The Relationship between the Jews and the Royal Family of England in the Thirteenth Century. Presidential Address

<plain_text><page sequence="1">THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE JEWS AND THE ROYAL FAMILY OF ENGLAND IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY By the Bev. H. P. STOKES, LL.D., F.S.A., Hon. Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (Presidential Address, delivered before the Jewish Historical Society of England on December 20, 1915) The relationship between the Jews and the Boyal Family in the thirteenth century opens up questions not only of public policy and of national, and even international, dealings, but also of personal and individual character and conduct. It may be well, therefore, to give a brief reminder of the royal personages on or near the throne of England from the accession of King John in 1199 to the Expulsion of the Jews in 1290. When the thirteenth century opened there were three queens living who had worn the crown of England?Eleanor of Aquitaine, the widow of Henry II, Berengaria of Navarre, the relict of Bichard Coeur de Lion, and Isabella of Angouleme, Queen-Consort of King John. Eleanor the Queen-Moth er, whose support had been one of the chief factors in securing the throne for her favourite son John, survived during four or five of the troubled years of that monarch's reign. She died in 1204 at the age of eighty-one years. Berengaria, the devoted wife of Bichard I, nursing her grief, lived on well into the reign of Henry III, and died at an advanced age in her abbey of Espan. 153</page><page sequence="2">154 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE JEWS AND THE Queen Isabella of Angouleme, so different in character from the blameless lady just mentioned, survived her husband King John for thirty years. Four years after his death she married her former lover, Hugh, Lord of Lusignan and Valence in Poitou, and Count of Marche. By King John, whom she married when she was only fourteen years old, she was the mother of Henry III, of Richard, Earl of Cornwall and King (in 1256) of the Romans, of Joan, Queen of Scotland, of Eleanor (wife successively of William, Earl of Pembroke, and of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester), and of Isabella, Empress of Germany. By her second husband?the Count of Marche?Isabella of Angouleme had several sons, amongst whom were the Count who succeeded Hugh of Lusignan, Guy who was slain at Lewes, William de Valence, created Earl of Pembroke, and Aymer who was consecrated Bishop of Winchester. Henry III wel? comed these Poitevin princes in England after the death of Isabella; but they were banished at the instigation of the nobles in 1258. When King John died in the year 1216 he was succeeded by his son Henry III, a boy of nine, upon whose long and inglorious reign we need not here dwell. It is with the royal home that we are immediately concerned. As we have seen, his mother Isabella, after four years of widowhood, married Hugh, Count of Marche. The question of finding a wife for the young English king was, of course, soon raised; and it might be thought that there would have been little difficulty in arranging the royal match. But it proved far otherwise. Negotiations for the hand of an Austrian princess fell through in 1224; and in the following year a Breton lady could not be secured, nor a Bohemian princess shortly afterwards. In 1231 the Scottish Court was approached, but still with? out success. Four years later, Joan, daughter and heiress of the Count of Ponthieu, had almost consented, when the match was broken off through the opposition of the French Court. At last, however, in the year 1235/6, when Henry was about thirty years old, a consort was found for him in the person of Eleanor, second daughter of Raymond Berenger, Count of Provence, and of his wife, Beatrice of Savoy. The new Queen was young, being only about thirteen, and, like her sisters, beautiful; one of these was Margaret, the consort of Louis the Ninth, King of France, and another, Cincia, was afterwards married to Bichard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of the English King.</page><page sequence="3">ROYAL FAMILY OF ENGLAND IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 155 Eleanor of Provence had numerous relatives?on her mother's side there were many princes of the house of Savoy, and of these Henry III gave a profuse English welcome to William, Bishop of Yalence, to Boniface (who five years later was intruded into the Archbishopric of Canterbury), to Peter (who was created Earl of Bichmond), and to Thomas of Flanders. The last mentioned uncle of the Queen later on imported a bevy of foreign girls to be married to young English nobles then in ward, and indeed the land was inundated with Savoyards and with Provencals. For fifty-five years Eleanor of Provence lived in her adopted country, dying in the year 1291, her husband, King Henry III, having pre? deceased her in 1272. We shall have occasion to refer in detail to the doings of this celebrated Queen later on, here we may mention the children whom she bore. Edward, the eldest son, who was born in 1239, succeeded his father in 1272; Edmund, surnamed " Crookback," six years younger than Edward, became Earl of Lancaster and Derby, and was subsequently chosen King of Sicily; Margaret was married to Alexander III of Scotland; and Beatrix became the wife of John de Dreux, Duke of Brittany and Earl of Bichmond. Continuing our enumeration of the members of the Boyal Family, we turn to Edward, the eldest son of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence. This renowned prince was married in 1254, when he was aged about fifteen, to a child of ten years old?Eleanor, daughter of Ferdinand III, King of Castile. We need not here refer to the seven beautiful princesses whom the Queen bore to her husband; we can only mention the son, afterwards Edward II, who was born in Wales thirty years after the marriage of his parents. Edward I's grief at the death of Eleanor of Castile on November 28, 1290, is historic; but as we have now arrived at a date when the Expulsion of the Jews from our land had just been carried out, we may close our list of the English kings and queens and the princes and princesses of the thirteenth century. The relationship between the Jews and the Boyal Family was, of course, almost entirely a question of money. It may be, therefore, well to make a few remarks upon the financial condition of the throne and its surroundings in the thirteenth century. Careful investigations have been made as to the amount of the</page><page sequence="4">156 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE JEWS AND THE revenue and of the expenditure of the Royal Court, and the results may be seen in Stubbs and Ramsay and (as it affects the Jews) in Gross and Jacobs. The royal income was derived from the Crown lands, from county and borough returns, from wardships, marriages, fines, forfeitures, escheats, amerciaments, &amp;c, from vacant sees, &amp;c, from the Mint and Exchange, from the Customs, from the grants from the clergy, from Ireland, and from various other sources?including, as we specially remember, the Jews. It has been calculated that the income of Henry III amounted to about ,?40,000?this was the sum asserted by the English envoys at Lyons in 1245; whilst in Edward I's time the figure has been placed at ?65,000, when " the king would live on his own (que notre seigneur le roi vive de soew)," and in time of peace; mounting under special circumstances to ?80,000, and under extraordinary conditions to ?120,000. As to expenditure, we must look at the Wardrobe Accounts and Issue Rolls of the Exchequer and at other records, and from them we learn ?after, of course, noting the important facts that the royal purse was responsible for such national outlays as the army and navy expenses, &lt;fec, and that (as we shall see) the incomes of the Queen and of other members of the Court had to be met from the same sources?we learn that there were often annual deficits, and that the incoming revenue was not seldom anticipated. Hence frequent borrowings and demands, and hence (to turn to our special subject) constant resort to the Jews. Henry III was as reckless and lavish as his father, and more also? especially in his extravagant expenditure in connection with his queen, Eleanor of Provence. Upon her numerous relatives, the Provencals and the Savoyards, he poured out grants and pensions, escheats and demesnes. The same had been done to the Poitevins and Bretons under the rule of Peter des Roches; while at least the same may be said of his bounties to his half-brothers, the sons of Isabella of Angouleme by her second marriage. Henry III had, indeed, certain fits of economy, but speaking gene? rally his long reign was a record of lavish expenditure and consequent need. His son and successor, Edward I, was not personally extravagant, but his heavy expenses abroad and various difficulties at home caused</page><page sequence="5">ROYAL FAMILY OF ENGLAND IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 157 him frequent financial anxieties. It should have been stated, in con? nection with this prince and as some excuse for his father, that during the latter years of Henry's reign an annual grant of ?10,000 was made from the royal revenue for the household and other expenses of " the lord Edward." We turn now to the Queens of England?the Queens-Consort and the Queens-Dowager; and the last word at once reminds us of jointures and dowries. The thirteenth century opened, as we have seen, with a complicated revenue for these royal ladies, for beside the Queen-Consort, Isabella of Angouleme, provision had to be made for the Queen-Mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, the aged widow of Henry II, and for Queen Berengaria, the relict of Bichard I. The sources of these incomes were varied. Sometimes there were definite marriage settlements, sometimes the queens were heiresses in their own right; then, in the case of the Queen-Consort at least, there was the Donum Regince ; and there were other perquisites, grants, &amp;c. The question of the Queen-Gold may first be touched upon. William Prynne has one of his innumerable and extraordinary volumes devoted to this subject, or rather he has two of them, for, in the same year, 1688, he issued a lengthy Appendix. The first work is thus entitled : " Atjrtjm Begins, or A Compendious Tractate, or Chronological Collec? tion of Records in the Tower, and Court of Exchequer, Concerning Queen Gold : Evidencing the Quiddity, Quantity, Quality, Antiquity, Legality of this Golden Prerogative, Duty and Bevenue of the Queen-Consorts of Eng land. The several Oblations, Fines out of which it Springs both in England and Ireland; the Queens Officers in the Exchequer to Beceive, Collect, Account to Her for it, with their Patents; the Lands, Tenements, Goods, Chattels, Persons liable to satisfie it; the Questions in Law about it ; the Kings Title to the Arrears thereof by the Queens Decease; the Process by which it is levyed, and what else concerns. With an addition of some Records concerning our Royal Mines of Gold and Silver, and four Patents of K. Henry the 6. by Authority of Parliament, for finding the Philosophers Stone, to Transubstantiate baser Metals into solid real Gold and Silver, to satisfie all the Creditors of the King and Kingdom in few years space." This long rigmarole of a title is quoted in full, for to a Jewish Society Prynne is always a curiosity, though it is only fair to go on to</page><page sequence="6">158 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE JEWS AND THE say that the work itself has, characteristically, a wealth of records most painfully and faithfully collected by this searcher among deeds. The Queen-Gold was " a due which the Queens of England were entitled to claim on every tenth mark paid to the King, as voluntary fines for the royal good-will in the renewal of leases on crown lands, the granting of charters, &amp;e." Prynne asserts that the Aurum Regince could only be claimed by the Queens-Consort, and not by the Queens-Dowager, and he is probably right, though Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine seems sometimes to have claimed it, as in the well-known story of the monks of Bury St. Edmunds and their gold-cup, and Queen Eleanor of Provence certainly granted leases to last " during her lifetime." Some of the Queens were heiresses in their own right: Eleanor of Aquitaine, for instance, brought several provinces to Henry II, Eleanor of Castile inherited the County of Ponthieu, and so on. Marriage settlements and jointures were often made. King John, for instance, " endowed his wife most richly with many towns in the west of England, besides Exeter and the tin-mines of Cornwall and Devonshire. The jointure-palace of the heiress of Angouleme was that ancient residence of the Conqueror, the castle of Berkhamstead, in Hert? fordshire, Exeter and Bockingham Castles pertained to her dower." At the treaty made in 1235 before the marriage of Eleanor of Provence with Henry III, it was provided by the King's letters dated October 15th, that she should be endowed with the cities, lands, and tenements which had been usually assigned to the Queens of England ; but that if Isabella, the Queen-Mother, should survive the King and recover her dower, then certain boroughs and towns (amongst them the borough of Cambridge) were to be assigned to Eleanor for the life of Queen Isabella. On the death of Henry III, his son Edward renewed to his mother a long list of castles, manors, &amp;c, to the value of ?1000 a year; "if the value did not by extent amount to this sum then the deficiency should be made up, but if it exceeded that amount the excess should remain to the King." So we learn from the Patent Rolls (1272, p. 27); in the same records (1280, p. 385) we read that some ?2000 granted to Eleanor of Castile by her husband was also continued by her son; again, on January 23, 1286, she was allowed to retain "for life, whether professed or not" all her possessions in England and Gascony, while ten years later (June 6, 1290) fresh grants valued at ?1000 are mentioned. The</page><page sequence="7">ROYAL FAMILY OF ENGLAND IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 159 Queen-Mother died on Midsummer Day 1291, and the same records (September 27, 1291) show that the executors of her will were allowed to retain her extensive possessions (of which a long list is given) till the day after Michaelmas Day. At the marriage of " the lord Edward " (afterwards the first King of that name) to Eleanor of Castile, Henry III settled upon his son all the Aquitanian domains inherited from Eleanor, his grandmother, while ?1000 per annum was the dower promised to the young Eleanor, in case the prince should die before his father. At the accession of Edward I the Patent Eolls tell of the usual assignments made to the Queen Consort, and in subsequent years numerous grants are recorded to her. In spite of all these assignments and grants, the Queen-Consort and the Queens-Dowager (as may be seen from Miss Strickland's interesting volumes) were perpetually in debt, and were continually "asking for more." Eleanor of Aquitaine, for instance, took one hundred marks for every thousand at her son's marriage, and she even claimed a tenth in connection with his ransom fund. Berengaria compounded with her brother-in-law, King John, for the dower she held in England for 2000 marks per annum; but when that monarch characteristically neglected to pay it, the Queen-Dowager?" with floods of tears streaming down her cheeks and with audible cries "?appealed to the Pope, who threatened John with an interdict. In the reign of Henry III, Berengaria had again to require the Pope's assistance for the payment of her annuity. Her arrears at that time amounted to ?4040 sterling; but the Templars became guarantees and agents for her payments, and from that time the pecuniary troubles of Berengaria cease to form a feature in our national records. Similar troubles occurred with regard to Isabella of Angouleme, the widow of King John. As that queen had married Count Hugh of Lusignan without asking the consent of any one in England, the Council of Begency withheld her dower from her, to the indignation of her husband. Subsequently, however, her son Henry III paid her arrears of jointure. The extravagances of the Court under Eleanor of Provence, the wife of the monarch just mentioned, were notorious. For the last ten or</page><page sequence="8">160 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE JEWS AND THE twelve years of Henry Ill's reign the queen was continually running into debt, so that, although Pope Clement had granted her some ?15,000 44 out of the tenths," yet at the close of the reign she owed no less than ?22,328. The Court under Edward I was more frugal, but his wife, Eleanor of Castile, needed again and again to have grants and assignments made to her purse. We must not dwell upon the other members of the Royal Family, except to remark that the large sums of money expended, when Richard of Cornwall was seeking to be King of the Romans and when Edmund of Lancaster was aiming at the kingdom of Sicily, added to the financial difficulties which encumbered the English Throne. We now turn to our special subject?the relationship between the Jews and the Royal Family; and with kings and queens and princes continually in need of money, and with a tribe of money-lenders always at hand with an abundance of wealth that could easily be snatched, no surprise can be felt that the Jews were perpetually being called upon to supply the royal needs and to pay the royal debts. And first of all we must, of course, treat of the King and the Jews. Much has been written on this question. Dr. Joseph Jacobs, for instance, has declared that "the King as King did not enter into any special relations with his Jews qua Jews," that "from the point of view of the State, a Jew (at any rate in the twelfth century) had no disabilities qua Jew," that "the goods of the Jews escheated at their death to the King qua usurers, and not qua Jews." Mr. Frank Schechter, in an able paper entitled The Rlghtlessness of Mediaeval English Jewry, after saluting Dr. Jacobs, as all students of Anglo-Jewish history must do, challenges these statements, and quotes with approval Scherer's characterisation of the Jew in England as a rightless financial object (or agency) absolutely dependent on the arbitrary will of the King (" ein rechtloses, von der Willk?r des K?nigs ganz abh?ngiges Finanzobjekt"); Bishop Stubbss sentence that " the Jews, like the forests, were the special property of the King, and, as property worth careful cultivation, they had peculiar privileges and a very dangerous protection," and Miss Bateson's sentence " the Jews have been called royal villains, but more apt, perhaps, it</page><page sequence="9">ROYAL FAMILY OF ENGLAND IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 161 would be to describe them as men 'ferae naturae/ protected by a quasi forest law." Prynne had called the Jew "a villain in gross" or dependant. Although Mr. F. L. Schechter is right in criticising the sentences quoted above from Dr. Jacobs, he does not seem sufficiently to recognise "the autonomy of the Jews," "qualified" though it was, nor to notice their power to dispose of their property by will, &amp;c, subject though it was to extortions and deductions. It is not necessary here to review the whole question. In the statute "De la Jewerie" (c. 1275) there is used the expression with regard to the relationship of the Jew "au Roi, ky serf il est." This phrase, as to the Jew and the King, " tohose serf he is," seems to put the whole question in a nutshell. Hence the possibility of the chevage (or Jewish poll-tax) and the yellow badge. This recognised, however, that royal protection and privileges may also be recognised. Nor is it necessary here to dwell upon the machinery which was used by the King and his agents for working the Jewish revenue. The dealing with the extensive possessions of and the debts due to Aaron of Lincoln, who died in 1187, led to the establishment of a specialised section of the Treasury?the Scaccarium Aaronis?and the dangers to which the Jews (and the King's revenue from them) were exposed about the time of the coronation of Richard If led, as far as the Jews themselves were concerned, to the Ordinances of Jewry, and, so far as their property was concerned, to the establishment of a peculiar Jewish department, " the Exchequer of the Jews" This has been admirably described by Dr. Gross in his paper published at the holding of the Anglo-Je wish Exhibition in 1887, and in other works, so that we may pass on?only stating that, in a recent learned communication to our Society, Mr. Hilary Jenkinson has contended that " the Exchequer of the Jews was purely legal; so far as the accountancy of Jewish receipts was concerned it was 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 mafti and original ones." It is with hesitation that one questions the conclusion of such an authority as Mr. Hilary Jenkinson, who daily breathes the atmosphere of ancient records, but in the sentences just quoted, even with the qualifying phrase at the end? VOL. VIII. L</page><page sequence="10">162 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE JEWS AND THE does he quite recognise that the references to a "Wardrobe of the Judaism near the Exchequer of the Jews (Garderoba de Judaismo juxta Scaccarium Judceorum)" to the Jewish Exchequer seal, to the special Prison, and to the numerous officials connected with the Jewish revenue, suggest something more than " a myth " % The dealing of the King with the Jews showed itself not merely in tallages, in the seizure of the local Archce, in orders issued to the Jewries, in the appointments of officials, and in other public acts; but also in transactions with individual Jews. We shall see, in reference to the Queens and other members of the Royal Family, that the monarch again and again assigned to them the persons and possessions of pro? minent Israelites. Such expressions as " our Jew " (Judceus noster), " Jew of the King's Consort," a Jew and " his lord (Dominus suus)" &amp;c, are of frequent occurrence; and "licences to Jews" were granted, of which the following, taken from the Patent Rolls under date 1230 (p. 387), is a specimen: " Concessimus etiam eidem B. quod ipse et heredes sui habeant in perpetuum Judseos in terra sua commorantes, sicut R. de Pontibus et ceteri barones Pictavenses habent in terris suis." Other points might be discussed as to the relationship of the King and the Jews, and indeed other points will appear as we deal with other members of the Royal Family. This section, however, may be ended by a reference to the responsibility for the expulsion of the Jews. The ultimate decision, of course, rested with the King; though the example and the influence of other important personages may have had their effect on the decision, as indeed had the wishes of the barons, the clergy, and the people generally. Simon de Montfort had expelled the Jews from Leicester; Queen Eleanor of Provence had driven them from her dower-towns, and, indeed, she is credited with a large share in persuading her son, Edward I, to issue the actual order. His father, Henry III, had threatened the Jews with banishment in the year 1240; and Edward had arrested the whole community in 1286 in response to a tempting promise; and he would probably have issued an edict of banishment, but that a still heavier promise was made by, and accepted from, the unfortunate Israelites. Again Edward, when he "took the Cross" the second time, in 1288, banished the Jews from Guienne. At length, in 1290, the actual order for the expulsion was given by the</page><page sequence="11">ROYAL FAMILY OF ENGLAND IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 163 King, influenced by bis council (per regem et secretum concilium), and by the promises offered by the parliament. It has been debated (see F. L. Schechter, op. cit, p. 126) as to whether the decree was "a self denying ordinance in the interests of religion and political science," or " a mere brutal discarding of a resource that was steadily decreasing and was not worth husbanding"; whether it was "a generous surrender of the rights of the Crown to the fruits of Jewish usury, which rights were exercised by Edward with almost painful diffidence and reluctance," or u a mere casting off of a perquisite of the Crown, since new Christians, and even Papal usurers were at hand to encroach upon * the royal pre? serve ' of the Jews." Probably Edward acted with mixed motives; it will be remembered that he had always regarded the Jews with dis? favour ; it was he who, being at Oxford at the famous Ascension Day affair in 1268, posted off the news of the Jewish outrage to his father the King at Woodstock; his crusading instincts looked in the direction of harshness to the Jews; his mother's influence had always urged him on, and this especially since " the Ladye of Gay Provence " had become the Nun of Ambresbury. The revenue from the Jews was certainly diminishing; and the general feeling throughout the country was un? doubtedly in favour of the Expulsion. At the same time, it should be remembered that Edward strove to mitigate the severity of the uprooting and transplanting by general orders and by particular actions tending to alleviate the sufferings of the unfortunate exiles. We turn to the Queens of England; and from the marriage of Henry III in 1236 to the Expulsion of the Jews in 1290, we shall find frequent dealings between the Queens-Consort [Eleanor of Provence (1236-1272) and Eleanor of Castile (1272-1290)] and the Jewry. Both these royal ladies just survived the Banishment. Eleanor of Provence has been called, by Bishop Stubbs, " the steady enemy " of the Jews, and to her influence especially the Expulsion has been attributed; but when she came to England as a bride, she was supposed to be their patron; and it is true that great numbers of them flocked to this country after the marriage, as "the Provencal princes had always granted toleration to the Jews." Similarly, the names of the Jews and Eleanor were linked together at the time of the extraordinary London riot, when the Queen, shouted</page><page sequence="12">164 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE JEWS AND THE at as a witch and a sorceress, nearly lost her life at the hands of the mob, and when the Jews were furiously attacked and assaulted. So the baronial party regarded the Jews as friends of the Court and accounted them as enemies of the state. But really Eleanor's relationship to the Jews was (during the fifty four years that intervened between her marriage and the Expulsion) one long effort to extract from them the wherewithal to meet her expenditure and her debts. When the Queen's uncles, Thomas, Count of Savoy, and Boniface, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, visited England in 1240, they werei entertained by the Court with such extravagance that " not knowing how to provide money for this charge otherwise, Henry III forced the Jews to present him with 20,000 marks, on pain of being expelled the kingdom." Three years later, Eleanor brought about a marriage between her youngest sister, Cincia or Sanchia, and her brother-in-law, Bichard, Earl of Cornwall; and again there were extraordinary scenes of ex? travagance. " The dinner at this bridal, for instance, consisted of 30,000 dishes." Once more the Jews were resorted to; Aaron of York was compelled to pay 400 marks of gold and 4000 of silver, and similar extortions were made from other Israelites. The Patent and other Rolls tell of frequent grants made to this Queen at the expense of the Jews. Such an entry as that, in 1246, which tells of " the laudable service" of Jacob, brother of Elias le Eveske, implies the convenient organisation of the Jewish exchequer; while the following record?a generation later (1275)?speaks of the dealings with individual Jews : " Elias, the son of Moses, Judceus noster, advances 600 marks to the Queen-Mother," as Eleanor then was styled. In the year just mentioned (1275), we read in the Fine Rolls and from the Patent Rolls of a "grant to Eleanor the King's mother, that no Jew shall dwell or stay in any towns which she holds in dower "; hence the Jews of Cambridge, Gloucester, Worcester, Marlborough, &lt;fec, with all their chirographs and all their goods, were unceremoniously deported to Norwich (or later to Bedford), to Bristol, to Hereford, to Devizes and elsewhere ; and some of the property which they possessed in these towns seems to have been dealt with equally arbitrarily; for instance,</page><page sequence="13">ROYAL FAMILY OF ENGLAND IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 165 the Queen-Mother granted a house in the Jewry of Cambridge which Cok the Jew held there to a citizen of the University town, "for the rest of the life of the said Eleanor." Nor, as we have seen, does Eleanor of Provence seem to have been content till the unfortunate Jews were, largely at her instigation, banished from the realm altogether by Edward her son (procurante domina Alienora, matre didi regis Anglice). It may be added that a petition, recorded in the Parliamentary Polls, speaks of Eleanor's dealings with Jews in another direction: she is therein described as the patron of the inhabitants of the Domus Conversorum, and these converts are said "to pray indefatigably for the souls of the late King Henry and of dame Alianor, his companion/' Eleanor of Castile had been married (it will be remembered) to "the Lord Edward" in 1254 when she was a girl of ten years old; in the interval between her marriage and the death of Henry III in 1272 we shall not expect to find many references to any relationship to the Jews; for, during the time of her education and during the period of the Barons' War, she resided chiefly in France, and when that trouble ceased, only a few years elapsed before the devoted princess accompanied her husband on his expedition to Syria. During their absence Henry died, but it was not till August 2nd that Edward and Eleanor returned to England. Still there are various financial allusions; after the births of the three eldest children in the years 1566, 7, 8, their delighted grandfather Henry III increased the dower of the prin? cess; and there are allusions in the Bolls of the Exchequer of the Jews and elsewhere to the influence of Eleanor of Castile in Jewish affairs (see Bigg, i. 273) and to Jewish debts "assigned by the King to the said Eleanor" (ibid., p. 289). The influence of Queen Eleanor of Provence was exerted in the same direction (ibid., p. 309). On the accession of Edward, or rather on his return to England, his Queen-Consort immediately became the recipient of grants of various kinds connected iwith the Jews, which were continuously poured forth until the Expulsion in 1290. Comparing the dealings with the Jews of the Queen-Dowager and Queen-Consort, Gr?tz somewhat strangely says that Eleanor of Provence was against the Jews and that Eleanor of Castile was for them. The former, after the death of her husband Henry III and especially after</page><page sequence="14">166 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE JEWS AND THB she had taken the veil, of course had less power to fleece the Jews, and she certainly increased in her religious dislike to them; but the latter (Eleanor of Castile) cannot in any sense be described as friendly to the Israelites, excepting that she favoured and patronised certain individual Jews, whom she found useful in helping her finances. A long list might be compiled from the various Rolls recording grants made in favour of the Queen-Consort. Some examples may be given. In 1273, Hagin, son of Cresse, being indebted to Eleanor in ?100 and more in respect of her gold, permission was given to withdraw from the London Jewish chest a charter bearing that amount. In the same year, Eleanor requested the justices assigned to the custody of the Jews " to respite all debts and demands affecting the Hospital of St. Katharine by the Tower on Jewish account." In the next year (1274) commences a series of records whereby all debts due from Norman D'Arcy to the Exchequer of the Jews were assigned to the Queen-Consort. In 1275, we learn from an interesting record in the Jewish Ex? chequer Rolls, that the King granted to the Queen "all the debts owing to, and goods, and chattels of Cok Hagin, Jew, of London, which debts, goods, and chattels concern Us as forfeit, by reason that the said Jew is excommunicate, and long ago refused, and still persists in refusing, to suffer himself to be tried according to the Law and Custom of our Jewry; &amp;c." This probably (as Mr. Rigg suggests) refers to some Synagogue trouble. Afterwards Cok Hagin, who was the same as Hagin son of Cresse (or Deulecresse) mentioned above, seems to have triumphed; for he was in 1281 appointed to the important post of " Arch-Presbyter," the appointment being recommended by the Queen, who, however, still apparently retained a hold on Hagin's property, some of which she sold after the Expulsion. In the record which notes this last transaction Cok Hagin is styled "the Jew of the King's Consort." In 1277 and the following years, the Close Rolls record the assignment to Eleanor of a large share of the property left by Jacob of Oxford, a Jew of London, with whom the Queen had had various dealings during his lifetime. In 1280, a curious record tells us that Walter de Kent, the Queen's attorney, demanded the sum of ?440 due to Eleanor on account of the debts owing to Hagin, the son of Master Moses, Jew, which debts the</page><page sequence="15">ROYAL FAMILY OF ENGLAND IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 167 said Queen had by gift of the King. The unfortunate Hagin, who was a prisoner at the time, then held the post of Areh-Presbyter; he was the uncle of Cok Hagin, mentioned above as his successor in the same office. In 1283, we learn from the Patent Rolls of a grant to Eleanor, the King's Consort, of all the concealed goods of certain condemned Jews; and similar grants were made at other dates?for instance, so late as 1290, when the King was at Amesbury?apparently on a visit to his mother, he "granted to Eleanor, the Queen-Consort, any action or forfeiture which he might have against Aaron, son of Yives, Jew, of Edward, the King's brother, by reason of concealed goods of condemned Jews." In 1285 there was a wholesale consignment to Eleanor of the debts in the Jewish chests of Cambridge and Bedford, which had been carried away to the Isle of Ely. In the same year (1285), the Patent Bolls record a grant to Floria, late the wife of Master Elias, son of Master Moses of Oxford, in con? sideration of ?1000 paid by her for the goods of her husband concealed by her, to Eleanor, the King's Consort, that for the rest of her life she should not be tallaged, nor the debts of her husband pardoned. Other instances might be quoted. It may suffice, however, to say that, even after the Expulsion and after the death of Eleanor, records may be noted; such as an inquiry, referred to in the Patent Bolls, under date January 18, 1291, as to "the houses of the Jews in the City of York which were in the hands of the late Queen-Consort." It will be noticed that, in several of the above quotations, the exactions from the Jews were effected by seizing the lands or possessions of those who were indebted to the Jews. There were, consequently, great murmurings against the Queen and others who availed themselves of the services of the hated usurers. Archbishop Peckham voiced these complaints when he declared that " the Queen went on from day to day acquiring possession of the manors and lands of the nobles, which the Jews by the whirlpool of their usuries, with the assistance of the King's Courts, extorted from the Christians (Per regnum Angliae clamor validus invalescit et scandalum inde plurimum generatur, super eo quod dicitur dominam reginam Angliae illustrem, cui assistitis, plura maneria nobilium, terras et possessiones alias occupare, et in suum peculium reduxisse, qua?</page><page sequence="16">168 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE JEWS AND THE Judcei mediante voragine usurorum patrocinante curia regia a Christicolis extorserunt, et adhuc de die in diem dicitur praadicta domina prsedia et possessiones alias per hunc modum). Bishop Grosseteste was equally plain-spoken in his animadversions: "Princes (said he) who received a share of the usury which the Jews ground out of Christian people, lived by pillage, and without pity ate and drank and covered themselves with the blood of those whom it was their duty to protect (Principes quoque, qui de usuris quas Judoci a Christianis extorserunt aliquid accipmnt, de rapina vivunt, et sanguinem oorum quos tueri deberent sine misericordia comedunt, bibunt et in duunt)." Such complaints, together with his own religious scruples?not to mention the diminished services which could be rendered by his im? poverished subjects?eventually induced the King to issue the notorious Expulsion order, which was to take effect by October 9, 1290. In the following month Eleanor of Castile died after a short illness, and the monuments, erected by her sorrowing husband, from Grantham to Charing Cross told of the good qualities of a devoted Queen. There are other members of the Royal Family to whose dealing? with the Jews brief reference must be made. Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who married Eleanor the sister of Henry III, banished the Jews from his county-town, with the approval of Grosseteste, who was then Archdeacon thereof. These are the words of the charter: " Simon de Montfort, lord of Leicester, to all who may have or see the present page, health in the Lord ! Know all of you that I, for the good of my soul and the souls of my ancestors and successors, have granted, and by this present charter have confirmed, on behalf of me and my heirs for ever, to my burgesses of Leicester and their heirs, that no Jew or Jewess in my time, or in the time of my heirs to the end of the world, shall inhabit, or remain, or obtain a resi? dence in Leicester, &amp;c." This action doubtless influenced Edward I, to whom Simon de Montfort was uncle and tutor. In the year 1255 Henry III borrowed of his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, 5000 marks sterling : and, for securing the payment thereof, assigned and set over all his Jews of England (omnes Judwos no&amp;tros</page><page sequence="17">ROYAL FAMILY OF ENGLAND IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 169 Anglise) to the said Earl; and bound them to pay the Earl 3000 marks which they owed to the King, at certain terms and days, under pain of forfeiting ?500 for every default of payment; and gave the Earl power to distrain them by their chattels and bodies for the same. In 1262 Henry granted his Jewry to the Lord Edward, his elder son, with the use of his Exchequer of the Jews, to seal his writs, et hdbeat prisonam ad Judceos. The prince, in the following year, handed over the Jews to certain Caturcensian merchants for two years, and the King ratified the demise; but, shortly before the expiration of that period, Henry resumed control of the Jewry (Rex dictum Judaismum cepit in manum suum). In 1271, to meet the expenses of Edward's journey to the Holy Land, his father, King Henry III, mortgaged the Jewry to Earl Richard for the second time. Heavy taxation was inflicted upon the unfortunate Jews, some individuals being treated with special harshness. The Earl, however, died on April 2nd in the next year; whereupon the King resumed the Jewry; but before the year was out death closed the long reign of Henry III. To pass from the mortgaging of the whole Jewry to the assignment of an individual is a long way in practice but not in theory. When we turn to Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, the second son of Henry III, we only have to deal with single cases, such as that of Aaron, son of Vives, an important Jew, who was generally styled " Judaeus Edmundi," and in connection with whom the Earl was called " dominus suus." A survey has thus been made of the relationship of the members of the King and the Royal Family to the Jews in the thirteenth century; and it has been noted how arbitrary and exacting were the dealings in question. We can well understand, therefore (it may be remarked in conclusion), the anxiety and uncertainty which is expressed in the following extract (see M. D. Davis: Shetaroth, p. 215) from a deed drawn up by Samuel, son of the honourable Rabbi Isaac, in the year 1254, with reference to his share of a debt which he had transferred to Rabbi Moses Crespin : "But if, which Heaven forfend, it should be seized by the King or Queen under any pretence, or for any debt for which they may render</page><page sequence="18">170 THE JEWS AND THE ROYAL FAMILY OP ENGLAND. me liable, I undertake for myself and my heirs to pay him or his attorneys, producing this bill, all that pertains to my share, principal or interest, within a month of its being presented?granting a lien on all my effects, movable or immovable, that I possess under the whole heavens." wnm mn dip in w dip nWw naton tu in iten Tai np^ m m\ iai 'an idp twp ipdd ?nb in A d!?p$&gt; w fen &gt;rtaD n? a?n</page></plain_text>