The London Jewry: William I to John

<plain_text><page sequence="1">The London Jewry: William I to John* JOE HILLABY The history of the English medieval Jewry extends from the years immediately following the Norman Conquest to 1290. The topography, character and vicissi? tudes of the London Jewry from the reign of John to the general expulsion of 1290 have already been reviewed in the previous volume of Jewish Historical Studies, referred to as Part 1 below.1 What follows is a consideration of the earlier period. For the 13 th century a wide range of primary sources is available. These include such great series of state records as the Charter Rolls, the Close and Patent Rolls, the Fine and Liberate Rolls and the Inquisitions Miscellaneous and Post Mortem. In addition there is that remarkable series of state records concerned exclusively with the Jewry, the Plea Rolls of the Exchequer of the Jews, of which the Society has published four volumes of calendars, to which a fifth volume, Sarah Cohen's transcript of the Latin text for 1277-9, was added in 1992.2 For the 12th century it is the very opposite. Only one series of public records is available - the Pipe Rolls.3 These are the records of the annual audit of the accounts of the sheriffs, the king's representatives in each shire, taken before the barons of the court of the Upper Exchequer. The oldest surviving roll is for the thirty-first year of Henry I's reign, 1130-1. This contains invaluable material relating to the earliest recorded financial relations between the Crown and mem? bers of the English Jewry. However, the full series of Pipe Rolls begins only in the second year of Henry IPs reign, that is the exchequer year ending at Michaelmas 1155. For additional information we have to rely on the monastic chroniclers, not always a dispassionate source. Nevertheless, the work of H. G. Richardson on The Jews of Angevin England has thrown a sharp light on the inter? pretation of this limited range of primary material.4 The turn of the century witnesses a remarkable change. The Charter Rolls begin in 1194, and with John's reign we reach firm ground. The Fine and Memor? anda Rolls commence in 1199, the Liberate Rolls in 1200, the Patent Rolls in 1201 and Close Rolls in 1204; above all the Receipt Roll of the 1194 tallage, known as the Northampton Donum, and the Memoranda Roll of 1199 are rich in detail concerning the London community. From these sources a picture can be drawn of the leading figures of the London Jewry in the last decade of the old century and the first years of the new. * An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Society on n February 1993. I</page><page sequence="2">Joe Hillaby The English medieval Jewry was an offshoot of that of Normandy, principally of the great port of Rouen. Jews are first referred to in England in William of Malmesbury's de gestis regum Anglorum.5 Here we have two texts. In the first recension, of about 1125, William records that the Jews who were living in London in his own time were brought over from Rouen by William the Con? queror. He then describes how members of this new community presented gifts to William Rufus on a Church festival. The latter, well pleased, then provoked the Jews into a disputation in the royal presence in London with members of his clergy, swearing by the Holy Face of Lucca that, 'if they mastered the Christians in open argument, he would become one of their sect'. In a later edition, of about 1135, William of Malmesbury rewrote this passage, softening barbed comments he had made about the king. The 'insolence' of the king he changed to the 'insolence' of the Jews, adding the judicious comment that William Rufus was acting 'in jest, as I suppose'. Not surprisingly, the matter was approached with 'much apprehension on the part of the bishops and clergy, fearful, through pious anxiety, for the Christian faith'. Thankfully, William was able to report, the Jews 'reaped nothing but confusion' from this confrontation. The latter, on their part, maintained that they were vanquished 'not by rational argument but by power'. William of Malmesbury's later assessment that the king was acting in jest is close to the mark, for Rufus's actions here were very much in character. Anselm's chaplain and champion, Eadmer, eager to provide evidence of William's profanity and general hostility to the Church, recounts two stories of his dealings with Jewish converts in Normandy. Whether true or not - and Eadmer says 'I set them down simply, without asserting their truth or otherwise' - they are significant in so far as they indicate what some churchmen were prepared to regard as not uncharacteristic behaviour on the part of their king, 'a man obstinately set against the divine justice'. At Rouen some Jews of the city came to William Rufus com? plaining that a number of their co-religionists had abandoned Judaism for Chris? tianity, and petitioned the king, for a price, to compel them to return to their faith. Taking the price of apostacy, William had the converts brought before him and by threats and intimidation forced them to 'a denial of Christ and a return to their former error'.6 This must have taken place after the conclusion of the treaty in May 1096 whereby William Rufus paid his elder brother, Duke Robert, who was now leaving for the Holy Land, 10,000 silver marks for the custody of his duchy for three years. The departure of the crusaders from Rouen was marked by the only cred? ibly recorded attack on a northern French Jewry at this time. Our sole source, Guibert de Nogent, tells how crusaders commented that they were doing their work backwards: attacking the enemies of God in the east rather than those before their eyes. Guibert refers to members of the community being herded into quondam ecclesia. Benton translated this as 'a certain place of worship' rather than 2</page><page sequence="3">The London Jewry: William I to John as 'a church', adding that, from what follows in the text, it was clearly a synagogue. There, unless they accepted Christianity, they were slain without distinction of sex or age.7 Runciman doubted whether such a Rouen massacre ever took place, but Eadmer's conversion stories, in addition to Guibert's story of the young Jewish convert who became a monk of Fly in order to resist his parents' persistent attempts at reconversion, provides independent, if indirect, witness. Given the events of 1096 it is only to be expected that the small group of Rouen Jews who had founded the London community were augmented by others. For just over a century they found in England that security which could no longer be taken for granted on the Continent, a security for which the English Jewry sought, and received, guarantees from Stephen at the time of the departures for the second crusade in 1147.8 Relations between the London and Rouen commu? nities remained intimate for more than a century, until the conquest of Normandy by the French king in 1204. A quite different debate was held in London at about the same time. This was a formal one between Gilbert Crispin, abbot of Westminster, c. 1085-1117, and a French Jew who, he tells us, had studied the Talmud at Mainz.9 The two probably became acquainted through business visits which the Jew made to the abbey relating to loans for the construction of the monastic cloister, dormitory and refectory.10 Indeed, one of the first Pipe Roll references to a London Jew, in 1130, is to a certain Jacob who paid sixty silver marks for a royal writ against the men of Crispin's successor, Abbot Herbert (1121-40). The tone of the debate, as revealed in Crispin's The Disputation of a Jew and a Christian, written before March 1093, is friendly throughout, due respect accorded on both sides; there is 'no loss of temper ... and no token of surrender or note of triumph at the end'. This was due in part to Crispin's modest and gentle nature, but also to an age when, in England, the attitude of Christians to Jews had not yet developed into a deep and apparently irreconcilable hostility. As recast by Crispin, seven objections were raised by the Jew. For example, he believed that Christ was a great prophet but could not 'believe in Christ, only in one God'. He complained of the violence done to Scripture by Christian anxiety to find everywhere prophecies of Christ's coming. He taxed Christians with the naming of churches after saints such as Peter, Paul and Martin rather than, quoting Isaiah IL.3, 'going up to the house of the God of Jacob'. To such charges Crispin replied at length, but effective debate was restricted because of the abbot's lack of a working knowledge of Hebrew. Despite the tone, conversion was, of course, the ultimate justification. In a copy of the Disputation which Crispin presented to his friend Anselm, prior to the latter's consecration as archbishop of Canterbury in March 1093, he referred to a London Jew who had, by God's mercy, been converted at Westminster, where he publicly professed his faith, was baptized and became a monk. There is evid 3</page><page sequence="4">Joe Hillaby ence of a second early conversion in a letter from Anselm to Ernulf, prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, 1096-1107, asking him to accommodate Robert the Convert.11 There can be little doubt that there was some link, besides curiosity, on the part of both Crispin and William Rufus between the two disputations; and the king may well have been provoked into arranging a formal debate between the two sides on hearing of Crispin's encounter with the French Jew. The arrival of the deputation from the London community with gifts, in all probability at a Christmas crown-wearing at Westminster, provided him with an opportunity to put this fancy into effect. The king lived a highly peripatetic life, always on the move with his court. Indeed it has been said that he did not even live much indoors. However, in the early years of the reign Christmas was usually spent at Westminster and it was there that he built his new palace. At its heart was the great hall, the walls of which still stand. Measuring 240 by 672 feet, it was probably the largest building of its type in Western Europe.12 Evidence suggests that he also took a close interest in the building work under? taken by Gilbert Crispin at the adjacent abbey. A capital of c. 1100 from the Romanesque cloister was discovered in 1807, reused in the Old Gate which gave access to the royal palace. It was lost in the 19th century, but from drawings by William Capon we know that it was sculptured on all four sides.13 On one side, only three pairs of feet remained, but on the other three the sculptures were intact. The first showed a king seated, without a crown, on an elaborate X-shaped throne with beasts' heads and feet, holding a parchment and with an abbot on his right and a monk on his left. The abacus above was inscribed WILLELMO SECUN[DO]. The second had an abbot, with two monks, holding the parchment scroll with an inscription above SUB ABB [AT] E GISLE[BERTO]. The third showed Crispin reading from a large service book bearing the inscription Ego sum .. . held by a monk while another stands behind him on his right. Above was an imperfect inscription which has been interpreted as LAUS FV. ET RELI[QUIIS SANCTORUM]. Gilbert's tomb can still be seen in the south walk of the cloister.14 Vicus Judeorum/In Judaismo The first reference to the London Jewry is in a survey of properties belonging to the dean and chapter of St Paul's, c. 1127.15 This refers to a parcel of land held by a certain Lusbert, a Christian, in the vicus judeorumy 'street of the Jews'. The land so described was either in the street now called Old Jewry or in Ironmonger Lane. It reads: In vico judeorum. Terra Lusberti in fronte ex parte occidentis est latitud' xxxij ped\ Versus sanctum Olavum longif quaterxx etxvpedum. herum versus sanctum Olavum long' Ixv ped' in fronte xiij ped\ Terra in fronte Ixxiij ped' in profundo xlj ped' et reddit x solidos. 'The land of Lusbert in front on the western side is 32 feet in 4</page><page sequence="5">The London Jewry: William I to John breadth. Towards [in the direction of] St Olave's is fourscore and 15 feet in length. Again towards St Olave's is 65 feet in length. In front 13 feet. The land in front [is] 73 feet. In depth 41 feet. It pays 10s.' Thus it appears that Lusbert's land was made up of three adjoining plots, with frontages of 32, 13 and 73 feet respectively and depths of 95, 65 and 41 feet. In this case all three plots were on the eastern side of the street, for the first is carefully described as Hn fronte ex parte occidentis\ 'the front on the western side'. The next two sentences define Lusbert's first and second plots as being in length, versus - that is towards or in the direction of - St Olave's church. The text is thus open to two interpretations: firstly that plot number 1 was opposite the eastern end of the church, that is on the eastern side of Old Jewry, with the others ranged beside it, whether to the north or south is not evident; secondly that the first plot ranged backwards towards the western end of St Olave's, in which case all three would have been on the eastern side of Ironmonger Lane which runs parallel to Old Jewry on the west. There are two objections to this. The first difficulty in assuming that Lusbert's land lay in Ironmonger Lane is that although from later sources we know that the whole of the street lay within Cheap ward, Lusbert's properties do not appear under that heading in the survey. A more serious objection is that if Lusbert's lands were in Ironmonger Lane, plot number 1 would be lying alongside the church of St Martin Pomary, for the eastern end of this small church in Ironmonger Lane almost touched the west end of St Olave's. After the Great Fire of 1666 it was not rebuilt and its site remained a graveyard until the 19th century when it became a garden - from which the tower and west wall of the St Olave's rebuilt by Wren, now used as offices, can still be seen. The remainder of the Wren church was demolished in 1885. If Lusbert's first plot had ranged backwards towards St Olave's from Iron? monger Lane, then the St Paul's surveyor could much more conveniently have described it as lying adjacent to St Martin's. Etymologically the identification of the vicus judeorum with Old Jewry is not as straightforward as might be assumed. The term 'Old Jewry' came into use only after the 1290 expulsion. It occurs first in the Calendar of Wills proved and enrolled in the Court of Hustings, as la Olde luwerie in 1327-8, and as la Eldejfurie in 1336. Here 'old' means 'former' or 'late', as in the case of Old Change, a name given to that street subsequent to the removal of the Exchange before 1297-8. In the 13th century Old Jewry was called Colechurch Lane or Street. In 1234 Aaron, Elias and their father, Leo le Blund, sold their house in Colechurch Lane, but twelve years later 'the messuage of Aaron and Samuel, Jews of York', was in Colechurch Street. Before 1234 property in the street was identified merely by reference to the parish of St Olave.16 This was a time when street names were conferred by common usage and not, as so often in our own day, by the whim of authority or caprice of speculator. Throughout the period this remained the most favoured residential area for the 5</page><page sequence="6">Joe Hillaby leading members of the English Jewry. If a name as distinctive as 'Street of the Jews' had been established as early as 1127, it is most unlikely that it would then have been superseded by that of a small church at its southwestern end. This being the case, was the St Paul's scribe using the term vicus in its classical sense as 'quarter' or 'district' of a town? Certainly there are few examples of its use in the sense of 'street' or 'lane' as early as this in London. The use of the term vicus may provide some insight into the status of the Jewry in the latter half of Henry I's reign. The history of the city prior to the first Pipe Roll of 1130 has been described as 'very obscure'. Aldermen certainly seem to have presided over wards, but little is known of them; merely a score or so are recorded, almost all in the St Paul's survey. Only in 1129-30 did the Londoners purchase the right to choose their own sheriff from the Crown. Nevertheless Henry I appears to have circumscribed the city's autonomy by closer and more multifarious supervision 'through the constables of the Tower, the lords of Bayn ard's castle, the royal chamberlains of London and the moneyers', the latter being one of the wealthiest and most influential groups in the city. Indeed, one of the eighteen aldermen named in the 1130 survey, Brichmar, was a moneyer and there is evidence that at least three others held that rank in the first half of the 12th century.17 The St Paul's survey provides the first extant list of London wards. The next list, the London Eyre Roll of 1244, is more than a century later.18 There the system of twenty-four wards is fully developed, but that this was the case c. 1127 does not necessarily follow. Indeed, Reynolds warns against the retrospective use of later material for a period when 'the kind and scale of change is such that it may invalidate such methods'.19 In drawing up his survey the St Paul's scribe groups the dean and chapter's properties under ward headings, but only twenty are mentioned in the extant text. Of these all but two, Cheap and Aldgate, are identified merely by the names of their aldermen.20 In addition, however, the scribe recorded property in three places which are not described as wards: ultra Fletam; in Aldresmanesberi; in vico judeorum. In so doing he may be indicating that these lay outside the ward system.21 The first, the district across or west of the Fleet, was beyond the city walls. In the 1244 Eyre Roll it forms part of the sprawling Faringdon ward. In 1394 it was decided that this should be split into two. The area beyond Fleet thus became London's twenty-fifth ward, as Faringdon without. It is probable, therefore, that in the early 12th century the process of its full incorporation into Faringdon was only about to begin. The second, Aldermanbury, was in 1244 part of Cripplegate ward. However, in the early 12th century it was an important structure, standing on the site of the eastern gate of the former Roman Cripplegate fort which, it has been suggested, was the official residence, the burh&gt; of the officer who repres? ented the king's interests within the city. Although the term 'alderman' had been downgraded in that it now referred to the head man of a city ward, as ealdorman it had been the title of the head man of a shire.22 If Aldermanbury was or had 6</page><page sequence="7">The London Jewry: William I to John recently been the residence of such a royal official, this could explain why c. 1127 it lay outside the civic jurisdiction, and thus the ward system. If neither the area beyond Fleet nor Aldermanbury were within that system c. 1127, then the implication is that the vicus judeorum was not either, and that the St Paul's scribe was groping for a new concept which, by the end of the century, had become clearly defined as in judaismo, 'in Jewry'. In essence this term was juridical. Because the Jews belonged to the king, they lay beyond the jurisdiction of the city's courts. Its citizens could seek redress of grievance against Jews only in the royal court. The position of Jews in English society was carefully regulated by Henry I, in 1100-35. When King John issued his Charter of Liberties to the Jews of England and Normandy in 1201, it was prefaced by the statement that 'they may freely and honourably reside in our land and hold of us all things that they held of King Henry [I] our father's grandfather'.23 The so-called Laws of Edward the Confessor, drawn up shortly after 1130, indicate what, at that time, was commonly held to be the place of Jews within the state. Judei et omnia sua regis sunt,24 'They and all their possessions belong to the king', and if anyone withheld their money the king could recover it as his own. They were to be guarded and protected by the king's lieges, wherever they were in the land. Only with royal licence could they accept a magnate's protection. Behind this lies an informal compact. The king permitted the Jews to enter his realm, throughout which he granted them his protection. In return they and their wealth were at his disposal. The status of Jews under Henry I thus appears to stand in contrast to that under William Rufus. One of the first questions which the French Jew asked of Gilbert Crispin in the disputation was: 'if we have in common the observance of the Law of Moses why do you Christians treat us like dogs, driving us away and assailing us hody with cudgels?'25 However, the term Jewry was not merely juridical; it also had a geographical context, in the sense of the area of Jewish settlement. There is no later reference to a vicus judeorum; places are described as in judaismo. St Olave's parish was commonly so described from 1181, and St Laurence's from the deanship of St Paul's of Ralph de Diceto, that is 1181-1202. Brooke and Keir refer to St Martin Pomary as St Martin Jewry but give no source. By the second half of the 13th century St Laurence's Lane, and in the ecclesiastical taxation of 1291 St Ste? phen's parish, which included the full length of Colman Street from Lothbury to London Wall, were in judaismo. Nevertheless, it is difficult to define with precision the limits of the Jewry. Certainly many Christians lived within and many Jews without. Further, in the 13th century Jewish settlement spanned some nine par? ishes. Only very late in that century did the city authorities attempt to restrict such settlement. 'No one shall... demise the same [messuages] for them to live in outside the limits of the Jewry.'26 During the 13 th century the constable of the Tower exercised wide police powers within this area, of which there is a wealth of evidence among the Plea Rolls of the Exchequer of the Jews - after 1266. It is evident from the receipts 7</page><page sequence="8">Joe Hillaby and perquisites of his Serjeant, William de Graveley, for 1275-8, that the limits of the Jewry were well defined. 'From a Christian found in the Jewry, 20s. From a Christian fighting in the Jewry, us. From a goldsmith fighting in the Jewry, 2is. From Nicholas the Convert, goldsmith of London, for his servants fighting in the Jewry, 100s ... for a cup and twelve spoons found on them, 33s 4d. From a Christian man coming into the Jewry by night, 7s 1 iid. From John of Lincoln because he was found by night in the Jewry, ?6. From Emma the Changer, because she came into the Jewry, 10s. From a Christian woman coming with 100s who fled and left her money behind, 100s. From a debauchee found in the Jewry at night, 7s 11 id.'27 The constable claimed always to have exercised this jurisdiction, and Richard? son believed that it was 'a survival from ancient times',28 by which no doubt the earliest period of Jewry regulation is meant. Certainly evidence for such jurisdic? tion exists well before 1266. At the Eyre of 1276 the king, in ordering the justices not to permit Jews to be impleaded but only to respond to questions concerning their lands and other things, emphasized that this had been 'the custom in previ? ous eyres'.29 Thirty years earlier, when Hugh Giffard, a member of the royal household, was appointed during pleasure to the custody of the Tower in 1236, it was 'with all rights belonging to it - of the Jewry and of the water of Thames - taking yearly from the king for the custody ?20 and two robes'. It is significant that in the definition of the constable's rights 'the Jewry' took precedence over 'the water of Thames'. The following year, when William fitz Bernard and Richard, his servant, went to the house of Josce the Jew and slew him, William, who was taken at St Saviour's with a silver cup he had stolen, was hanged and Milo le Espicer, who was with them, fled badly wounded to the church and died there. However no attachment, that is arrests of persons nearby at the time of the murder, was made 'because this took place in the Jewry and in such a case it is not the duty of the [city] sheriffs, only the constable of the Tower, to make attachments'.30 In the earliest extant Plea Rolls, of Trinity term 1194, a case concerning Benedict Parvus (Table 4, No. 3) and a false charter was to be heard not at Westminster but at the Tower.31 The evidence thus suggests that the constable had special jurisdiction over the Jews within the city in the 12th century, in which case the vicus judeorum referred to in the St Paul's charter may well be our only evidence of its early form. The 1130 Pipe Roll The first extant Pipe Roll provides important evidence about the London Jewry. Brief and isolated as these 1130 references are, they do provide a remarkable conspectus of the community at an early stage of its development. Although its clientele was widespread, entries relating to the Jewry itself show it was confined to the city. A single entry, which refers to the imposition of a fine of ?2000 'for 8</page><page sequence="9">The London Jewry: William I to John the sick man whom they killed', illustrates both the extraordinary wealth of that community, for more than ?600 was paid immediately, and yet its vulnerability to apparendy unbridled royal exactions.32 Medicine was one of the skills practised by the first Jews to come to England. This, despite its evident dangers, they continued to practise. The 1191-7 lists of tallage arrears (Table 3, Nos 24 and 30) refer to Isaac Medicus and Josce son of Medicus. At Kings Lynn a Jewish doctor, honoured by his Christian neighbours, was among those slaughtered in 1190 and there was an Ursell Medicus at York in 1208. As late as 1279 such was the reputation of Master Elias son of Master Moses that he was called from London to attend the count of Flanders. There were other skills, particularly in relation to precious metals. Security for loans made to laymen would be land, but the clergy had other resources - Church treasure. Bishop Robert de Chesney of Lincoln pledged the ornaments of his cathedral, while Bishop Nigel of Ely (1133-69) and Abbot William de Walterville of Peterborough (1155-75) even pawned the most sacred relics of their churches including, in the case of the latter, the arm of St Oswald. In consequence the Jewry accepted gold and silver objects in pledge, from laymen as well as ecclesi? astics. This may well explain the 'two silver cups' which Abraham sold to the Crown for ?10 5s iod, accounted for on the 1130 roll. On the other hand, some members of the Jewry were certainly involved in the working of gold and silver. Leo the Jew, the king's goldsmith, was held in such regard by John that he was given not only royal protection but also freedom from tallage.33 In 1130, ?2000 was no small sum. The total income accounted for on the Pipe Roll that year, that is for both the current year and items carried over from earlier years, was almost ?23,000. The value of the ?2000 fine can be expressed in a different way. During the vacancy of an English bishopric or monastery all the revenue, except for the amount required for the subsistence of chapter, monks or nuns, was at the disposal of the Crown, which generally did not deal gently on such occasions. Essential maintenance could be neglected and assets plundered. These were known as regalian rights. In 1092 the vacancies of the archbishopric of Canterbury, the bishopric of Lincoln and the abbacies of the great and ancient monasteries of St Augustine's at Canterbury, Newminster at Winchester, Mal mesbury, Ely and Chertsey brought ?2385 into the royal coffers.34 For Henry I the Jewry was thus a considerable prize as a source of ready cash, whether in the form of loans, 'gifts' or fines, and as such was to be cherished. Heavy fines may well have been imposed on occasions, but not in such a way as to destroy its profitability - that process was left to John and his son, Henry III. A considerable degree of confidence must have existed between the two sides, the monarch and the leaders of the community, for reference to payments by the Crown to Rubigotsce (Rabbi Josce) of 180 silver marks, to Manasser some 85 marks and Jacob (a sum no longer legible) indicates loan repayments, for they are prefaced by the term in soltis.35 The imposition of heavy fines and the granting of 9</page><page sequence="10">Joe Hillaby such temporary but unprofitable loans will have been accepted by the community's leaders as a necessary element in the assessment of risks and profit in their general business transactions. Certainly for Henry I the Jewry was too rich a prize to be allowed to fall, even in part, into other hands. Hence its restriction to London where full control, and protection, could be exercised. The wealth of the community came, of course, from loans made to parties other than the Crown. The names of some of these clients are recorded in the proffers made by members of the Jewry for the king's assistance, through his courts, in the recovery of their debts. Rubigotsce, with others, offered ten gold marks for help in a claim against the earl of Chester, an offer evidently accepted, for the scribe recorded that Rubigotsce paid 6 gold marks, while his unnamed partners contributed 4. Rubigotsce was at the head of another partnership, with Jacob and Manasser, which, for assistance in their action against Richard fitz Gilbert, proffered 6 gold marks of which 4, that is ?24, were paid in ready money. On the other hand, Richard made a counter-offer through the sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire of 200 silver marks, ?133 6s 8d.36 Richard's outstanding debt will, therefore, have been considerable. On such occasions the king must have found himself faced with a serious conflict of interests, for the two clients con? cerned were among the most powerful men in the realm. Rannulf II des Gernons, earl of Chester, succeeded his father, Rannulf I le Meschin, in 1129. In the Gesta Stephani he is the man 'who by force of arms had seized almost a third of this kingdom'. This was no exaggeration. During the Great Anarchy, through family, friends and allies, he did indeed control almost a third of the realm. His base was the Palatine earldom of Chester which extended deep into North Wales. Much of Lincolnshire was his and the honour of Carlisle, lost by his father to Henry I, he sought to regain. He was not a man to temporize in the attainment of his objectives. Having captured Stephen at Lincoln in 1140, he only agreed to the king's release once an exchange had been arranged for the Empress Matilda's brother, Robert of Gloucester.37 The Pipe Roll gives clear evidence of his need for ready money in 1130. He owed: ?1000 on account of 'his father's debts for the succession to the lands of Earl Hugh', that is the earldom which his father, as first cousin and heir, had acquired from Henry I in 1121; 500 silver marks for the agreement which he and his mother had made with the king in order that she be excused from marrying (a fourth time) for five years; and 400 marks which his father had owed Herbert fitz Dudemann. His mother, the Countess Lucy, owed ?266 13s 4d for the lands of her father, that is to retain one third of her dower to dispose of as she pleased, in this case to her son, Rannulf II, and 100 marks that she may do justice in her court among her own men. Thus, jointly, they owed the Crown more than ?2000.38 In addition Rannulf may have had to pay a considerable relief for his own entry into his father's estates. At his coronation in August 1100 Henry I had promised 10</page><page sequence="11">The London Jewry: William I to John that only a 'just and lawful relief, pro terra patris sui as it is described on the rolls, would be demanded of the heir on the death of any of his barons. With the passage of three decades Henry's remembrance of this promise had seemingly become dim. The author of the Dialogue of the Exchequer, writing in 1176-9, was able to say that the heir to a barony makes the best bargain he can with a king, the amount of relief is at the king's pleasure. The 1130 Pipe Roll, for example, shows that Geoffrey II de Mandeville owed 1300 marks (?866 13s 4d) for the lands of his father, William I, who had died many years before. At Michaelmas next year only 200 marks had been paid.39 When such a relief was levied the money had normally to be borrowed, for this was an age when hoarding of money by the great was regarded as dishonourable. Money was to be spent, whether on security, ostentation or charity, but not amassed for rainy days. The Crown's demands for relief - inheritance duty - from its baronage was to provide the Jewry with a large and profitable market. The second client, Richard fitz Gilbert, a direct descendant of Richard I, duke of Normandy, was Rannulf IPs brother-in-law. His grandfather, also Richard fitz Gilbert, held the honours of Tonbridge and Clare, Suffolk, and was one of the major Domesday tenants-in-chief. His father, Gilbert fitz Richard, had been granted Ceredigion by Henry I in 1110. 'Brave, renowned and powerful ... gathering a host he took possession of it', building the casdes of Cardigan at the mouth of the Teifi to guard the south, and Aberystwyth at the mouth of the Rheidol and Ystwyth to guard the north of his marcher lordship. Richard, who inherited Ceredigion between 1114 and 1117, had married Adeliza, daughter of Rannulf I. Their son was to be made earl of Hertford in 1141, while his nephew, Richard (fitz Gilbert) de Clare, was that Strongbow, second earl of Pembroke, who initiated the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in 1167. Costs of casde construction and maintenance may well have obliged fitz Gilbert to call on the resources of the Jewry. In April 1136, when the Welsh march was ablaze after the death of Henry I, he declined armed assistance from his neigh? bouring marcher lord and, travelling with only a few companions and his piper playing in the van, was ambushed and killed by Iorwerth ap Owain in the woods of Coed Grwyne on his road from Abergavenny to Brecon.40 A third client, Osbert of Leicester, is not so easily identified, but the Pipe Roll does supply some background information. His need for cash was acute for he had fallen foul of Henry I in a serious but unspecified way, and had to find 1000 marks (?666 13s 4d) for relaxation of malevolentia regis. Another reference links him, but again in an unspecified way, with the Benedictine priory of Blyth, founded by the lords of Tickhill as a cell of Holy Trinity, Rouen.41 Abraham and Deulesault offered one gold mark for assistance in the recovery of their loan to Osbert. It was not laymen alone who were borrowing from the London Jewry. Loans to monasteries had already begun. In 1130, as we have seen, Jacob paid 60 marks 11</page><page sequence="12">Joe Hillaby for assistance in recovering money from 'the men of the abbot of Westminster'. Jewish women were already playing a part in the London financial market, for Jacob's wife is formally associated with him on the record.42 This solitary extant Pipe Roll of Henry I's reign provides the only reference to the man, mentioned above, who seems to have been a legend in his own time. Usually he is called Rubigotsce, but on one occasion he is Rabi Gotsce. It was as the Rabbi Josce that he was best remembered in London, for there can be little doubt that it was he, not his son Abraham, who founded the great synagogue on the eastern side of Colechurch Lane which in 1213 was described as magnam scolam Iudeorum que fuitAbrahe filii Raby. This acted as a magnet for senior mem? bers of the English Jewry well into the 13 th century. His sons, Isaac and Abraham, building on the business interests established by the rabbi, played a major role in the life of the London and English Jewries throughout the second half of the 12th century, managing to avoid those conflicts which so troubled the careers of their contemporaries, Aaron of Lincoln and Jurnet of Norwich. The building up of the family's interests in London and England was not, however, at the expense of their business on the other side of the Channel, in Rouen and Normandy, where the rabbi's memory was perpetuated by the property which the family owned in the rue des Juifs and which was only sold by his grandson, Josce, in 1203.43 The 1130 roll not only shows Henry borrowing money but, more important, it provides evidence that he was already creaming off a considerable share of the profits of usury in the form of arbitrary fining of the Jewry. The entry referring to the London Jewry concludes with the sentence: 'They owe ?1166 13s 4d'. As the London community only made a downpayment of ?510, Rabbi Josce, Manasser and Jacob did not receive the sums due in soltis, nor Abraham the price for his two silver cups; the exchequer court unilaterally deducted these from the ?2000 fine. The London community was important to the Crown in another respect. By the provision of extended credit to members of the baronage, such as Rannulf II and Richard fitz Gilbert, it enhanced the king's capacity to levy ever greater cash fines on a social group who, although powerful and wealthy, would not normally have had access to large sums in ready money. As land, the ultimate measure of status, had to be offered as security, this was to lead, when there was default, to serious social tension and was the underlying cause of the York, and to a lesser extent the London, massacre at the beginning of Richard I's reign. The Reign of Stephen, 1135-54: the Beginnings of Provincial Settlement On 1 December 1135 Henry I died of a surfeit of lampreys, and early in the new year he was buried at his foundation, the abbey of Reading. He had sired at least twenty-one children, but only two were legitimate. His son William had been 12</page><page sequence="13">The London Jewry: William I to John drowned in the White Ship disaster off Honfleur in 1120. His daughter, Matilda, had been the wife of Emperor Henry V but after his death in 1125 was married to Geoffrey (Plantagenet), son and heir of the count of Anjou. She was Henry's choice as heir, but his nephew, Stephen of Blois, son of his sister, Adele, countess of Blois, acting quickly, was crowned at Westminster three weeks after the death of his uncle. Sources for the history of the Anglo-Jewry in the reign of Stephen are virtually non-existent. There are no Pipe Rolls and the monastic chroniclers are silent on the subject. However, there are two clues to the king's attitude to his Jews. In 1144 Stephen resisted the charge of ritual murder brought against the Norwich community. The Jewry sought and received the protection of his sheriff, John de Chesney, who supported their refusal to appear before the Norwich diocesan synod, on the grounds that they were answerable only to the king. When they brought a charge against a local knight for the murder of one of their community leaders, Eleazer, they were met by the countercharge of the murder of the young William. Stephen first referred the case to the royal council in London and then deferred it, apparendy sine die.44 Further evidence is to be found in the Hebrew chronicle of the first crusade, Sefer Zekhirah, 'The Book of Remembrance', of Ephraim of Bonn, who tells how in England in 4906 (1146 ce), 'the Most High King rescued them (the English Jews) through the instrument of the king of England, putting it into his heart to protect them and save their lives and property. Blessed be He Who aids Israel.' He also gives evidence of relations between the English and Rhenish Jewries in his description of the martyrdom of Simon the Pious of the city of Trier, who 'returned from England where he had spent some time'. While boarding a boat at Cologne for Trier, he was seized by crusaders who murdered him when he refused profanation.45 Despite the silence of the records, political events of the period had a profound impact on English Jewry. It was not long before Stephen's succession was con? tested. Full-scale civil war broke out in 1138. The Great Anarchy, as it has been called, provided fertile ground for the expansion of English Jewry from its London base. It has been argued that Stephen, in contrast to his three predecessors, deliberately pursued a poKcy of decentralization, by a 'shift of executive power from the centre to the provinces'. This was not merely a different style, it was a different form of government. The weakness of his position certainly obliged him to make concessions on all sides - to the Scots and Welsh as well as his own ambitious baronage. The clearest evidence is in the creation of earldoms, of which there were only seven when Henry I died. Stephen made some fifteen new appointments between 1136 and 1141.46 The implication of such a transfer of power from the centre to the shires was reflected in the coinage of the realm. Diminution of control, even within the area where Stephen's authority was accepted, led to wide divergences in the coinage, 13</page><page sequence="14">Joe Hillaby and some provincial mints were even obliged to make their own dies. At least four magnates struck their own coins to their own designs and two bishops and one abbot, of Bury St Edmunds, were given the right to their own moneyers.47 If Stephen lost control of such a cherished and valuable royal asset as the coinage, even within districts under his own jurisdiction, is it surprising that the same process took place in regard to another, formerly jealously guarded, asset - the king's Jews? By the time Matilda's son, Henry II (Plantagenet), came to the throne in 1154, the English Jewry had been transformed. Released from the geographical con? straints imposed by Henry I, Jewish settlements were now established at many of the growing urban centres in the provinces. Curiously, trade seems to have flour? ished during Stephen's reign. The weakening of royal authority encouraged the formation of urban communes and guilds and the great monastic revival, with its remarkable building programme and seemingly insatiable demand for encum? bered estates, was apparently not hampered.48 All this encouraged the extension of credit facilities far beyond London, especially in such great trading centres and ports as Norwich, Lincoln and York, offering opportunites readily seized by members of London's Jewry. The affair of Little St William provides evidence of the foundation of new communities at Norwich and Cambridge by 1144 and a Jewry is mentioned at Winchester in 1148.49 With the 1159 Donum, the first Jewish tax recorded in detail on the Pipe Rolls, we are on firmer ground. Seven other provincial Jewries can be added to the list: Oxford, Lincoln, Northampton, Thetford and Bungay, Gloucester and Worcester (Table 1). At the two latter, however, payments were very small, representing but a few people. The Pipe Rolls came to an end in Stephen's reign and those of the first years of Henry IPs reign are slight and limited in content, but they show that the Oxford Jewry was taxed, de dono, in 1156.50 The conclusion is inescapable, that the others mentioned in 1159 were established prior to Henry IPs accession. Given the close relations between min ters and exchangers of coin, goldsmiths, silversmiths and lenders of money, it is not surprising that they attracted Jewish immigrants. Of the ten provincial centres all but Bungay and Cambridge had mints. Eight of these new communities could look to the king's officer in the county, the sheriff, for protection. Thetford and Bungay, however, represent a different type, one found commonly on the Continent. Here they looked to a baron for protection. Hugh de Bigod's oath, that Henry I on his deathbed had regretted forcing his barons to swear oaths of allegiance to his daughter Matilda, had cleared the way for Archbishop William of Corbeil's coronation of Stephen on 22 December 1135. Four years later he defected to Matilda, who subsequently made him earl of Norfolk. However, his real concern was the maintenance of his own control of the countryside of East Anglia, from his castles of Thetford, Framlingham, Bungay and Walton. He had his own mint at Thetford where, to 14</page><page sequence="15">The London Jewry: William I to John Table i. The Donum of 1159 Community Sheriff Marks % Rank London Norwich Lincoln Cambridge Winchester Thetford Northampton Bungay Oxford Gloucester Worcester London Norfolk &amp; Suffolk Lines Cambs Hants Norfolk &amp; Suffolk Northants Norfolk &amp; Suffolk Oxon Gloucs Worcs 200 72.5 60 50 50 45 22.5 22.5 20 5 2 Total: 549.5 36 13 11 9 9 8 4 4 3.6 1 0.4 (?366 6s 8d) 1 2 3 4= 4= 6 7= 7= 9 10 11 PpR 1159, 3, 12, 17, 24, 28, 35, 46, 53, 65 further emphasize his autonomy, he struck coins of the first type of Stephen with the obverse dies erased by the stamping of a cross over the king's face.51 It was in the shadow of his casdes at Bungay and Thetford that Bigod established his own Jewries which, apart from serving his personal needs, must for a time have creamed off much of the rural trade of Norfolk and Suffolk, at the expense of Norwich's community under royal protection (Table 1). One of Henry IPs early acts was to deprive him of the shrievalties of Norfolk and to take his casdes. Later tallage returns show these Bungay and Thetford Jews dispersed over a number of provincial communities, some at Norwich, but others as far away as Hereford; for with the loss and destruction of Bigod's casdes their security had gone, and they had to seek royal protection once again. Groups of Jews established them? selves at other baronial and ecclesiastical boroughs, as at Casde Rising and Bury St Edmunds.52 With the relaxation of central control during Stephen's reign, Jewish credit facilities came to be available throughout much of the realm, but the nerve-centre of this elaborate new network was London. 'Happy and Respected': the Reign of Henry II, 1154-89 English Jewry flourished during the long reign of Henry II. William of Newburgh, writing of the tribulations of the Jews in 1189-90, referred to their life at this time as 'in an England in which their fathers had been happy and respected'. Elsewhere William refers to Henry II 'favouring [the Jews] more than was right .. . because of the great advantage which he saw was to be had from their usuries'. In fact he was only following the example set by his grandfather, Henry I; but it was Henry II who refined and extended the principles on which the English Jewry 15</page><page sequence="16">Jfoe Hillaby was to develop. These he issued in charter form. No copy has survived, but Richard Fs and John's charters adhered closely to their father's model. Thus John's 1201 charter opens: 'We have granted to all Jews of England and Norm? andy that they may reside freely and honourably in our land ... and that they may have all their liberties and customs as they had them in the time of King Henry, our father's grandfather'; and closes with the phrase, 'as the charter of King Henry our father rightly testifies'.53 This was an era of growth, not only in numbers and wealth, but also in the area of settlement: as far as York in the north and Exeter in the southwest. New settlement, begun under Stephen, continued under Henry II. In 1177 the provin? cial Jewries came of age, for they were granted the right of sepulture. Previously all bodies had to be taken to London for burial at the Jewish cemetery outside the walls, beyond the Cripplegate bastion.54 The Northampton Donum of 1194 lists twenty provincial communities, of which twelve are additional to the eleven in the 1159 Donum. These were, in order of wealth as reflected in their tax burden: Canterbury, Warwick, Colchester, Chich ester, Bristol, Hereford, Nottingham, Hertford, Bedford, Exeter, Wallingford and Coventry. Omitted from the 1194 list was York.55 Originally established from Lincoln, it became a centre which, in the affluence of its magnates, rivalled Norwich and Lincoln; but all this came to an end with the massacre of 1190. Also omitted were Stamford and Lynn which had suffered in the same way as York, Bury St Edmunds whence the remaining members of the Jewry had been expelled by Abbot Sampson in 1190, Thetford and Bungay.56 Prior to 1190 we thus have evidence of twenty-six provincial Jewries of which six no longer existed in 1194. The growth of provincial Jewries during the reigns of Stephen and Henry II was not at the expense of the London community. If anything the reverse, for the city was not only the predominant commercial centre of the kingdom, it had now replaced Winchester as the centre of the royal administration. Given the dependence of the Jewry on the king, a presence fn London with its courts, especially the exchequer court, was of vital importance to the provincial magnates. There they would regularly repair to buy favours of the Crown and its ministers, especially in the prosecution of recalcitrant clients, and for the annual examination of greater debts by Jacob the Presbyter who, during the reigns of Henry II and Richard, was responsible to the king in these matters.57 The partnerships formed in 1176-9 to provide loans to the Crown were dominated by Londoners but, significantly, included Aaron of Lincoln, Jurnet of Norwich and his brother, Benedict.58 These leading provincial magnates had homes and important business interests in the capital. Aaron was involved in property speculation in London, lending money on the security of land to such eminent city figures as Gervase de Cornhill and his son, Henry, and Alan, Gervase and Jocelyn, sons of Peter fitz Alan. No doubt there was also a lively social life in the St Olave's area of the Jewry. The 16</page><page sequence="17">The London Jewry: William I to John mansions of these magnates were close to Colechurch Lane, where they had ease of access to the magnam scolam judeorum which lay behind the house belonging, in the reign of John, to Abraham son of the rabbi. In all probability the synagogue had been founded by his father and then passed down to his brother, Isaac. It was at the northeast end of Colechurch Lane, while the London mansions of Aaron of Lincoln (d. 1185) and Isaac of Norwich (c. 1175-1235), two of the wealthiest provincial Jews of their time, were on the south side of Lothbury, at its western end. Aaron's house was in St Olave's parish while Isaac's, which would have belonged to his father, the great Jurnet who died in 1197, lay close by, in the parish of St Margaret Lothbury. They thus faced the western and eastern corners of Colman Street's junction with Lothbury. Isaac's house, confiscated by John, was given to William de Ferrers, earl of Derby, in 1213. However, such was the importance of a London residence that, early in Henry Ill's reign, Isaac bought another from Roger le Due, financier and mayor, in 1227-30. This was close by, in the same favoured location, but in the parish of St Mary Colechurch.59 Until the reign of Henry II there is virtually no evidence as to how or to what extent the Crown was borrowing from private individuals. With the commence? ment of the great sequence of Pipe Rolls from the second year of that reign, 1156, the curtain is raised and it is possible, as H. G. Richardson has shown, to offer some answer to these questions; but surviving records provide 'but a fraction of the evidence ... most of it is lost'.60 The Pipe Rolls merely recorded payments in and sums due to the royal exchequer. They thus throw light only on royal loans in anticipation of such income. These loan repayments can be detected by the fact that they are prefaced by in soltis (occasionally in perdonis), but an entry for Lincolnshire in n 65 gives the formula in full: 'In payment [In soltis] by writ of the king to Isaac the Jew ?100 which the king owes him'. The formula in soltis thus refers to sums remitted by a sheriff to a named individual on the authority of a royal writ for which he was allowed credit when presenting his accounts.61 Analysis of the Pipe Rolls for the period 1156-80 reveals a number of important changes in royal policy relating to such loans secured on exchequer revenue (Table 2). For the first nine years the market was dominated by Wiliam Cade, the Christian moneylender and entrepreneur of St Omer, and to a lesser extent by the Rouen capitalist, William Trentegerons and his wife, Emma. In his later years Trentegerons held the civic office of vicomte of Rouen, an honour enjoyed after his death in 1159 by his widow, who is always described on the rolls as vicomtesse. Their sons, Hugh and Geoffrey, were prominent figures in Rouen society in the later years of Henry IPs reign. For both parties, very large sums were involved, secured respectively on the farms of the important cross-Channel ports of Dover and Southampton. Between 1156 and his death in 1166 the Pipe Rolls show payments to Cade totalling some ?5600. Between 1156 and 1158 Trentegerons received ?548, and in 1163 the king ordered that ?1423 owing on the viscountess's account be taken off the exchequer rolls. This was transferred 17</page><page sequence="18">Joe Hillaby Table 2. Solte entries, Pipe Rolls 11^6-njg Year 1130 Rabbi Josce ?66 13s 4d Manasser ?58 13s 4d Jacob 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 Cade 333 257 741 483 681 882 609 569 977 81 35 Trente gerons 150 242 146 1423 Isaac 47 06 8 126 13 4 171 100+ 121 13 4 26 16 8 4- 479 00 o3 12 12 3 845 09 8 730 00 o 21 06 8 Aaron of Lincoln 100 00 o 320 00 o 533 06 8 12 00 4 200 00 o ? First syndicate ? Second syndicate - - Third - ? syndicate - Jurnet 33 068 33 068 Illegible 2 Payment to Isaac's brother Abraham 3 From 1168 to the roll of the royal chamber, where apparently the full record of royal debts was held, but of these latter rolls there is now no trace. Two other Christians, Robert fitz Savin and Ralph Waspail, were making large loans to the Crown. They are shadowy figures, to whom payments appear in the case of the former from 1155101171 and of the latter between 1158 and 1163. Here again the term used was solte.62 Such lending by Christians was not to the exclusion of the English Jewry. Attention has already been drawn to the evidence of the 1130 Pipe Roll where solte were made to Rabbi Josce and his colleagues, Manasser and Jacob.63 Twenty seven years later, one year after the re-appearance of the Pipe Rolls, there is 18</page><page sequence="19">The London Jewry: William I to John record of solte of ?47 6s 8d to Rabbi Josce's eldest son, Isaac. The following year there was nothing, but in 1159 ?126 13s 4d was allowed in soltis to the 'Jews of London', by which was probably meant Isaac and his brother, Abraham; for the next solte, in 1162, were ?171 10s to Isaac and ?121 13s 4d, from the sheriff of Essex, to Abraham. In addition there is a reference to ?80 to episcopus judeis. The two apparently lean years, when Isaac received only ?26 16s 8d and ?12 12s 3d, are followed by two fat years, 1165 (?845 9s 8d) and 1166 (?730). After this there are two minor payments in 1168 totalling ?21 6s 8d. But it is noted in the roll for that year that William de Chesncy produced a royal writ for ?479 in favour of Isaac. This must refer to a payment made by Chesney during his shrievalty of Norfolk and Suffolk which terminated in 1163, one of Isaac's lean years. Repay? ment in 1168 thus totalled only ?21 6s 8d (Table 2). Effectively Henry IPs borrowings from Isaac had ceased in 1166. The Lon? doners were not to have it all their own way. An apparent rival had already emerged in the person of Aaron of Lincoln. In 1165 the Pipe Rolls record Aaron's first receipt of money, in soltis, ?100. This rose to ?320 in the following year, and in 1169 it was ?533 6s 8d. How Isaac managed to extricate himself from the dubious privilege of furnishing short-term credit to the king we do not know. Such business can have provided little if any profit and was potentially dangerous. Aaron's intervention in this market was no doubt motivated by the prospect of future royal favours and in 1169 he was joined byjurnet of Norwich. Certainly there was a change in royal policy from 1164 when, fitz Savin excluded, the Jewry had a monopoly in providing such royal loans until 1179, for the payments to Cade in 1165 and 1166 are so small as to suggest final settlement of his account. One undoubted reason was the greater confidence the king could have in dealing with a group over which he exercised such tight control. Addition? ally the establishment of Jewries as far north as York, and ultimately as far south? west as Exeter, provided a highly efficient network for the operation of credit facilities - and no doubt goes a considerable way to explain the difference in attitude between Henry I and Henry II to the extension of the Jewry. Despite keen business rivalries the leaders of the English Jewry, both metropolitan and provincial, were linked by compelling forces, a profound sense of religious and cultural identity as well as by vulnerability in an alien and often hostile society. Furthermore, on Cade's death in 1166 Henry II had sequestrated all his bonds on which he could lay his hands. In total these had a face value of some ?5000 and this must have served as a salutary warning to other Christian moneylenders. The Dialogue of the Exchequer, written ten years later, is quite clear cut on this matter. 'The Crown has no ground of action against a Christian usurer, clerk or layman, so long as he is alive; for he may have time to repent. He is left, rather, to the judgement of an ecclesiastical court, to be sentenced as his condition demands. But when he dies, all he had falls to the king and the Church makes no claim on it; unless, as we have said, he has honestly repented before his death, 19</page><page sequence="20">Joe Hillaby and in making his testament has completely alienated all his property.' The law treatise, called Glanvill, probably written between 1187 and 1189, develops this subject. 'No living person can be appealed or convicted of the crime of usury' (in the royal courts), but when a usurer dies, if he did not desist from the offence nor did penance before his death, 'all his moveables and chattels shall be seized to the use of the lord king' (VII, 16).64 Both statements may represent ex post facto justification. There appear, therefore, to be two quite distinct sources of short-term loans secured on exchequer revenue, for which the English Pipe Rolls can reveal but part of the picture. As Sir Hilary Jenkinson pointed out long ago, the Pipe Roll payments made to Cade are exacdy paralleled by those made to members of the London Jewry.65 More significantly, they are exactly paralleled by those made to Isaac's father in the sole surviving Pipe Roll of Henry I's reign. Unless the 1130 entries represent isolated transactions one must assume that the family had been lending money to the English Crown, if intermittendy, from the later years of Henry I's reign, 1130, to the early years of Henry II, 1157, and that it was Rabbi Josce who blazed the trail that was followed by Cade, Trentegerons, fitz Savin, Waspail and others. With the fall of Rouen castie in 1144 to Matilda's second husband, Count Geoffrey of Anjou, Stephen lost control of Normandy, an action justified by Geoffrey who declared that he ruled on behalf of his son, Henry, who became duke in 1150. Until Henry became king in December 1154 it is unlikely that the resources of the London money market would have been open to him. Thus he will have looked to local financiers. Henri Trentegerons, vicomte of Rouen, pro? vided the young Henry with money to plan the 1149 invasion of England.66 No doubt William Cade of St Omer soon followed the vicomte's example. How the rabbi's family, with its twin bases in London and Rouen, coped with this ten-year political rupture between kingdom and duchy, we do not know. Total silence in the English public records means that we can only speculate. The same problem faced the Anglo-Norman baronage. Possibly, like the Beaumont twins, Robert earl of Leicester and the count of Meulan, who guarded one another's interests in England and Normandy respectively until re-union in 1154, Isaac supervised the family's affairs on this side of the Channel while his younger brother, Abra? ham, took control on the other. Certainly, the early years of Henry IPs reign show Isaac as the unrivalled leader of the London Jewry. By 1162 his brother is associ? ated with him in loans to the Crown.67 For virtually four years, from 1170 to 1174, the Pipe Rolls show Henry II managing of his own. ?12 os 4d was paid to Aaron of Lincoln in 1170, and four years later Jurnet of Norwich, who had joined the circle in 1169, received another 50 marks (?33 6s 8d). The ?200 that went to Aaron the next year signals the end of the old system.68 Perhaps Aaron and Jurnet now fully recognized the wisdom 20</page><page sequence="21">The London Jewry: William I to John of Isaac's withdrawal from the market in 1166. Nevertheless, Henry II was now dependent on the English Jewry for such short-term financial support, and the Jewry was in no position to decline. The solution was to spread the burden by the formation of syndicates.69 In this, possibly under royal pressure, Isaac took the lead. In 1175 he had agreed with Jurnet of Norwich to pay the Crown the small sum of 4 gold marks for the right to form such a syndicate (societatem). Two of the marks were paid, but the proposal came to nought. The following year Isaac tried again, this time with his brother, Abraham, and Aaron of Lincoln. At Michaelmas they recouped ?600 from the exchequer, but the syndicate came to an end that year. The reasons are not evident - possibly rivalry among the magnates or a shyness on the part of Isaac and Aaron to continue any longer than necessary in a business which carried no direct profit but considerable risk. In 1177 it was replaced by another syndicate, of the Norwich brothers Jurnet and Benedict, and two Londoners, Moses le Brun and Josce Quatrebouches. (Le Brun, Josce Quatrebouches and members of their families will be found in Tables 3, 4 and 5.) This arrangement ended up in virtual disaster for the principals. Royal pardon, for an offence not indicated, had to be purchased at a cost of ?4000 (6000 marks), a liability which was evidently distrib? uted proportionate to the holdings in the partnership: le Brun had to find ?2000, Jurnet ?1333 6s 8d, Benedict ?500 and Quatrebouches ?166 13s 4d. The final syndicate, of 1177-9, was made up of secondary figures drawn from the London community. At the head was Benedict, son of Sarah, who had already had some dealings with the Crown in this area, for he had received ?46 is iod in soltis from the sheriff of Buckingham and Bedfordshire in 1169. The others were Josce (probably Josce son of Isaac, whose interests he would have been representing, and who succeeded Jacob as archpresbyter in 1207), Deudonne l'Eveske and Vives (PEveske?). Later Benedict's brother, Moses, was substituted for Josce. This group was able to avoid the royal ire and received almost ?2000 in soltis over three years. The last payment, a mere ?160, in 1179, represents the end of the era of short-term loans by the Jewry to the Crown. Tallages and Fines Richardson has suggested that after this date 'when the king needed money he took it as tax'. He had, however, an additional fruitful source of revenue from his Jewry - fines. Neither tallages nor fines were innovations. Both are found in the first Pipe Rolls. In 1130 the London community had been fined ?2000 'for the sick man whom they killed';70 and in 1159 Henry II had levied a tax called a Donum or gift. This only raised ?366 from the whole English Jewry (Table 1) but we cannot be certain that other such 'gifts' were not imposed either before 1159 or in the subsequent twenty years. Given the nature of extant records, it is not 21</page><page sequence="22">Joe Hillaby safe to presume too much from their silence, for knowledge of even the heavy tallages of the last years of the reign comes only indirecdy from later references, in the rolls of Richard I and John. Henry II was much exercised by matters of taxation. He levied the last Danegeld in 1162. The 'aids' (auxillia) which Henry I had claimed of the royal boroughs became 'gifts' (dona) under his grandson. The term 'tallage' was first applied in the exchequer records of 1173, but before long all 'aids' or 'gifts' were so described. Such tallage, which was demanded of both royal boroughs and royal demesne manors, was neither fixed, regular nor slight in amount. It could not be refused but was subject to a degree of negotiation. It was either 'assessed on the individual citizens at so much a head or the citizens offer a sum worthy of a prince'. In the case of the Jewry there seems to have been a considerable degree of negotiation and adjustment between the magnates, but in at least one case there was an appeal to the king, by Jurnet of Norwich whose assessment was reduced from ?6000 (9000 marks) to ?1333 6s 8d (2000 marks).71 Fines, on the other hand, were often heavy and arbitrary for they were usually imposed on suspicion of malfeasance. In consequence, if fully pursued, they could have a rapid and disastrous impact on an individual's or family's fortunes. Strangely, to our way of thinking, many of the heaviest tallages and fines remained unpaid. Only with the accession of John did this state of affairs change, and then drastically. The first tallage of which we have report was levied at Guildford in 1186 (references are preceded by 'G' in the text). There is no formal record of the total, but according to Gervase of Canterbury it was ?6o,ooo.72 This may be more than the 'symbol for a very large sum' which Richardson suggests. Such few details as we have of the original levy suggest that it might not have been so far from that mark. If Jurnet's original assessment was 9000 marks and that of le Brun 10,000 marks,73 then that of Isaac son of the rabbi could hardly have been less. These three magnates alone would thus have provided a third of Gervase's suggested total. However, details of arrears which appeared in the Pipe Rolls of 1191-7 show that such assessments were totally unrealistic. For example, Isaac's brother, Abraham, and le Brun each had ?1000 outstanding on that account a decade later (Table 3). The imposition of two further levies within the next thirty months may in part explain such arrears. There was a 25 per cent tax on the personal property of the London community and a further 10,000 mark tallage on the whole English Jewry. The latter bore heavily on the Londoners. Le Brun still owed some ?300 and Abraham son of Abigail ?250 in 1199.74 These arrears were recorded on the Pipe Rolls annually from 1191 to 1197, but were transferred to a special roll in the custody of Benedict of Talmont in 1198. The only Jewish justice of the Jews, Talmont, was probably a native of the small town of that name on the north bank of the Garonne, not far from Saintes. No copy of Benedict's roll is extant, but a detailed list derived from it was tran 22</page><page sequence="23">The London Jewry: William I to John Table 3. Guildford Tallage of Christmas, 1186 Arrears of the London Community, 1191?j Contributor 1 Abraham son of the rabbi 2 le Brun1 3 Isaac son of the rabbi 4 Abraham son of Abigail3 5 Sampson brother of le Brun 6 Deulesault Episcopus 7 Abigail4 8 Samuel son of Abraham 9 Floria wife of Episcopus 10 Leo le Blund 11 Deintosa wife of Quatrebouches 12 Levi of Devizes 13 Moses of Spain 14 Potelinus and Hakelinus, sons of Benedict the Soldier 15 Josce son of Clarice 16 Leo le Blund for his son Firmin 17 Coket 18 Jacob of Winchester of London 19 Deulebene de Juvigny 20 Cok de domo Abraham 21 Josce de domo Sampson 22 Moses de domo Sampson 23 Jacob of Paris 24 Isaac Medicus 25 Isaac de Juvigny 26 Biket de domo Isaac 27 Leo de Pontoise 28 Benedict son-in-law of Master Moses 29 Deudonne the Crooklegged 30 Josce son of Medicus 31 Hanna de domo Abraham son of Episcopus 32 Calamod 33 Jurnet son of Episcopus 34 Josce Mauritii 35 Deusaie daughter of Rana 36 Josce son of David 37 Hospetard' 38 Sarah wife of Solomon d'Etampes 39 Clarice 40 Hannah Curi 1000 19 1000 o 526 o 326 13 117 2 83 62 60 21 20 20 2 2 1 6 3 o o o o 6 3 o 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 8 5 5 5 5 4 o o)2 4 o 8 4 o o o o 8 4 o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o 3254 12 PpR 1191,139-140; 1192,305; 1193,162-3; 1194,180-1; 1195,116; 1196, 293-4; 1197, 162-3 Assessed at 10,000 marks; also ?250 arrears of the tallage of 10,000 marks 2Arrears taken from Memoranda Roll, I John 70 34- ?297 is 2d arrears of the tallage of 10,000 marks of c. 1188 4Assessed at 200 marks. Arrears to be paid at ?20 per annum 23</page><page sequence="24">Joe Hillaby scribed on the Memoranda Roll of the first year of John's reign. The sums outstanding range from ?1000, on the part of Abraham son of the rabbi and of le Brun, to a mere 5s due from Hospetard, Sarah, Clarice and Hannah Curi. In all 39 London Jews are named, yet throughout the period 1191-9 not one penny was paid off by any except Benedict son of Josce Quatrebouches.75 The original assessments for the Guildford tallage are known only in a few cases. Evidence elsewhere on the Pipe Rolls suggests that le Brun was assessed at 10,000 marks and Abigail at a mere 200 marks. Nevertheless, the list of arrears does provide important information about the London Jewry prior to the 1189 massacre. It may not name all members assessed, for it is probable that some, especially those at the lower end of the scale, may have met their obligations in full. It does, however, indicate the hierarchy of wealth and the enormous gulf that divided the community. At the top were households as large and wealthy as those of many of the baronage. Evidence of such Jewish magnate households is made explicit by the description of four members of the community as de domo, of the household of, followed by the suggestive names Isaac, Abraham and Sampson, probably the brother of le Brun (Table 3, Nos 21, 22, 26, 31). This is a feature unique to this list. Additionally the list reveals a significant if impoverished group of exiles: Deule bene (G19) and Isaac (G25) of Juvigny, Jacob of Paris (G23), Leo of Pontoise (G27) and Sarah, wife of Solomon of Etampes (G38). On 24 June 1182 King Philip Augustus of France had expelled all Jews from the royal domain. Juvigny, Pontoise and Etampes were all within that domain, with prosperous Jewries. Pon? toise had been the scene of a ritual-murder accusation in 1163 and the body of Richard of Pontoise had been translated to the church of Holy Innocents in Paris. After the exile the synagogue of Etampes was converted into a church.76 Know? ledge of these events and the presence of a body of exiles may well have had an impact on relations between the Jewry and more impoverished elements within the city. The name of not one exile is found among the Londoners listed in the Northampton Donum (identified as 'N' in the text). During Richard I's reign four tallages were levied on the Jewry. There were two early tallages of 1000 marks; another, of 3000 marks, for 'the redemption of the king', that is towards the ransom demanded by the emperor Henry VI; finally 5000 marks was 'promised' to Richard at Northampton, 8-11 April 1194, after his release and brief return to England.77 Rather anachronistically, this promissum has come to be called the Northampton Donum. It throws welcome light on the English Jewry in the last decade of the 12th century. Here, for the first time, we have precise details, by communities, of individual contributions.78 Only the first of two payments due, those for the Easter term, are recorded and it is known that, in the case of Jurnet of Norwich, payment was not equivalent to half of his assessment. Nevertheless, the total for the one term amounts to about half of the 5000 marks demanded. The Easter 24</page><page sequence="25">The London Jewry: William I to John Table 4. Northampton Donum, Easter Term 1194 Contributions of the London Community Contributor 1 Deulesault (Episcopus)1 2 Josce son of Isaac 3 Benedict Parvus 4 Abigail 5 Benedict Quatrebouches 6 Abraham son of Abigail 7 Abraham son of le Brun 8 Muriel 9 le Brun 10 Leo son of M-gar-te 11 Sampson son of Abraham 12 Moses Levi 13 Josce son of Deulesault 14 Sampson (chattels) 15 Slema 16 Solomon son of the Magister 17 Abraham Levi 18 Murien' daughter of Isaac of London 19 Leo le Blund 20 Vives le Vesque 21 Peter son of Isaac 22 Moses of Kent 23 Isaac son-in-law of Abigail 24 Abraham le Veske 25 Samuel son of Abraham 26 Abraham Quatrebouches 27 Elias son of the Magister 28 Sarah 29 Isaac Quatrebouches 30 Elias son of Magarede 31 Benedict son of Vives 32 Josce son of the Magister 33 Vives son of Margaret 97 53 5i 40 35 33 21 21 17 16 10 9 10 o o 7 o 13 11 3 10 18 13 o 6 o 14 8 6 o 15 5 14 13 9 12 10 10 9 3 1 o 18 16 14 469 16 1 PRO Ei01/249/2 1 + ?20 for 3000m tallage 25</page><page sequence="26">Joe Hillaby returns can therefore serve as a useful indicator of the comparative wealth of communities and individuals. Taken in combination with the lists of arrears of the Guildford railage on the Pipe Rolls of 1191-7, it is of great assistance in establishing the impact of the massacre which took place at London on the occa? sion of Richard Ps coronation. The Attack on the London Jewry, 3-4 September 1189 The deep hostility shown to the English Jewry in the last decade of the century had both religious and economic roots, and these were interrelated. The halcyon days of the English Jewry came to an end with Henry IPs death in 1189, but already disaster in Palestine, the destruction of the French army at Hattin in July 1187 and the surrender of Jerusalem in October, show that such days were coming to an end. After his conquest of the holy city, Saladin allowed the Jewish commun? ity to return and even permitted Christian priests to hold services at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In contrast, in 1099 after its capture by the crusaders, all Muslim inhabitants had been massacred: ?No one has ever seen or heard of such a slaughter of pagans'. When the Jews fled to the chief synagogue this was burned over their heads; but the great library was sold to the Ascalon community.79 After Jerusalem's loss in n 87 even the circumspect Henry II was obliged to take the cross the following January. Those preaching the crusade necessarily laid great stress on the passion and the crucifixion, for above all was the symbol of the cross. Those taking up the cross needed money, which had to be raised by sale, lease or mortgage of property or rights. The encyclical Quantum praedecessores of 1146 enacted that lands could be pledged only to churches or churchmen, placed a moratorium on crusaders' debts and exempted them from interest payments. This had little impact on the Jews. Ironically, it was the Church, especially the monasteries, which provided a ready market for the lands taken as security for such loans.80 The combination of crusading zeal with the growing indebtedness of members of the knightly class created a highly dangerous climate of opinion, for the Jewry was seen as the agency through which land, that most important of medieval commodities, was irretrievably lost. These were not the only factors at work. In 1144 members of the Norwich Jewry were accused of the murder of a twelve-year-old boy, William, but there is no evidence that they suffered in any way. Indeed, their community flourished under Henry IPs firm rule. It was twenty-four years before a second ritual-murder charge was levied, at Gloucester in 1168. Again there is no evidence that the Gloucester Jewry was adversely affected by the events surrounding the discovery of the body of the young Harold on the banks of the Severn.81 As at Norwich, the community grew in numbers and prosperity. However, these events established a pattern quickly taken up across the Chan? nel. The Gloucester accusation was followed by a rapid succession of similar 26</page><page sequence="27">The London Jewry: William I to John charges in France and led to the expulsion of the Jews from the royal domain. In England the accusation was revived at Bury St Edmunds in 1181 and Jocelin of Brakelond, following the model established at Norfolk and Gloucester, wrote a Life publicizing his monastery's young 'martyr'.82 Such Lives fuelled the growing antagonism towards the small groups of Jews living in the provincial towns, for the hagiographers were the propagandists of their age. Passages were read to the assembled pilgrims on the saints' days and many found permanent expression in stained glass or sculpture. The attack on the York Jewry in March 1190 was spearheaded by those with an interest in the destruction of bonds,83 but at London in September n 89, different forces were at work. The removal of firm and long-established authority at the death of Henry II, feverish excitement among the crowds who had come to the capital to witness the coronation of their crusader king, now combined with developing popular antipathy, fanned by the stories of the boy martyrs and the opportunities for easy plunder. The chroniclers identify three distinct groups: outsiders, retainers of the nobles and the London mob. There is no mention of crusaders. On his arrival in England, Richard had proclaimed an amnesty for all prisoners who, William of Newburgh tells us, were now 'free to go forth to rob and plunder more boldly than ever'. Mingling with the retainers of the nobility who had come to the coronation, they no doubt provided a hard core around which the London mob could draw. The occasion is commented on by a number of monastic chroniclers, but for the most part we have to rely on the account of William of Newburgh who was particularly well informed. A detailed description of the coronation ceremony and banquet is to be found in Roger of Howden's Chronicle and in the Gesta Regis Ricardi Primi. Further information on what he calls 'the raid' on the Jews can be gleaned from Matthew Paris's Historia Anglorum, but Richard of Devizes' short diatribe concerning the massacre merely illustrates monkish antipathy at its most virulent. The chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, written at the beginning of the 14th century, recycled Newburgh's material. Ephraim of Bonn commented from a distance but gave a circumstantial account.84 Faced by a young king anxious to quit the realm for the crusade and in full knowledge of recent events in France as well as the dire fate of the Rouen, Rhenish and Jerusalem communities at the hands of the first crusaders, the leaders of the English Jewry righdy believed that they had to act prompdy. They came together from all parts of England for the coronation, wishing that Richard's 'first acts should be honoured by them in the most becoming manner, thinking that undiminished favour would be secured by ample gifts'. However, it was 'because of the magic arts which they [both] notoriously exercise at coronations' that, as Matthew Paris avers, Jews and women were forbidden entry to the abbey during the coronation. Certainly women had been excluded since the 10th century at least, and Geoffrey of Monmouth believed that the tradition went back to the earliest days of the British monarchy and even to the Trojans!85 27</page><page sequence="28">Joe Hillaby It is difficult to imagine any starker contrast than that between the coronation ceremony within the abbey and the events which took place outside almost imme? diately afterwards. The procession entered the abbey led by Godfrey de Lucy carrying the cap, John Marshal the royal spurs, William Marshal the sceptre with the cross and the earl of Salisbury with the dove. The earls of Huntingdon and Leicester and the count of Mortain carrying the three swords were followed by six barons and six earls with the royal vestments in a coffer, and William de Mandeville, earl of Essex, carrying the crown. Richard took up the rear, walking under a canopy carried by four barons with the bishops of Durham and Bath on his right and left. At a solemn mass where Archbishop Baldwin was assisted by the archbishops of Rouen, Trier and Dublin and the archbishop elect of York - with sixteen other bishops and the abbots of twelve great monasteries, including Hugh Foucault, abbot of St Denis - Richard swore to exercise true justice and equity to the people committed to his charge and to abrogate bad law and unjust customs. Then Archbishop Baldwin, supported by two earls in consequence of the crown's great weight, placed it on Richard's head. The king, glorious in his diadem, went in procession with the churchmen, earls, lords and others to the feast in William Rufus's great hall, a banquet for which 1770 pitchers, 900 cups and 5050 dishes had been specially purchased.86 Shordy after, the riot began. Outside the palace some Jews, mingling with the crowd, found themselves carried by the press within the forbidden doors. 'At this a certain Christian, endeavouring to drive a Jew away, aroused the mob who attacked the Jews first with their fists and then with sticks and stones.' In their flight 'many were beaten so that they died, and others, trampled underfoot, per? ished'. Both Londoners and provincials fled to homes in the Jewry where they were assailed by the mob from 3 o'clock to sunset. As the houses withstood attack the roofs were set on fire and the conflagration spread to adjacent Christian homes. For this two of the rioters were hanged, as royal and civic officials were primarily concerned to track down the fire-raisers, not altogethe