth, he says: (i) the Jewish population of London may not have exceeded 2,000-2,500 souls, but in the Northampton 'Donum' (1194), London had a quarter of the total contributions. But my examination of similar lists in the thirteenth century shows London representing a third, or even a half, of the total contributions. (ii) 'While most of the approximately 200 settle? ments in medieval England [listed by Roth] in which Jews are mentioned at some time or other accommodated only a few Jewish families, there doubtless were others which are not recorded at all. In the aggregate these tiny settlements must have added a substantial number of Jews to those of the cities' (op. cit., p. 245). These 200 names listed by Prof. Roth, however, are mainly drawn from references in the personal names of individual Jews. There is no certainty that because a Jew is called Isaac of Yarmouth, he actually lived there, as distinct from being descended from someone</page><page sequence="14">The Anatomy of Medieval Anglo-Jewry 77 who had once lived there, or only visited there regularly to do business (as Mr. Richardson suggests in his English Jewry under Angevin Kings, p. 14). More important, even if Jews resided in some of these 200 places, residence in them was not simul? taneous. Therefore they cannot all be taken into account in estimating the total population at any given date. (iii) 'The number of Jewish households must be multiplied by six, or seven, rather than the usual five persons, not only on account of the fairly large numbers of children in the average medieval family, but also because of the numerous servants, apprentices, and others who lived with their masters' (op. cit., pp. 243-4). As this paper shows, however, intensive study of one medieval Anglo-Jewish community (Norwich) does not show any pre? valence of large families or any number of ancillaries in the average household. (iv) 'North of Newcastle-on-Tyne, or west of Exeter, as well as in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, there probably lived quite a few Jews, although the records relating to them are extremely scanty' (ibid., p. 7). However, there is simply no evidence for assuming any substantial numbers of Jews in these areas, and what evidence there is (e.g., the prohibitions on Jewish settlement in the northern Welsh boroughs) is against it. To sum up, it seems to me that there is insufficient evidence to justify estimates of medieval Jewish population in England in the latter part of the thirteenth century which are substantially out of line with the poll-tax figures, especially since these are unusually firm evidence for medieval Jewish population. 13 E.J., in, 103-4, 130-4. 14Jessopp and James, St. William of Norwich, p. 92. 15 Richardson, op. cit., p. 9. 16 Misc. J.H.S.E., I, lxii-lxxiv (1194); Trans. J.HS.E.,Xl,99-lll (1221) ;Cal. Pat. R. 1255, p. 439 (1255). 17 Richardson, op. cit., p. 18. 18 The only apparent exceptions are Stamford (which was, however, a royal castle for part of the time) and Wilton (which was close to the royal castle of Salisbury). In the twelfth century there were communites in Bungay and Thetford in the Bigod lordship; and in the thirteenth century in the Earl of Chester's boroughs of Coventry and Leicester. 19 Carl Stephenson, Borough and Town, Appendix VI. 20 A. Lane Poole, Domesday Book to Magna Carta, p. 96. 21 Y. Baer, History of the Jews in Christian Spain (1961), I, p. 196. 22 W. B. Emery, The Jews of Perpignan, 1959, pp. 11-12. 23 Monumenta Judaica, Handbuch, p. 221: Liebe, Judentum in der deutschen Vergangenheit, p. 21, and I. Krakauer, Geschichte der Juden in Frankfurt-am-Main, pp. 79, 152, 202. 24 Published as an appendix to C. Roth, 'The Ordinary Jew in the Middle Ages', in Studies and Essays in Honor of Abraham A. Neuman (ed. M. Ben-Horin, Bernard D. Weinryb, Solomon Zeitlin), Philadelphia, 1962. 25 H. G. Richardson, op. cit., p. 14. 26 C. Roth, History of the Jews in England (3rd edn.), pp. 277, 282. 27 Trans. J.H.S.E., II, p. 82. 28 The 1221 'aid to marry' (published in Trans. J.H.S.E., XI, 99-111); the 'Day Book' (Westminster Abbey Muniments, 6686, 6687, 6693, 9012); and Westminster Abbey Muniments, 6694, 9011, 9008, 6736, and 6692. 29 The sources on Aaron of Lincoln are cited in C. Roth, op. cit., p. 16, n. 1. 30 W.A.M. 6092. 31 C. Roth, op. cit., p. 101, n. 4. 32 H. P. Stokes, Studies in Anglo-Jewish Historyr pp. 250-1. See also P.R. 1249, p. 46. 33 G. Roth, Intellectual Activities of Medieval Anglo Jewry, p. 15 gives a list, to which should be added Moses f. Isaac of Norwich (Davis, Shetaroth, p. 78).. 34 C. Roth, 'Elijah of London', Trans. J.H.S.E., XV, pp. 29-62; for his family, see the same author's. Jews of Medieval Oxford (Oxford, 1951).The writings, of Rabbi Elijah of London have been published by the Mossad HaRav Kook, Jerusalem, 1956. 35 G. Roth, Jews of Medieval Oxford, p. 82. 36 Day Book (W.A.M. 6686). 37 Cl.R. 1237-42 (14 May 1241), p. 353. 38 Davis, Shetaroth, p. 40. 39 Ibid., pp. 32, 43, 46, 47, 119, 136. 40 Ibid., p. 43. 41 Ibid., pp. 32-5; 299-302. 42 Ibid., p. 299. 43 E.g., Davis, Shetaroth, p. 66. 44 Ibid., p. 99; E.J., II, p. 183. 45 W.A.M. 6962. 46 He is listed as dampnatus in the Roth MS. 270. 47 Trans. J.H.S.E., XV, 54. 48 P.R.O., E 101 Q.R. 249/4 m.l. 49 There is a list of physicians in C. Roth, Intellectual Activities of Medieval Anglo-Jewry, p. 65 (from which Bateman son of Deulecresse should be omitted, as the word Bateman is a misreading for Solomon, who is already known). 50 Davis, Shetaroth, p. 129. 51 Richardson, op. cit., pp. 25-7. 52 I. Epstein, 'Pre-Expulsion England in the Responsa', Trans. J.H.S.E., XIV, pp. 196-7. 53 Trans. J.H.S.E., XV, pp. 49-50. 54 P.E.J., p. 1. 55 Ibid., p. 8. 56 Ibid., p. 106. 57 W.A.M. 6692. 58 W. B. Emery, The Jews of Perpignan in the Thirteenth Century, N.Y., 1959, esp. Chap. 4. 59 See the cases mentioned by M. Adler, Jews of Medieval England, pp. 34-6. 60 Pat. R. 1262, p. 205.</page></plain_text>