The Records of Exchequer Receipts from theEnglish Jewry

<plain_text><page sequence="1">THE RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. By HILARY JENKINSON, F.S.A. {Paper read before the Jewish Historical Society of England on February 12, 1912.) I. Introduction. The study of the medieval history of the Jews in England is a pleasantly compact one. It is very definitely bounded at the one end by the arrival of their folk in this country, at the other by their expulsion; and the way in which they were treated by the English kings and people makes the period one of peculiar isolation even in their history. Never was there a body of people whose activities were more exactly circumscribed: never (it follows) was there a subject of historical research the directions of which could be more satisfactorily and easily defined. In the present case we are limited, in the matter of sources, to an examination of Records.1 Records during the time which concerns us fall into two periods. The first contains mainly the Pipe TwQ periods of Rolls or Great Rolls of the Exchequer (which start with English and Henry I) and Plea Rolls (which start with Richard I). Medieval1811 The Records of this period, so far as they affect Jewry, Records before have been already very fully considered, particularly by 129?* Dr. Jacobs in his Jews of Angevin England. The second period, in which English Records come to something like maturity, begins with the beginning of the three great series of Chancery Enrolments in the reign 1 It may be well, perhaps, to define here the meaning which I attach to this word. I understand by it documents drawn up during an official process of which they form a part, and preserved in official custody for official reference. They may take three forms?that of contemporary files of originals, that of con? temporary registers of originals, and that of contemporary notes of proceedings. The register is, of course, a string of copies in the forms of a file, a roll, or a book, indifferently. 19</page><page sequence="2">20 RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. of John : this period, in spite of the labours of such scholars as Madox, Prynne (in his well-known Short Demurrer and Second Demurrer), the late Dr. C. Gross (whose work I have to examine below), Mr. Hyamson, Mr. Rigg, and Sir L. Abrahams?this period remains still to a con? siderable extent unworked. Mr. Rigg, it is true, has dealt and is dealing in full detail with what is by far the most interesting body of Anglo-Jewish Records ?the Jewish Plea Rolls. But what is the institution about which the oHine* Jew^not work of Mr. Rigg and of all the writers I have mentioned yet fully dealt revolves ? and what the common fact which emerges from all their researches ? The institution called the Exchequer of the Jews, and the fact that this people flourished in England because and so long as they were the financial agents?unwilling and un? recognised, but still de facto agents?of the Crown. Under these cir? cumstances it is remarkable that the records?dull, no doubt, and repeti? tive sometimes, but plentiful and detailed?of the financial connection of the Jews and the Crown have not been comprehensively worked, or even surveyed.1 I propose here to examine briefly the English Exchequer system of the time, with the records in which it is embodied, and then see how at each point Jewry touches and modifies it. IL The English Exchequee System and Records. It becomes necessary at this point to name briefly a few of the chief characteristics of English Exchequer records in medieval times. The cardinal point of Exchequer practice from the earliest times of which we have empiric knowledge is the annual audit; and of Exchequer (l) The Audit Records, the minutes of that audit found in the Pipe or and Pipe Roll. Great Roll of the Exchequer. Upon the audit system and its record, the Pipe Roll, truly hinge all the rest; and the earliest extant of these rolls (incidentally the earliest extant English record) tells us that this system was in definite working order in 31 Henry I. The system is that of the Scaccarium (from which the word Exchequer is derived), the 1 Dr. Gross, in his article printed in the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition Papers, used a large number of such records, but he did not aim at a com? plete survey of them, nor at a critical examination of the rather mysterious Scaccarium Judeorum.</page><page sequence="3">RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. 21 squared table-eloth or abacus, the chess-board on which was played every Michaelmas, between the accounting officer on the one hand and the members of the King's Court sitting as a financial body on the other, the game of the Audit. The pieces in that game?the pieces which move from square to square?are coins or counters or writs for issue of moneys spent, or receipts for moneys taken; the end of the game is the pre? ponderance of receipts over issues, when we may say the accounting officer loses; or of issues over receipts, when he wins; or, alternatively, the end comes with an exact balancing of both, and the game (ideal result) is drawn. Whatever the result, there is an appropriate phrase embodying it to be added to such details of the account as are recorded, during the progress of its auditing, on the Pipe Roll. Now we may suggest that the complicated business of the Audit, in its various stages, will hardly be got through without a considerable amount of note-taking, of production of evidence and , %M. ,, - . _ . (2) Memoranda, precedents, and even, we may add, of disputes and the settlement of disputes, whether between accountant and accountant, subject and subject, or between the subject or accountant and the Crown. As, a result we find, very early, regular series of Rolls (and still earlier traces of less regular ones x) upon which such matters are, with increasing formalism, noted for reference?the King's Remembrancer's and Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer's Memoranda Rolls. So much for the Audit and the Scaccarium. Before leaving it we 1 Good examples of these (of the time of John) are L. T. R. Miscellaneous Rolls 1/3 and 1/4, to which we shall have to refer again below. The early history of this class of record and the differentiation between the Memoranda of the King's and the Lord Treasurer's Remembrancers is, again, a matter which awaits definitive treatment. We may remark, however, that the Rolls above referred to, though they bear strong marks of affinity with the later regular Memoranda Rolls, are largely arranged under counties, and are obviously an adjunct of the Pipe Roll. During the process of clearing the accounts of a particular county and sheriff, notes have to be made of certain facts to which reference will be required later ; and this is a roll of those notes. The form of the earliest Receipt Roll seems likewise to be conditioned by the requirements of a Pipe Roll which has already taken definite shape {see the remarks on this roll below, p. 27). That fact does not weaken the claim made below that the Recepta is older than the Scaccarium, and the tally the earliest English Record strictly so called; it merely suggests that the Pipe Roll may be the earliest example in England of the " Proceedings " form of Record.</page><page sequence="4">22 RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. may, again referring to its complicated nature, look with some certainty for traces of its preliminaries and auxiliaries. Audit implies the pro? duction of original vouchers?details and particulars prepared and put (3) The pre- 111 by the accounting officer, and no more than sum liminaries of marised in that statement of his account which appears audit?original i -n n T ? r &lt;? i ii accounts and upon the Pipe Roll. In point of fact we have already vouchers. seen something of these originals in the writs (for issues) and the receipts which served as counters in the game : but to those must now be added the more important full, detailed, and particular accounts, lists, and vouchers, put in by the responsible officers at audit time, and forming the basis of the present Record Office class of Exchequer Accounts, fyc. We ultimately1 find the Audit divided into two stages, the pre? liminary and the final, presided over respectively by the departments of the King's Remembrancer and the Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer; the first of which has left us the mass (above referred to) of original accounts submitted to it by sheriffs and other officers, and by it submitted in a shortened form to the final Court of Audit. But there is something which comes before the single, annual Audit, before even the preliminaries of such audit?the receipt and (4) Receipt and issue ?^ ^ne moneys involved : and accordingly we find Issue?Receipt in existence from the earliest time of which we have Rolls ^nd narrative record 2 another Exchequer, the Lower as con original writs trasted with the Upper, the Exchequer of Receipt as and tallies. contrasted with the Exchequer of Audit, the Eecepta as contrasted with the Scaccarium, Whether this Lower Exchequer repre? sents the Saxon treasury upon which is superimposed the Exchequer proper, the Norman Scaccarium system, is a question we need not here discuss:3 sufficient that we have now added to the two departments, as 1 The precise period at which this differentiation of functions was made has not yet been settled. 2 i.e. the date of the Dialogus de Scaccario?the middle of the twelfth century. 8 Dr. R. L. Poole in his Exchequer in the Twelfth Century, published after I had read this paper, collects together (pp. 46 et seq.) a number of evidences that the scaccarium system was introduced into the English treasury during the first half of the twelfth century ; this, without prejudice to the possible previous existence of some kind of annual audit. The statement of the author of the Dialogus " quod hodie dicitur ad scaccarium olim dicebatur ad taleas "</page><page sequence="5">RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. 23 they ultimately became, of the Upper Exchequer, a separate Lower Exchequer; that preceding the records of the two stages of the audit, we have those of issues and receipts. Each of these records of the Mecepta is double. From the earliest1 times this department, or its predecessors, must have preserved and filed on the one hand the original Writs of Liberate?the King's orders to issue money to certain persons; the cheques, we might say, which it had honoured?and on the other the original receipts, or at any rate copies of them, in the shape of foils or counterfoils of tallies. Soon it pro? ceeded to keep also a register of these proceedings in the shape of Liberate and Receipt Rolls. I might here point out that the Receipt and Liberate 2 (or Issue) Rolls, in their final form, are not only simpler than the Records of the Audit?they are also completer. The Pipe Roll is not a complete balance sheet, nor does it contain the materials for one : certain of the Crown's financial officers long escaped the audit,3 notably the chief spending officials. On the early Pipe Roll, in fact, appear a good many receipts and a few issues; but not all of either. Now the Receipt and Issue Rolls ought to register without (Oxford edition, p. 60), seems to me to fit in with Dr. Poole's conclusions in both respects. The writer is referring to an occasion (as we speak of "The Assizes"), and says in effect that its existence dates from a period before the squared cloth system, which distinguished it in his own time, came into use. 1 It has been said that Domesday (itself not a record in any strict sense of the word) is the first writing to suggest the intentional keeping of records in England ; being in fact compiled from writs returned : and no doubt the writs for issues were early preserved at the Recepta. But whatever may be the com? parative age of the writ-filing practice at the Chancery and the Receipt respectively, there seems no doubt that the tally takes us one step further towards systematic record-keeping. Its very form implies that its issuer makes, at the time of issuing, a copy for preservation, as well as a possibly returnable original: and as soon, therefore, as the Crown takes to systematic tally-making it takes, inevitably, to record-making. 2 The department began by copying in full all writs of Liberate received : later it gradually substituted for this a roll consisting of a series of abstracts of them, arranged, in its final form, under day-dates like the Receipt Roll. 3 The Pipe Roll represents primarily only one class of accounts?that of the county farms (a cash commutation for earlier payments in kind) rendered by the sheriffs. The affairs of the Receipt itself largely escaped any save internal audit (Poole, op. cit., p. 190).</page><page sequence="6">24 RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. exception every payment into and out of the Treasury: if they do not do so it should be because another department or individual has usurped the Treasury's functions. The Receipt has only three chief officers,1 the Treasurer and the two Chamberlains or their deputies. To conclude this summary statement of the methods and records of English royal finances in early times we should summarise their sources, (5) Sources of the receipts from all of which nominally appear in the Revenue. Records of the Recepta. For our present purpose, how? ever, it is perhaps sufficient to say that they may be divided roughly into the casual, or incidental, and the feudal: the former consisting of the fines (in the most general sense of that word) exacted on all the numerous occasions, legal and other, of contributions to the royal Treasury; and the latter of the recognised feudal aids?wardship, marriage, escheat, and so forth. III. Jewry and the Exchequer System and Records. Grafted on to this financial system?its every detail a result, its every practice an epitome of feudal habits of thought and action? grafted on to this we have the Jew of medieval England; a man, as I said, compelled to occupy the position solely of an instrument of the King's finance, yet utterly removed from every conception of feudalism alike by his own ideals and by the treatment he received from Christians.2 We have, in fact, a point of contact which is also a point of severance between the Jew in England and English finance. I propose to point out the resulting modifications. Let us trace backwards the appearance of the Jews at the various points of normal interest in English Exchequer practice which we have already noted. And first as to the financial relations of the Jew with the Crown as 1 We shall have occasion to mention these below when we come upon a trace of their influence upon the outward form of the Records of the Receipt. For other officers see the Bialogus and the introduction to the Oxford edition of that work. 2 See Mr. Rigg's introduction to the volume of Jewish Pleas, published jointly by this Society and the Seiden Society, and Sir L. Abraham's Expulsion of the Jews. Madox sums up the Jewish situation by saying that " as they fleeced the subjects of the Realm, so the King fleeced them."</page><page sequence="7">RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. 25 we find them at the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century. They may be set in two divisions ^ Jew ag for our purpose (purely feudal payments we shall not, of a source of course, expect to find at all). Revenue. (1) The Crown has the absolute right to talliage its Jews?the King's Jews: that is to say, being in need of money, the King decrees that the Jews as a whole shall provide him with some definite sum?say 5000 marks. (2) All that the Jew has belongs to the King, who may, more or less arbitrarily, resume it at any time. Thus while the King, not exercising this right, may receive from the Jews sums of money upon occasions not essentially different from those on which he mulcts his other subjects, he may at any moment treat their possessions as his own; on the one hand they pay him amercements after process of law, pay him fines for licences of all kinds (such as licence to move from one place to another, licence to marry at will, and so forth); on the other hand, he seizes all their property at death, or if the talliage is not paid in full, opens the public " Jews' chests" and possesses himself of the bonds of their debtors, from whom he exacts either whole or part pay? ment. The King is thus constantly appearing as the creditor for debts incurred by way of loan from the Jews; and records of royal dealings with the Jews may conceivably contain the names of none but Christians. Now we come to our main subject?the connection of the Jews with the Records of the Exchequer of Receipt, and with the purely financial Records generally. I would note here as a preliminary that the Jews? very naturally when we consider their circumstances?are the first to introduce us to the characteristic English method of what I may call departmental enlargement, the modifications in Records which occur when violently or unnaturally a new element is added to the sphere of administration. Administration may meet this either (1) by creating a new department, as was done, e.g., when Henry VIII created a Court of First Fruits and Tenths after his ecclesiastical rearrangements; (2) by collecting together the new or unnatural items into a supplementary class or record instead of allowing them to be scattered over (and unduly enlarge) the old one: this second method may be seen at work in the supplementary Patent Rolls, where a large number of, e.g., French or Scots</page><page sequence="8">26 RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. items are entered on a separate roll instead of being scattered over the normal one; or, again, in the separation of the bulky class of foreign accounts (accounts of officers other than the sheriffs) from the original Pipe Boll. The Jewish Plea Bolls perhaps furnish the first example of the first of these devices : the Jewish Receipt Rolls present, as we shall see, every appearance of being the earliest instance of the second. With the Records of Issue?the original writs and the Issue or Liberate Rolls which register or copy them?we need not trouble our? selves. The Jew had very little to do with the spending the Records of s^e ?^ tne royal finances, though we should not omit to the Exchequer mention here that there is some evidence (in the shape of of Receipt. occasional notes upon the dorse of rolls) of receipts from them being assigned sometimes to definite purposes. We may conveni? ently note here that in the beginning the membranes containing the records of the Lower Exchequer or Receipt are fastened together Exchequer fashion, like the Pipe Roll, that is to say, they are sewn together at the head, not end to end; and that the department generally sewed up the membranes of the Issue with those of the Receipt Roll; and some separate Jewish rolls, which we shall treat shortly, with both. So too the Records of money received, divided like those of Issue into two classes of originals and enrolments, the original Receipts or wooden tallies and the register of these, the Receipt Roll. Misguided zeal for Tallies reform destroyed practically all the old tallies in exist? ence in 1834. A few hundreds have recently come to light,1 and among them about 220 Jewish ones, whole or fragmentary. Nearly all of these relate to a single period and taxation, and their number is of course insignificant, though their individual interest is considerable. Various specimens are shown in Plate I below. It is sufficient here to put on record their existence, together with a note that the tally is a slip of wood, smoothed so as to be square in section, upon two sides of which is written in duplicate an inscription setting forth the name of the payer and the reason of his payment, while the amount is cut on the other two sides in notches of a certain width; the whole being then split through the notches so as to form two parts, each containing the same information in notches and writing. It will be convenient to 1 I have printed a note upon these in Archceologia, vol. lxii. p. 367.</page><page sequence="9">RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. 27 add here the form of the inscription which is copied exactly on to the Receipt Roll, the sum being there added in writing: De Aaror? de Eboraco de talltagio iv. milium marcarum [.?2039. 10s. 2d]. This form appears in the earliest Receipt Roll, and never alters (down to 1826). At the time which concerns us there is as a rule no evidence of date upon the tally.1 I would only note further that the special circum? stances of the Jew modifies even the tally. In a number of cases it appears with Hebrew added to the ordinary script. We have already noted that the tally system is very probably older than the Scaccarium system, and its amplification, the Receipt Roll, if its existence as far back as the reign of Henry I ? . x _ ? ? Receipt Rolls. cannot be proved, at least dates from that of Henry II, the first example being an isolated and incomplete one of 1185.2 The form of this roll (which has been published in facsimile by the London School of Economics) is instructive. Its writing is distinguished, as an almost current one, from the careful hand of the Pipe Roll; in other respects it resembles the Pipe Roll, its items being classified topogra? phically 3 with no indication of the date of each receipt, an arrangement which continues for some time. For us it is particularly interesting to note that, in spite of this county classification, eight Jewish items 1 For the form and appearance of the tally, see Plates I. to III. 2 Exch., L.T.R., Misc. Rolls, 11. 3 I may perhaps mention here again, in anticipation of some remarks at the end of this paper, my theory that the Receipt Roll?not the keeping of Records of Receipt; that was done by the preservation of the tally foils?that the Receipt Roll, like the Memoranda, is in origin purely a matter of Pipe Roll convenience ; a collection together of particulars, made either by the officials of Receipt or by the Pipe Roll clerks themselves, which it would be tedious to set out at length in the more formal Record. Several indications go to confirm this view. One is that (as we notice above) the earliest Receipt closely follows the Pipe Roll in its arrangement and in some details of its form; note also that this solitary roll was found among the Records of the Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer, i.e. in the Pipe Roll department. Another is the number of occasions upon which we get in the Pipe Roll references to a roll of details of receipt, not set forth in the Pipe Roll, kept by one of the officials of the Exchequer. Dr. Round has commented upon one of these recently (in a note in the ^English Historical Review of July 1913); and there are others to be found. The way in which, as the officials of the Receipt recognise its usefulness for their own purposes, this Record grows away from Audit to Receipt characteristics is referred to again below in my notes on Plates IV to VIII.</page><page sequence="10">28 RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. involving fines and amercements, and belonging to different parts of the country, are brought together under the heading Judjeorum. By the time that we come to the next on the list of surviving Receipt Rolls the separation is complete : here1 we have a roll of 1193/4 giving the " Receipt made at Westminster of the promise of the Jews made at Northampton after the return of the King from Germany." Jewish entries having now grown to such bulk as to necessitate a separate roll, the county arrangement is applied to this as it was to the normal receipt roll. Following this we have two fragments of Receipt Rolls of which, since they are not Jewish, we need only say here that they are similar in form to the first. The next roll in the series, belonging to the 14th year of John,2 is again devoted entirely to receipts from Jews: the county arrangement is still in force, but the current hand being now much smaller (the formal Pipe Roll hand was still maintained at almost its earliest size), enables three columns to be placed side by side; on the other hand, the Pipe Roll habit of noting its contents at the foot of each membrane or rotulet is particularly well exemplified in this document. This arrangement in three columns is adopted?with an alternative of two columns?in the more or less regular series of Normal and Jewish receipt rolls alike which begin soon after (4 and 14 Henry III). The only other development of form I have to mention occurs some years later (21 Henry III), when, by a violent change which, however, does not immediately take universal effect, the receipts are entered, ultimately under an exact date, but, in any case, in the order in which the tallies they record are issued, in a single-column roll; the county to which each refers being mentioned in the left margin. Probably at about the same time the custom arose of adding a note of the county to the inscription on the tally. It will be remembered that we divided the King's revenue from his Jews into two classes, one containing the receipts from talliages, the other including all the rest. This is the arrangement which is followed, throughout, by the series of Records of Jewish Receipts which now begins. On the one hand we have a broken series of rolls of receipts from talliages; on the other a similar series of receipts from the fines and amercements settled in the Jewish Plea Rolls, from other fines and 1 Exch. Accts., 249. 2. 2 Receipt Rolls, 1564.</page><page sequence="11">RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY* 29 reliefs, and from debts owing to the Jews which the Crown was exacting. I need hardly say that the last item may represent the balance of a talliage incompletely paid. Also, we have in this class of rolls occasional entries of the payment of arrears of talliage which were not sufficiently numerous to require a separate roll. It will be perceived from the above description that the entries in the first of these two classes may be ex? pected to occur almost entirely under the names of Jews; while in the case of the second Christian names will often preponderate, Christian debts supplying a large number of items. We have now seen something of Jewish receipts or tallies, of the early forms of Receipt Rolls?particularly Jewish ones?and of the two regular series of rolls to which these scattered early specimens lead. It will be convenient to insert here a few illustrations of these matters. Plate I illustrates some Jewish tallies relating to a talliage of 20,000 marks, the first being the one De Aaron1 de Eboraco, quoted above. Note the two ?1000 cuts below; above, on the extreme left, a score and half score ; in the middle, pounds and a half pound; on the right, pence. Shillings are shown in the centre of the upper side of Fig. 2, while Fig. 8 has an unusual mention of the county, not in the place where, subsequently, it became the custom to note this. Eli Levesque (Fig. 4) is another well known name. Plate II shows a number of tallies with Hebrew script upon them (a peculiarity seen also in Fig. 7 of Plate I). This is generally no more than a transliteration of the name of the Jew concerned. The differences in handwritings (which are perhaps those of the payers themselves) is interesting. The amounts here are all small, only shillings and pence, with a few pounds (in Figs. 2, 3, and 4) appearing. None of the Jews named are well known. Plate III shows tallies referring to a number of different transac? tions. Figs. 1 and 2 relate to an unknown talliage of 8000 marks, and Figs. 3 to 6 to a tax of a third part of the Jews' moveables ; while Fig. 9 brings us back to the talliage of 20,000. The remaining plates illustrate the evolution of the Receipt Roll; every step in which may be seen in rolls, or parts of them, devoted to Jewish matters. Plate IV is the Jewish item in the Receipt Roll of 1185. This is the roll already spoken of as obviously an adjunct of the</page><page sequence="12">30 RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. Pipe Roll, arranged with a view to the convenience of those responsible for that Record.1 Plate V, again, I have already spoken of particularly. It is the first instance of a roll exclusively Jewish: on the other hand, it retains many of the formal Pipe Roll characteristics?note particularly the handwriting of the county headings and the careful spacing of the divisions. Plate VI shows a distinct loss of formalism in a three-columned roll: while Plate VII goes yet another step towards independence from Pipe Roll influence, by adding, for its own convenience, the sum of each division, which the Pipe Roll would not require. This plate shows the Exchequer manner of making up the membranes (a number being tied together at the head). It also illustrates the combination of separate Jewish membranes with others relating to the ordinary business of the department: the membrane turned over at the head contains enrolments of writs of Liberate (i.e. it is an ordinary Issue Roll of the period); and this bunch?if I may call it so?includes also an ordinary Receipt Roll. Finally, travelling over a number of years, we come with Plate VIII to a Jewish Receipt Roll of the later period?a Roll precisely similar in form, as all these Rolls are, to the normal Receipt Roll; arranged under day-dates, having the identifying county in the margin, copying the exact wording of the original tally, and having periodical sums and a final summa summarum. Incidentally, this illustrates also the dwindling of direct receipts from the Jews towards the time of their final expulsion?a matter to be referred to later. We may now proceed to make some kind of list of the surviving Registers (in the form of Rolls) of Receipts from the Jews. For con? venience I make here one collection, numbered through in chronological order. It should be noted that 1. I have tried to give here a complete list of all surviving Rolls of Receipts made upon the ordinary plan contemporarily used for ordinary receipts. Supplementary rolls and documents of all kinds are dealt with below. 2. I have not tried to make a complete list of talliages. Chronicles, See above, p. 27, note 3.</page><page sequence="13">RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. 31 and even certain of the tallies already dealt with, not to mention allusions in Records, would add, of course, many to those of which detailed records are here mentioned; just as, conversely, the present list itself adds con? siderably to the number of those before known. I have also regarded it as beyond our scope to deal with the totals shown by our Rolls; though of course the dwindling of these, their comparative completeness or incompleteness in different cases, and the like are very interesting subjects. 3. The division adopted?that between talliage and non-talliage or Judeism Rolls, is of course that between arbitrary exaction and revenue flowing from sources in appearance or in actual fact legal: the second class, however, includes throughout moneys collected in respect of arrears of talliages. It is difficult to say why this was so: it is also difficult to decide (I have discussed the matter later) why, apart from the talliage arrears, this class of receipts should not have been incor? porated in the ordinary Receipt Rolls; and we may mention here that in at least one case 1 they are so incorporated in large numbers. 4. I have inserted (in italics) the exact titles given in the originals only when these seemed to be of special interest. Rotulus Judeorum, Rotulus de Judeismo, and Amerciamenta et perquisita are those most commonly used for rolls of the non-talliage class; the word judeismus being employed here with a vagueness parallel to that of the very common entry pro Judeis. 5. The rolls begin, practically, at the beginning of the reign of Henry III, as do the regular ones of the ordinary series, and as do also the Jewish Plea Rolls. I think that the administrative distinction between talliage and non-talliage Receipts began to be made at the same date, when reforms would seem to have been going on at the Exchequer. 6. It will be noticed that there is a striking diversity of references. The difference in the numbers of the Receipt Rolls is due to the fact that some of the earliest ones (Numbers 3 to 9, 11 and 13 in this list) are filed up with ordinary Receipt Rolls. It should be added that the Record Office arrangement of all the Receipt Rolls has recently been revised, and that many of the rolls enumerated here have not been 1 Receipt Roll 15.</page><page sequence="14">32 RECORDS OP EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. classed as, or known to be, Jewish before. The more startling appear? ance of certain Jewish Receipt Rolls, among what were in the beginning Original Accounts of the Exchequer King's, Remembrancer, is paralleled by numerous other additions made to that class in the course of centuries from all kinds of places, courts, and divisions of Records. Another curious instance of the adventures of Jewish Records in the past is mentioned on p. 41, note 5. 7. Except where the contrary is stated it may generally be con? cluded that Talliage Rolls deal mostly in names of Jews, non-talliage ones in those of Christians. LIST OF SPECIAL JEWISH RECEIPT ROLLS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER Date. Receipts from Talliage. 5 Rich. I East. 14 to Mich. 15 John 4 Hen. Ill 5 Hen. Ill 6 Hen. Ill App. remains of a talliage already dealt with else? where. Aid for marrying king's sister. Ar? ranged under towns. General Receipts, or " Judeism." Record Office Reference. Rotulus Judeorum. E ntries practical] y all under names of Christians. A large roll of fines and arrears of tal? liage. One rotu let partially dup? licated. Arranged under counties. Rotulus Judeorum as above. One membrane, under Counties as usual. Filed with the Aid Roll of same date. Judeism. Exch. Accts. 249. 2. Receipt Roll, 1564. Ibid., 3.1 Ibid., 4.1 Ibid., 5.1 1 Filed with ordinary Receipt Roil: see note above, p. 31, on references.</page><page sequence="15">RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. 33 No. Date. 7 Hen. Ill 9 Hen. Ill 10 Hen. Ill 9 10 10 Hen. Ill 17 Hen. Ill 11 12 37 Hen. Ill 38 Hen. Ill Receipts from Talliage. Talliage of 3000 marks. Arranged under towns ; Jewries at seven? teen mentioned. Talliage of 4000 marks. Arranged under counties. Duplicate of above. Talliage of St. Mar? tin. Very few entries, all Jews of one place pay? ing together. Talliage of 1000 marks. Includes some payments by Christians. General Receipts, or " Judeism. ' A fragment of a roll of Judeism filed with the Talliage Roll of same date. A very large roll of Judeism. One and a half rotu lets of Judeism including arrears of more than one talliage. Part entitled Rotulus Christianorum pro Judeis. A large number of cases of sheriff being charged. Filed with Talliage Roll of same date. A small roll of Jude? ism. Arrears of three talliages and the Aid mentioned. This is the well known roll headed by a caricature drawing. Record Office Reference. Receipt Roll, 6.1 Ibid., 7.1 Ibid., 8.1 Ibid., 9.1 Ibid., 1565. Ibid., 20.1 Ibid., 1566. 1 Filed with ordinary Receipt Roll: see note above on references. VOL. VIII. C</page><page sequence="16">34 RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. No. I 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 44 Hen. Ill 44 Hen. Ill 56 East, and 57 Mich. Hen. Ill temp. Hen. Ill Mich. 3 Edw. I Mich. 3 Edw. I East. 3 Edw. I Mich. 4 Edw. I Mich. 4 Edw. I East. 4 Edw. I Mich. 5 Edw. I Receipts from Talliage. General Receipts, or " Judeism." Arrentacio Judeorum j Anglie 500 mar Ca? rum. Arranged under counties. Talliage of 500 marks: Fragment. Refers to same collection as pre? ceding roll. Talliage of 5000 marks. Arranged under counties. On dorse are en? rolled writs of Liberate relating app. to proceeds of this talliage. Talliage of third part of moveables. Single column roll under days. Duplicate of preced? ing. j Continuation above. of App. continuation of above. Duplicate of preced? ing. App. continuation of above. Talliage of ?1000. Record Office Reference. Fragment in columns. two Receipt Roll, 43.1 Exch. Accts., 250. 14. Receipt Roll, 1567. Exch. Accts., 249. 14. Receipt Roll, 1568. Exch. Accts., 249. 18. Receipt Roll, 1569. Ibid., 1570. Exch. Accts., 249. 21. Receipt Roll, 1571. Ibid., 1572. 1 Filed with ordinary Receipt Roll: see note above on references.</page><page sequence="17">RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. 35 No. 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 Date. Mich. 5 Edw. I Hil. 5 Edw. I Mich. 6 Edw. I East. 6 Edw. I East. 6 Edw. I Mich. 9 Edw. I East. 9 Edw. I Mich. 10 Edw. I East. 13 Edw. I Mich. 14 Edw. I Mich. 15 Edw. I Mich. 16 Edw. I East. 16 Edw. I Receipts from Talliage. Talliage of 25,000 marks. Only three names (two Jews and one Christian). Very small total. General Receipts, or " Judeism." Record Office Reference. 37 I Mich. 17 j Edw. I (prob.) (See other column.) Amerciamenta et per quisita Judeorum. Amercements, &amp;c. Amercements, &amp;c. Partial duplicate of preceding. Judeism. Jews' names occur. Judeism. Judeism. Amercements, &amp;c. Amercements, &amp;c. j j Amercements, &amp;c. Amercements, &amp;c. Includes a large amount of Re? ceipts from a Tal? liage. Rotulus de placitis perquisitis et amer ciamentis Jude? orum. Continua? tion of preceding. Judeism. Receipt Roll, 1573. Ibid., 1574. Ibid., 1575. Ibid., 1576. Ibid., 1577. Ibid., 1578. Ibid., 1579. Ibid., 1580. Ibid., 1581. Ibid., 1582. Ibid., 1583. Ibid., 1584. Ibid., 1585. Ibid., 1586.</page><page sequence="18">36 RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. No. 38 39 ! 40 41 42 43 44 45 Receipts from Talliage. 40 47 48 49 50 31 Mich. 18 Edw. I East. 18 Edw. I Mich. 19 Edw. I East. 19 Edw. I Mich. 20 Edw. I East. 20 Edw. I Mich. 21 Edw. I East. 21 Edw. I General Receipts, or " Judeism." Placita et amercia menta. Judeism. Duplicate of preced? ing. Amercements, &amp;c. I Duplicate of preced Amercements, &amp;c. i Duplicate of preced- J j ing. Incomplete. ? j Amercements, &amp;c. j From this point [ many rolls have \ on them names of j Chamberlains' de? puties who kept ! them. j Duplicate of preced- i ing. Judeism. Duplicate of preced? ing. Judeism. j Duplicate of preced j ing. Incomplete. , Judeism. I Duplicate of preced Record Office Reference. Receipt Roll, 1587. Ibid., 1588. Ibid., 1589. Ibid., 1590. Exch. Accts., 249. 28. Receipt Roll, 1591. Ibid., 1592. Ibid., 1593. I I Ibid., 1594. j Ibid,, 1595. j Ibid., 1596. j Ibid., 1597. \ Ibid., 1598. j Ibid., 1599. ; i Ibid,, 1600. j</page><page sequence="19">RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. 37 No. ! 54 56 Date. 58 59 60 61 62 Mich. 22 Edw. I East. 22 Edw. I Mich. 23 Edw. I East. 23 Edw. I Receipts from Talliage. General Receipts, or " Judeism." Amercements, &amp;c. Duplicate of preced? ing. Judeism. Duplicate of preced? ing. Another copy. Be? ginning of ar? rangement by which Treasurer also kept a roll. Amercements, &amp;c. Duplicate of preced? ing. Judeism. Duplicate of preced | ing Another copy. Record Office Reference. Receipt Roll, 1601. Ibid., 1602. Ibid., 1603. Ibid., 1604. Ibid., 1605. Ibid., 1606. Ibid., 1607. Ibid., 1608. Ibid., 1609. Ibid., 1610. So much for the normal records of normal receipts from the Jews. Before we leave them, however, we have tor add two more possibilities of which we get occasional glimpses. A talliage might be collected by a commissioner or by commissioners, and paid in en bloc, and again there might under special circumstances be particular cases and accounts of a seizure of their property. What record do we get of the results of these ? Of the first we see something for the first time in the forty-fourth year of Henry III, when William de Axemue, with four others, was responsible for collecting a talliage of 2000 marks, the account of which was enrolled among the Foreign Accounts upon the Pipe Roll: this account makes mention of eleven</page><page sequence="20">38 RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. particular Jews and twenty communities. From probably about the same date we have a curious fragment1 giving some receipts on account of a talliage of 10,000 marks by Josce of Lincoln and three other Jews. Then in the second year of Edward I2 we have a roll entitled "Receipt of the Whole Talliage of the Jews at the New Temple," a roll in one column giving 362 names, only a very few of which are Christian. We are not told what the assessment was, but the total is about .?600. The Jews at this time were mortgaged to the Earl of Cornwall, so that it is not easy to see how they could be talliaged by the King. A fourth example of this kind of roll is one 3 which gives, as between the third and sixth years of Edward I, an account of receipts from Jews, apparently imprisoned, at the Tower of London. This roll does not belong to the talliage class, but records fines exacted: differing, however, from the usual roll of this class at the period in that the names of payers are almost all Jewish ones. The amount levied is about ?564:. Of the second class of supplementary Receipt Rolls to which I have referred I can quote only two instances. One is from the thirteenth year of Edward I, and one from the twenty-second; both are once more accounts enrolled later upon the Pipe Rolls. The first is the account of a receiver of the goods and chattels of Jews condemned on various charges, mostly relating to the coinage : the items are of interest. The second of these accounts shows similar proceedings taking place with regard to the whole of the Jews' property after they left England, the whole sum received in the one year being ?1850. 13s. 4d.: with this may be compared the original compotns of Hugh de Kendale, dealing with the same matter.4 The connection of the Pipe Roll with Jewish affairs we have already set down for subsequent discussion. Here we need make only one more remark with regard to these extracts from it?that both refer to the rotulus de parttcults from which they are compiled, thus bringing us, in the proper order of our backwards progress, to the subject of those original accounts of the King's Remembrancer's Department from which the Pipe Roll is compiled, and out of which the summary it gives may be supplemented. 1 Exch. Accnts., 249. 9. 2 Ibid., 16. 3 Ibid., 22. Both the Tower and the Temple were recognised Royal Treasuries. 4 Ibid., 250.1.</page><page sequence="21">RECORDS OP EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. 39 In this connection we may naturally consider first such examples as we have of preliminary particulars put in by the accounting officer?the sheriff, for instance?at the auditing of his accounts. Of jews an&lt;j tlie such I have three to instance, one1 being an anomalous preliminaries of account written in French, probably about 1264, by some final account officer unknown, and giving the details of a mass of fines collected from the Jews. It contains some curious entries, such as pr sa norrice, and pr venir a unes noces a londres (these are preceded by the words prist de with the name of the Jew concerned), and, ^ ^arti&lt;mlars* again, de Mosse fuiz Avon per Chartres qui furent en la main lliomas quant il morut?Mosse has lost his charters by misadventure, and has to pay to redeem them. The other two are similar in character, but more regular, being lists put in by the sheriff of the details of amounts he has paid into the Treasurer and Chamberlains on account of a lump sum of debts from the Jews, and for which he will have to give account. They belong to the twelfth and thirteenth years of Edward I.2 A second natural class of documents supplementary to final account are those technically known as Estreats. We have in the Plea Rolls of the Jews a large number of fines imposed, and we have seen this class, and numerous others, bulking largely in one series of the Receipt Rolls as, mutatis mutandis, they did in the Normal Rolls of Receipts from the King's ordinary subjects. How were they exacted? Obviously lists must have been supplied here, as they were in the course of normal Exchequer business, to the responsible collecting officer; and this class of Record is possibly represented by a single very rough document,3 which we have preserved, of the reign of Henry III: it includes both Christian and Jewish names, and every class of petty exaction. Another class of these records we might describe as matters relating to the administration of the archw. Here we have first a very elaborate document4 of the time of Henry III, arranging for the ^) "Arehse" due collection of a talliage by certain Talliers elected by matters, the community of England (i.e. English Jews), with minute directions for their conduct, especially by way of preventing any kind of nepotism, 1 Exch. Accts., 249. 8. 2 Ibid., 249. 25 and 26. 3 In Exchequer of Receipt Miscellanea. 4 Exch. Accts., 249. 12.</page><page sequence="22">40 RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. and with notes of names of Jewish sub-officers made responsible for the collection at various points. I pass to other preliminaries, particularly those in the nature of inquiries made by the Exchequer for taxing purposes. One of the most important classes of these is naturally that dealing with the examination, or breaking open, of arehce?the Jewish public chests in which, from the time of Richard I, they were compelled to deposit all their bonds: by means of these the Exchequer and the King were able, on the one hand, to judge the extent up to which the Jews could be mulcted, and, on the other, to make up deficiencies later. From this source we have first documents actually taken from the arehce. Such is possibly a very early fragment1 (perhaps as early as the reign of Henry II), being an enrolment of cheirographs, or Christian acknowledgement of debt to Jews?in fact something very like a Cheirographer's Roll; further, there are two files2 of original cheiro? graphs of Henry Ill's reign, and there is an original indented star 3 in French. From these we pass to compilations made probably (some certainly) by Exchequer officials from materials found in the arehce, and to subsidiary documents. Belonging to this class we have a large number of documents. One4 of the twenty-fourth year of Henry III contains a Rotulus de nominibus Judeorum et Judeorum Lincolnie et summis starrorum eorundem, with ten membranes of debts found in the Lincoln chest?perhaps 1000 debts in all: there is another5 like roll relating to Cambridge. Then there is a roll6 (34 Henry III) of the debts of a certain Jew (apparently he was dead or had forfeited) called Catalla . . . Irrotulata?per . . . Thesaurarium. ... A fourth7 (46 Henry III) is entitled Debita de Judaismo Anglie que Judei dederunt Regi in puramento facto de catallis eorum annis xlvj eo quod dicti Judei volebant talliari secundum ea debita. This roll relates to a large number of arehce, and there is a marked falling off in the number of debts con? tained in each. Again we have (50 and 51 Henry III) a fragment8 giving, upon one side, receipts, mostly from Christians, in respect of Jewish fines, and having curious marginal notes of persons who are dead, or unknown, or have "paid at the Receipt" or at "the Great 1 Exch. Accts., 249. 1. 2 Ibid,, 249. 5 and 7. 3 Ibid., 250. 13. 4 Ibid., 249. 4. 5 Ibid., 249. 3. 6 T&amp;uZ., 249. 6. 7 249. 10. 8 Ibid., 249. 17.</page><page sequence="23">RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. 41 Exchequer." On the other side of this are entries of debts extracted from Christians in respect of a Jewish talliage of 2 Edward I. One, belonging to 56 Henry III, is called Rotulus de scrutinio facto de Thesauro in archa de Judaismo apud Westmonasterium, or, alternatively, Caialla domini Regis ? mark the possessive ? irrotidata inventa in Thesauro de Judeis:1 it gives a long roll of debts owing to Jews. Another2 (1 Edward I) is again an examination of the area de Judaismo, at Westminster, with curious details as to the tallies it contains. Another,3 belonging to the end of our period (19 Edward I), gives details of all archa3 brought in by royal order by the sheriffs, or their deputies, with their contents. Another,4 of the year previous, is a writ to a sheriff directing him to bring in his archa for this purpose. And finally we have a whole series of rolls5 of Jewish debts made before the Treasurer and Barons post abjurationem Regni. Yet another of the preliminary classes is that of Inquisitions. A fair number of miscellaneous inquisitions relating to Jews have survived. I will do no more than remark that they naturally related for the most part to Jewish property in the King's hands ^ Inquisitions, either by forfeiture or escheat. I will instance only one,6 an elaborate series of inquiries, arranged under cities, into the houses and property lately held by Jews (this document belongs again to the last year of our period) with the value of the same, the terms under which they were held, and in many cases the names of those who have bought them? an obvious preliminary to the account noticed already of the officer who disposed of these in the Crown's interest. We may perhaps add here?it is a subject to which the mention of an inquisition naturally leads?that even so hasty a survey as we have taken of the Jew's connections with the English Exchequer would be in? complete if we failed to mention the supplementary information obtained 1 Exch. Accts., 249. 11. 2 Ibid., 249. 15. 3 Ibid., 249. 29. 4 Ibid., 249. 27. 5 Ibid., 250. 2 to 12. It is worth noting that a number of Jewish documents similar to those first cited (rolls of debts, original cheirographs, writs, &amp;c.) are now among the muniments of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster. See Hist. MSS. Comm. Report, iv., app. p. 182. 6 Exch. Accts., 249. 30.</page><page sequence="24">42 RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. from the Chancery. Many, or most, of the operations by royal officers whose results we see in the collection of a talliage, the listing of a Jew's goods, or the opening of a local archa, were not automatic ; oi^the?Exche-011 ^ne^ cou^ never have taken place without the direct quer and the command of the central administration, i.e. something Chancery. ^e nature of a writ: and such writs issued as a rule, not from the Exchequer, but directly from the Chancery. Often, therefore, the springs of an Exchequer action and the key to its meaning will be found in the Chancery writ with its annexed "return " (generally in the form of an inquisition), or in the more important letters close or patent: no consideration of Exchequer actions touching any given matter can afford to leave unsearched the Chancery Enrolments and what remains to us of the Chancery files.1 We have now traced in summary the connection of the Jews with the Exchequer through all the stages of Exchequer administration, and The Pipe Roll all the consequent varieties of Exchequer Records; and attd^^110^ are brought finally to the cardinal administrative process and the Jewish and chief Record?the Audit and the Pipe Roll with Exchequer. what were (at any rate in origin) the satellites of the latter, the Memoranda Rolls. A consideration of the Jewish connection with these carries with it a discussion of the relation one to another of the Jewish Scaccarium and Jewish payments to the Crown ; for it is an essential point of received doctrine on this subject that the Jews, after the organisation of Richard I7s time, were apart from the Pipe Roll and the Pipe Roll system?that when they dealt with the Exchequer they were dealing only with the Jewish Exchequer. "Within five years," says Dr. Jacobs, referring to the year 1190, "the organisation of the Jewish Exchequer was so far advanced that all the Jewish items of the Pipe Rolls were removed from them " : similarly Prof. Gross refers to the Scaccarium Judeorum as "a simple piece of mechanism which caused the money of the Jews to flow from their pockets into the Royal coffers." 2 1 Among the Chancery Miscellaneous Rolls are a roll relating to Jews' houses and two scrutinia of arches similar to those mentioned above. The Inquisitions alluded to here are the " Miscellaneous Inquisitions " series. 2 I need hardly say that though I have to differ from them on this point below I have freely used and admired the work of both Prof. Gross and Dr. Jacobs.</page><page sequence="25">RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. 43 It is perhaps not very strange that every one who has dealt with the subject should have accepted without question the belief that an institution called Scaccarium Judeorum, having a local ^-j^ ?S ^ne habitation near the Exchequer proper, and created un- Jewish questionably to deal with the affairs of a people given Exciie(iuer? over entirely to the interest of their own or other persons' finance, meant a separate administrative body created to deal with all such affairs of the Jews as, normally, would have come within the cog? nisance of the normal Exchequer Court. Had the mere possibility of this not being the case occurred to the two scholars whose researches in the matter have most touched Exchequer Records, Madox could not, I think, have failed to notice that all the excerpts which he adduced touching this extra-official body showed it working in the strongest connection with the ordinary Pipe and Memoranda Rolls?with, in fact, all the normal machinery of normal Exchequer procedure; while Dr. Gross would probably have seen that there was something wrong in a theory which led him to class together,1 without distinction, as the " Muniments " of a single Court, not only separate classes of Rolls from a single department (the Receipt), but also completely different records from the King's Remembrancer's department, the Exchequer of Pleas, and the Exchequer of the Jews. Fow the direct effects, in the way of Record producing, of the special administration of the Jews were originally, and remained, more or less straightforward. The public archce system and the early capitula were, as Dr. Gross shows, devised some time in the reign of Richard I to safeguard and regularise the private business (of money) ordinarily carried on by the Jews in England; and with them was devised2 a central controlling organisation, the Scaccarium Judeorum, the Office of Special Officials appointed for the purpose, who controlled, then and throughout, the administration of the archce (with the appointment of Cheirographers and so forth), and the settlement of all disputes arising out of the or dim system, the last being converted presently into a regular judicial administration. But the archce system had (as, again, Dr. Gross points out) from the first an indirect use, that of assisting the 1 The Exchequer of the Jews in England, p. 212. 2 I make below (p. 51) a suggestion as to the way in which this occurred.</page><page sequence="26">44 RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. Ring in his exactions. This indirect use, therefore, also resulted, indirectly, in Record making?in the Records, in fact, of the King's exactions. Did the Scaccarium Judeorum control these as well? It has been assumed without investigation that it did, and that assumption we have now to investigate. It may be convenient at this stage to summarise the chief points we have made so far. First, we may emphasize the fact that this paper is intended only as an investigation of the machinery used in the collection of moneys by the Crown from the Jews, and of the records of such collections. We do not profess to impart any of the statistical and other information obtainable from the documents to which we have attempted only to supply a modest introduction. At the same time we may perhaps stress here the fact that so late as the fifth year of Henry III we have been able to produce a roll showing contributions by all the Jewries of England to an Aid for marrying the King's Sister.1 Any? thing more feudal in character than this it is difficult to imagine. True it is an isolated instance; and we have no wish to press it too far, nor to seek by its means to invalidate that theory of the non-feudal position of the Jews once they were organised in England upon which all accounts of their medieval history in this country have been based, as we saw in our note2 upon The Jew as a Source of Revenue. But it opens up the possibility of very curious and important anomalies in Anglo Jewish administration: it might with a little research be taken in con? nection with certainly some, possibly many, instances of the holding of lands by Jews?and how could this be, if not as part of the feudal system??and it may prepare us at least to verify before we accept them a good many received opinions. Next I would call attention to the suggestion made that at various times certain subjects of administrative activity have by their bulk or importance brought into the machinery of administration (and its con? sequent records) temporary or permanent changes which might result either in the creation of new forms or the modification of old. The Scaccarium Judeorum is very possibly an instance of the first of these varieties: but there is no inherent improbability in the suggestion that 1 Cf. the talliage exacted from the Jews under Richard ad redemptionem domini Regis. 2 Above, p. 25.</page><page sequence="27">RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. 45 the importance of the medieval Jewry might also be responsible for an early instance of the second. To the distinction of royal receipts from the Jews into two broad classes I need not again call particular attention. We may more profitably revert to the survey we took of surviving Jewish Records and their comparative position with regard to the Records of ordinary, non Jewish, financial administration. We pursued, then, Jewish Receipts into all the normal forms of normal procedure. Leaving for a moment the question of actual receipt, and turning to the preliminaries of audit, I may recall the fact that we found plentiful instances of lists of debts, moneys, persons to be dealt with by the royal official; found estreats of fines to be exacted; found " particulars " of accounts to be summarised elsewhere; nay, we found such summaries themselves among those Enrolled Accounts which mark the later stage of the Audit. Briefly, in no case of importance did we fail to find a Jewish example of all the various forms of record which expressed, accom? panied, supplemented, or vouched for the ordinary processes of auditing ordinary accounts. We may well ask what reason is there to suppose that these precisely similar Jewish examples served a purpose totally different from that of their Christian parallels ? But one case is alone conclusive. Among the " particulars " which are the most immediate pre? liminary to formal audit in ordinary cases, there are two accounts, already referred to,1 belonging to the years 12 and 13 Edward I?where the most regularly appearing normal accountant, the Sheriff, is the collector ; and in one that official, after enumerating in detail a large number of pure Jewish debts, adds that he paid them to the Treasurer and Cham? berlains (the normal officials of the ordinary Exchequer of Receipt) by way of proffer?i.e. as part of his regular Pipe Roll Account?and received in return two tallies inscribed de debitis diversorum; a very common entry this on the Pipe Roll, upon which Record, I may add, the present payment-in duly appears under the same equivocal title. The last-quoted very pretty Record, or series of Records, is sufficient by itself to dispose of the erroneous conclusion that Jewish Migtailten views matters were all extra Pipe Roll and extra the rest of the of the Jewish ordinary Exchequer machinery. If further proof is Excne(luer needed, I may add that any student of Madox's History of the Exchequer 1 Exch. Accts., 249. 25 and 26.</page><page sequence="28">46 RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. may find1 plenty of such undoubtedly ordinary entries relating to Jews as this from the forty-ninth year of Henry III: Abraham filius Vives debet ?63. 14s. Zd. de pluribus talliagiis super eommuniam Anglie: while, if we turn once more to the Records of the actual Receipt, or Lower Exchequer, we may note, as two important items among many proofs; (a) that in the earliest Receipt Rolls we find frequently Jewish Receipt Rolls filed, by contemporary filing stitches, with undoubtedly normal membranes of ordinary Receipt and Issue; find even a large membrane composed of two small membranes stitched head to tail, one being of Receipts from the Jews and one 'of Ordinary Receipts: (b) that so soon as it became the custom for the controlling officers of that department (the Treasurer and Chamberlains, or Deputy Chamberlains) to write their names upon their ordinary Rolls of Receipt and Issue, the Rolls of Jewish Receipts appear with the same names similarly inscribed upon them. And finally, we may suggest that, however much confusion of Record classes is to be ascribed to the accidents of their custody in the past, it is hardly a maintainable assumption that so many Records of preliminary audit (vouchers and the rest) relating to Jewish accounts should have found their way to the company of general Records of that nature, and to the custody of the King's Remembrancer; that so many Rolls of Receipts should have come down to us among the general Receipt Records kept by the Chamberlain's Deputies; had not both constituted from the earliest times, and continued throughout to constitute, an ordinary part of those offices', and those officers', ordinary business. The " Exchequer of the Jews " then is purely legal; so far as the accountancy of Jewish receipts is concerned it is a myth : those receipts came in to the King or his officers through the ordinary channels through which any other money came in ; at most their bulk led to the temporary creation of certain supplementary ducts which were strictly subordinated to the main and original ones. But we may still repeat, though in a modified form, Dr. Jacobs' statement that the Jewish items in the Pipe Rolls do fall off; there still remains the question where, if not in the Pipe 1 Quarto edition, vol. i. pp. 222 et seqq.</page><page sequence="29">RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. 47 Rolls, did the Jewish accounts, so complete in all their preliminary stages, come to audit; and since every department of the Exchequer must necessarily be involved to some extent in the question of royal receipts from the Jews, we shall not even have summarised the whole case com? pletely until we have looked for the Jewish equivalent of the ordinary Memoranda. Now, in dealing further with the phenomenon noticed by Dr. Jacobs, we have first to point out that of the Jewish contributions to the Exchequer whose records we have been noticing, at any rate the The "dis talliages (let us take them first) cannot be said to dis- appearance." appear out of the Pipe Rolls, because they never to any appreciable extent appeared in them. In other words, Dr. Jacobs would be right in saying that the organisation under Richard I is responsible for certain classes of Receipts which, it seems, do not appear on the Pipe Roll; right because from that organisation date the regular imposition of talliages (instances of which in their strictest and harshest form can hardly be produced from an earlier date) as well as the regular and business-like collection of fines; the success of both systems depending on the arcJiw ; but he has not noticed that the items which actually disappear from the Rolls are largely those which belonged to a previous and happier state of things when the Jews merely lent to the King and recovered their loans by means of assignments1 on the Pipe Roll accountants; and he is wrong, I submit, in deducing that any items, and particularly those which to a great extent did not exist before this date, failed to appear on the Pipe Rolls afterwards because of the contemporary setting up of a Scaccarium Judeorum which cannot by any evidence be directly connected with the financial operations in question. This leads us to the next question?Where, if not on the Pipe Roll, did the Jewish talliage accounts (I postpone for a moment consideration of the non-Talliage Rolls) come to final Jewish talliage audit-? I am afraid the answer must be?Nowhere, accounts Students of the Exchequer, even of the Exchequer of a much later date, are beginning to be aware that it took some centuries to 1 See a note on William Cade in the English Historical Review, April 1913. Madox, however, quotes certain instances (which Dr. Jacobs has apparently missed) of talliage matters appearing on the Pipe Rolls as late as John.</page><page sequence="30">48 BECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. sweep into the final audit the accounts of all the officers and departments which had dealings with the King's money. Every Exchequer Reformer of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries aimed at doing so, but his efforts were not infrequently frustrated by the fact that the Crown, continually looking for fresh means to supplement that ancient income which it perpetually found inadequate, was continually inventing new means of obtaining money, none of which ever entered into the ordinary Exchequer scheme. Thus we have the King first securing advances on his regular income from the financier Cade (and possibly Cade was not the only one); then turning to the Jewish financiers; then inventing talliages; and then, when these gave out in the later part of the thirteenth century, falling back upon fifteenths and tenths; and we must not forget the Italian bankers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the later system of assignment by tally so widely used for the anticipation of the royal revenues. In this connection it is instructive to notice how the peculiarities of the Jewish position are reproduced elsewhere: when we come to subsidies these too fail for a long time to appear properly on the Pipe Roll, have separate Receipt Rolls assigned to them, have their arrears occasionally in the normal Receipt Rolls?all exactly as the Jewish Receipts had done before : and in both cases (until the longer lived subsidies were reformed away into a place in the ordinary Exchequer procedure)?in both cases there is the same mystery as to the manner in which they were both checked and spent.1 The mystery of the question why on one or two occasions, with apparently no reason, the collection of Jewish moneys was entrusted to Commissioners whose handling of the accounts was actually (as in the cases quoted above) submitted to an ordinary audit, is also, I am afraid, not certainly soluble in the present state of our evidence. The fact that such audit occurred may perhaps argue the presence of some formalist, or reformer, at the Exchequer otherwise unknown. I should be disposed, however, to advance the theory that there were recognised at different times two distinct methods of collecting a talliage. The first w as generally indirect, using Commissioners, and belongs to the time before Receipt Rolls be? came large and important: we find it applied to early collections (up to 1 Professor Willard of Colorado University has, I understand, material bearing on this point, which I hope may shortly be published.</page><page sequence="31">RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. 49 the time of John, as appears by the instance cited above from Madox), and we may expect to find it ending in the Pipe Roll. The latter cases mentioned on p. 38 appear to be a revival of this: it was very prob? ably ruled out of the newly perfected Jewish Receipt Roll machinery; indeed, if my theory is correct, payments in on account of a talliage thus exceptionally subjected to the ordinary Pipe Roll processes, should, ex? ceptionally, appear on the ordinary Receipt Rolls (unfortunately a gap in that series prevents us testing the point). The second method, belonging to the period when Receipt Rolls had become important (partly at the expense of the Pipe Rolls) tends, as appears by surviving tallies and Receipt Rolls, to deal directly with contributors; it is preserved to us upon a large number of special Receipt Rolls; and, though this has not been proved (because uncalendared Pipe Rolls are almost impossible as subjects for minute research) it almost certainly escaped the Pipe Roll and the audit. Before we leave this topic we have yet to deal with the non-talliage Receipt Rolls and with the fact that there are on the Pipe Rolls a number of Jewish items which pass unnoticed because jewign ^ems they are disguised. We have already seen that the King on the later in exacting money from a Christian might often be ex- Pipe Rolls acting, in point of fact, either the arrears of a talliage or (more frequently) money owed by a Jew for fines by the simple expedient of collecting the Jew's debts : and we have seen in two instances, fortunately preserved to us, how a sheriff might collect such sums and account for them on the Pipe Roll in a phrase (de debitis diversorum) which, without the chance survival of his "particular" account in the King's Remembrancer's Department, would give no indication of its Jewish character. Most unfortunately there is no Jewish fine and amercement (non-talliage) Receipt Roll in existence for the date covered by these. But other rolls of the kind which have survived do show precisely such entries as that under which these items are disguised on the Pipe Roll (de . . . vicecomite . . . de pluribus debitis); and from the very beginning of Henry Ill's reign we find this kind of Jewish payments being paid per vicecomitem. That being so there seems no reason why the ordinary Receipt Rolls should not have been used for them; as indeed we saw done (above, p. 31) in at least one instance: we can only attribute the use of a separate roll for such matters to an original convenience (due to their VOL. VIII. D</page><page sequence="32">50 RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. bulk) hardened by habit. I think, then, on the whole we are justified in putting forward the theory that these rolls represent, at least to some extent, Jewish receipts which went through the full Pipe Roll process. Possibly some of their items did, while some {e.g. arrears of talliage) did not. In the present state of our knowledge such points can be subject only for theory. We may be content with having established the facts, (1) that Jewish receipts from the time of Henry III were all subject to the ordinary administrative machinery of the Exchequer of Receipt; (2) that of the two classes into which they fall one apparently did not, one to some extent certainly did come into the net of the Pipe Roll; (3) that there is nothing in either of the two circumstances last mentioned which need cause surprise. An examination of the Memoranda Rolls, following the lines of Madox's extracts already quoted, and combined possibly with analytical statistics of the growth (for instance) at certain periods of the amount of certain items in the sheriffs' accounts on the Pipe Rolls, might conceivably lead us to some further definite conclusions on this subject. We are left with the Memoranda and what remains of the Scaccarium Judeorum. Why, for one thing, is this Scaccarium so called ? In the The present paper I must not embark upon a complete dis Memoranda cussion of these topics. I would only venture to suggest ^?^s* that the key to both questions may possibly be found in three records, the Memoranda Roll of John 1?already alluded to?in which the items are grouped under counties, one membrane being devoted to Jewish affairs, and certain purely Jewish Memoranda;2 together with a consideration of the Exchequer Plea Rolls. I would conjecture, subject to further research, that just as the early specialised Jewish headings and membranes and rolls among the Receipt Rolls furnished us with a fairly complete picture of the development of that Record from an appanage of the Pipe Roll into a distinct Record having uses not by any means of a purely " audit" character; so we have in these two records an indication of the lines along which the Memoranda Rolls developed out of a collection of notes taken during the process of audit into a complete Record of the daily life of a department. I would 1 Exch. L.T.R., Misc. Rolls, 1/3. 2 Below, p. 53.</page><page sequence="33">RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. 51 conjecture further that the Exchequer of the Jews is an early parallel or example of the process by which the Department (the Barons of the Exchequer), the record of whose proceedings is the Memoranda Roll, split off, at an early date, a large portion of their more legal proceedings into a separate Record?the Exchequer Plea Roll. The Court whose pro? ceedings are registered on that Plea Roll is traditionally the Court of the Exchequer Barons modified by the exclusion of the Treasurer: and the Court of what I have ventured to call its early parallel?the Exchequer of the Jews?is similarly the ordinary Court of Exchequer modified for a special purpose (the purely legal one of hearing disputes into which Jewish law entered), modified this time by an inclusion?the inclusion of Jewish assistants, to whom it delegated in practice an authority which it always retained in theory itself.1 In this way, then, I suggest, we may account for the name Scaccarium being applied to what, as we have seen, is a purely legal institution. The only difference between the Exchequer of the Jews and the Exchequer of Pleas (apart from the difference of their functions) lies in the fact that, though the Exchequer of Pleas pos? sibly furnished the model, yet here, as in the case of the Receipt Rolls, the peculiarity of the Jewish position caused a corresponding peculiarity of administration and records to perfect itself at a comparatively early date; that Jewish legal Memoranda were evolved, perhaps, more completely than those other contemporary legal Memoranda which we find upon the Exchequer Plea Roll (just as Jewish anticipated other classes of Receipts in the distinction of a separate roll) simply because their own nature called more obviously for special treatment. Of course there remains a residuum of Memoranda cases concerning Jewish affairs which had no legal element; which were parallel to the plain Memoranda of the ordinary Memoranda Roll: and it may be asked what became of these ? For an answer to this we must refer back to the explanation already given of the " disappearance " of Jewish items from the Pipe Roll: and it is here that the two rolls cited above may serve us. The possibilities with regard to Jewish Memoranda are, I think, four. 1. There is the legal possibility already dealt with. We may add here that the Plea Rolls have often sections entitled Memoranda, and 1 Cp. Gross, op. cit., p. 176.</page><page sequence="34">52 RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. containing matters properly so called, but belonging particularly to the class of affairs (not directly related to Royal finance) with which the Plea Rolls are, as we saw, associated. 2. There is the case where (in the earliest times) Exchequer matters concerning Jews had not yet begun to be reckoned a thing apart. This is the time at which we get occasional references1 upon the Pipe Rolls to certain mysterious rolls giving details for which the Pipe Roll scribe had not space or patience. I have already hinted2 that these rolls may not be unconnected with our earliest surviving fragments of Receipt Rolls, and I would now suggest that the same may be said of the early Memoranda Rolls : that these vaguely mentioned Rolls were, I believe, the ancestors of both, were in fact themselves a kind of Memoranda, a section, or even the whole, of which might on occasion be devoted to detailed lists of such receipts as were only enrolled in gross upon the Pipe Roll. From another point of view one might say that such early Memoranda fulfilled, inter alia, the needs provided for later (after the distribution of business between the King's Remem? brancer's and Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer's departments) by the King's Remembrancer's Original Accounts. The form of the John Memoranda Rolls seems to me to bear out this theory: like the first Receipt Roll these rolls are divided up, in parts, by a county arrange? ment quite unlike their later form (of which, however, considerable traces appear elsewhere), but obviously suiting the convenience of the Pipe Roll scribe admirably. However this may be, both the earliest Receipt Roll (that of Henry II) and the earliest Memoranda (that of the first year of John) have, in the midst of miscellaneous matters, a section devoted specially to Jews. In the case of the Memoranda it is a whole membrane of some length, and written upon on both sides. The Exchequer appears to be treating directly with only one Jew (Benedict de Talemunt) assisted by another, Jacobus Presbiter; these two, however, representing apparently the whole English Jewry.3 The matters dealt with are points of difficulty of every kind?the amount of some fine of an ordinary sort owned by one, the question whether the King shall accept a fine and allow pledged 1 See above, p. 27, note 3. 2 Ibid. 3 The membrane is entitled Compotus Benedicti de Talemunt de debitis et finibus Judeorum Anglic. . . . Benedict was Gustos and Jacob Presbiter Judeorum.</page><page sequence="35">RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. 53 lands to be possessed by a Jewish creditor or take them into his own hand, the amount of arrears owed by another Jew in respect of a talliage, and so forth. This roll relates only to the first year of John ; talliages in their worst sense have as fet scarcely begun ; and Jewish matters of what? ever nature are all grouped together, and are part of the normal procedure of the Exchequer, their items among the normal items of the Pipe Roll, their Memoranda part of the normal Memoranda, just as their Receipts, rather earlier, have been found to be part of the normal receipts. Whatever, then, may have been the early history of the Exchequer Memoranda Rolls, we may assume that it was more or less shared by such memoranda as there were of Jewish business : little' distinction between Jewish and Christian, less still between Jewish talliage and Jewish non talliage, matters had yet been made. 3. We have the case where these distinctions have been made?let us say from the beginning of Henry Ill's reign onwards. Not only are Jewish talliage distinct from non-talliage matters in the sphere of the Receipt, but the former (though they have become a regular source of Royal income) are now, it appears, excluded regularly from the Pipe Rolls; while the latter are at any rate to some extent included. It will be necessary, therefore, to take what will probably be two sets, talliage and non-talliage Memoranda, separately. We might suppose that so arbitrary a matter as a talliage would hardly admit of or require much discussion: indeed we may say that either it would be paid or else it would become a matter of arrears, falling thus into the division of which we hope to speak in our next section. We have, however, two rolls1 of Memoranda de Talliagio (3 Edw. I). They contain writs of distraint against recalcitrant debtors, orders to sheriffs and keepers of archw, questions of wardship of heirs of Jews dead, and so forth; the distraints forming a large class; but ?what is more important for our purpose?though they are made thus separately the rolls have divisions and titles made in obvious imitation of the ordinary Memoranda Rolls; they have Brevia, for instance; and, what is more, the Brevia are directa Baronibus. The talliage, then, may be excluded from the Pipe Rolls and may produce separate Memoranda as it has separate Receipt Rolls, but the Barons retain management. 1 Exch. Aects., 249. 19 and 20.</page><page sequence="36">54 RECORDS OF EXCHEQUER RECEIPTS FROM THE ENGLISH JEWRY. We may quote here, as extra illustration, two further Records;1 one being the fragment of a Royal writ, returnable to the Barons, directing the taking of an Inquisition (a fragment of which has also survived) relative to certain Jewish debts : while the other is a file of a number of Royal writs addressed to Jews, bailiffs of various Jewries, and likewise ordering inquisitions to be taken. 4. Finally, we have the case of the non-talliage matters, the case where only fines or arrears of talliage indirectly collected were concerned, and where, very often, no Jewish names figured. In this case the details, as we have seen, would go on to the non-talliage Receipt Roll and a summary of them (probably) on to the Pipe; and Memoranda concerning them will be found (with or without Jews' names attached) in the midst of the ordinary business of the ordinary Memoranda Roll, as we have noticed in the case of quotations made by Madox; from whose citations alone it is clear that we have here an enormous amount of scattered information waiting for an investigator. I said earlier in this paper 2 that we must not attempt to deal with the question of the contents of our Records. I hope, however, we have said enough to show that research into the direct Records Conclusion. . of Jewish Receipt would give an excellent historical yield ; and that even then many byways would remain to be most profitably explored. March 23, IT 15. 1 Exch. Accts., 249. 13 and 23. 2 I am much indebted to my colleagues, Messrs. C. G. Crump, M. S. Giuseppi, and C. Johnson, who have all read the proofs of it.</page></plain_text>