History of the Jews in England

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This article is about the history of the Jewish people in England; also see the related Jewish history article. England is the southern and central portion of the island of Great Britain. In broad strokes, there are several main periods of Jewish history in England. First, there is the early period, marking the time from when the Jews arrived in England at the time of the Norman Conquest until 1290, when all the Jews in England were expelled. They were only allowed to return in 1655, marking the second period of Jewish history in England, where Jews were second-class citizens until full emanicipation in the 1890s. Finally, there is the modern history of the 350,000 Jews currently living in England.

Early History

First Settlements, 1066

There is no evidence of Jews residing in England before the Norman Conquest. The few references in the Anglo-Saxon Church laws either relate to Jewish practices about Easter or apply to passing visitors, the Gallo-Jewish slave-traders, who imported English slaves to the Roman market and thus brought about the Christianizing of England. William of Malmesbury states that William the Conqueror brought the Jews from Rouen to England. At first the status of Jews was not strictly determined. An attempt was made to introduce the Continental principle, that he and all that was his were the king's property, and a clause to that effect was inserted under Henry I. in some manuscripts of the so-called "Laws of Edward the Confessor"; but Henry granted a charter to Rabbi Joseph, the chief Rabbi of London, and all his followers. Under this charter, Jews were permitted to move about the country without paying tolls, to buy and sell, to sell their pledges after holding them a year and a day, to be tried by their peers, and to be sworn on the Torah rather than on a Christian Bible. Special weight was attributed to the Jew's oath, which was valid against that of twelve Christians. The sixth clause of the charter was specially important: it granted to the Jews the right of moving wherever they wanted, as if these were the king's own property ("sicut res propriæ nostræ").

King Stephen Through King Richard

Gentile-Jewish relations in England were disturbed under Stephen, who burned down the house of a Jew in Oxford (some accounts say with a Jew in it) because he refused to pay a contribution to the king's expenses. It was during this time that the first recorded blood libel against the Jews was brought in the case of William of Norwich (1144). While the crusaders in Germany were trying their swords upon the Jews, outbursts against the latter in England were, according to the Jewish chroniclers, prevented by King Stephen. With the restoration of order under Henry II., the Jews renewed their activity. Within five years of his accession Jews are found at London, Oxford, Cambridge, Norwich, Thetford, Bungay, Canterbury, Winchester, Newport, Stafford, Windsor, and Reading. Yet they were not permitted to bury their dead elsewhere than in London, a restriction which was not removed till 1177. Their spread throughout the country enabled the king to draw upon them as occasion demanded; he repaid them by demand notes on the sheriffs of the counties, who accounted for payments thus made in the half-yearly accounts on the piperolls (see Aaron of Lincoln). Strongbow's conquest of Ireland (1170) was financed by Josce, a Jew of Gloucester; and the king accordingly fined Josce for having lent money to those under his displeasure. As a rule, however, Henry II. does not appear to have limited in any way the financial activity of Jews. The favorable position of the English Jews was shown, among other things, by the visit of Abraham ibn Ezra in 1158, by that of Isaac of Chernigov in 1181, and by the resort to England of the Jews who were exiled from France by Philip Augustus in 1182, among them probably being Judah Sir Leon of Paris. In 1168, when concluding an alliance with Frederick Barbarossa, Henry II. seized the chief representatives of the Jews and sent them over into Normandy, while tallaging the rest 5,000 marks (Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, i. 205). When, however, he asked the rest of the country to pay a tithe for the crusade against Saladin in 1186, he demanded a quarter of the Jewish chattels. The tithe was reckoned at £70,000, the quarter at £60,000. In other words, the value of the personal property of the Jews was regarded as one-fourth that of the whole country. It is improbable, however, that the whole amount was paid at once, as for many years after the imposition of the tallage arrears were demanded from the recalcitrant Jews. The king had probably been led to make this large demand upon English Jewry by the surprising windfall which came to his treasury at the death of Aaron of Lincoln. All property obtained by usury, whether by Jew or by Christian, fell into the king's hands on the death of the usurer; Aaron of Lincoln's estate included £15,000 of debts owed to him. Besides this, a large treasure came into the king's hands, which, however, was lost on being sent over to Normandy. A special branch of the treasury, constituted in order to deal with this large account, was known as "Aaron's Exchequer". Starr of [[Aaron of Lincoln, 1181, Acknowledging Receipt of Part Payment from Richard Malebys, Afterward the Leader in the York Massacre, 1190.]] In this era, Jews lived on good terms with their non-Jewish neighbors, including the clergy; they entered churches freely, and took refuge in the abbeys in times of commotion. Some Jews lived in opulent houses, and helped to build a large number of the abbeys and monasteries of the country. However, by the end of Henry's reign they had incurred the ill will of the upper classes. the anti-jewish sentiment fostered by the crusades, during the latter part of the reign of Henry, spread the anti-Jewish sentiment throughout the nation.

Massacres at London and York, 1189-1190

Richard I had taken the cross before his coronation (September 3, 1189). A number of the principal Jews of England presented themselves to do homage at Westminster; but there appears to have been a superstition against Jews being admitted to such a holy ceremony, and they were repulsed during the banquet which followed the coronation. The rumour spread from Westminster to the City of London that the king had ordered a massacre of the Jews; and a mob in Old Jewry, after vainly attacking throughout the day the strong stone houses of the Jews, set them on fire at night, killing those within who attempted to escape. The king was enraged at this insult to his royal dignity, but took no steps to punish the offenders, owing to their large numbers. After his departure on the crusade, riots with loss of life occurred at Lynn, where the Jews attempted to attack a baptised coreligionist who had taken refuge in a church. The seafaring population rose against them, fired their houses, and put them to the sword. So, too, at Stamford fair, on March 7, 1190, many were slain, and on March 18 fifty-seven were slaughtered at Bury St. Edmunds. The Jews of Lincoln saved themselves only by taking refuge in a castle. Isolated attacks on Jews occurred also at Colchester, Thetford, and Ospringe, but the most striking incident occurred at York on the night of March 16-17, 1190. Alarmed by the preceding massacres and by the setting on fire of several of their houses by the mob of crusaders preparing to follow the king, the Jews of York with their leader Josce asked the warden of the king's castle at York to receive them with their wives and children. In the castle, the Jews had no hopes of escaping death by hunger except by forced conversion to Christianity. Their religious leader, Rabbi Yom Tov of Joigny, exhorted them to slay themselves rather than adopt either alternative, and the president, Josce, began the self-immolation by slaying his wife Anna and his two children. Finally Josce was slain by Yom Tov himself. The few who had refused to follow their example appealed in vain for pity to the Christians, who entered at daybreak and slew them. Finding that the deeds proving the indebtedness of the rioters to the Jews were not in the tower, the mob rushed to the cathedral, and there took possession of them and burned them.

Ordinance of the Jewry, 1194

During Richard's absence in the Land of Israel and during his captivity the lot of the Jews was aggravated by William de Longchamp. The Jewish community was forced to contribute toward the king's ransom 5,000 marks, more than three times as much as the contribution of the City of London. On his return, Richard determined to organise the Jewish community in order to ensure that he should no longer be defrauded, by any such outbreaks as those that occurred after his coronation, of his just dues as universal legatee of the Jewry. Richard accordingly decided, in 1194, that records should be kept by royal officials of all the transactions of the Jews, which without such record should not be legal. Every debt was to be entered upon a chirograph, one part of which was to be kept by the Jewish creditor, and the other preserved in a chest to which only special officials should have access. By this means the king could at any time ascertain the property of any Jew in the land; and no destruction of the bond held by the Jew could release the creditor from his indebtedness. This "Ordinance of the Jewry" was practically the beginning of the Exchequer of the Jews, which made all the transactions of the English Jewry liable to taxation by the King of England, who thus became a sleeping partner in all the transactions of Jewish usury. The king besides demanded two bezants in the pound, that is, 10 per cent, of all sums recovered by the Jews with the aid of his courts. At this point in time Jews had many of the same rights as gentile citizens. However, their loans could be recovered at law, whereas the Christian usurer could not recover more than his original loan. They were in direct relation to the king and his courts; but this did not imply any arbitrary power of the king to tax them or to take their money without repayment, as is frequently exemplified in the pipe-rolls. They were the king's "men," it is true, but no more than the barons of the time; and they had the privilege of the baronial rank, and thus could move and settle anywhere.

Under John, 1205-1216

As early as 1198 Pope Innocent III. had written to all Christian princes, including Richard of England, calling upon them to compel the remission of all usury demanded by Jews from Christians. This would render the Jewish community's very existence impossible. On July 15, 1205, the pope laid down the principle that Jews were doomed to perpetual servitude because they had crucified Jesus. In England the secular power soon followed the initiative of the Church. John, having become indebted to the Jewish community while in Ireland, at first treated Jews with a show of forbearance. He confirmed the charter of Rabbi Josce and his sons, and made it apply to all the Jews of England; he wrote a sharp remonstrance to the mayor of London against the attacks that were continually being made upon the Jews of that city, alone of all the cities of England. He reappointed one Jacob archpriest of all the English Jews (July 12, 1199). But with the loss of Normandy in 1205 a new spirit seems to have come over the attitude of John to his Jews. In the height of his triumph over the pope, he demanded the sum of no less than £100,000 from the religious houses of England, and 66,000 marks from the Jews (1210). One of the latter, Abraham of Bristol, who refused to pay his quota of 10,000 marks, had, by order of the king, seven of his teeth extracted, one a day, till he was willing to disgorge (Roger of Wendover, ii. 232; but see Ramsay, "Angevin Empire," p. 426, London, 1903). Though John squeezed as much as he could out of the Jewish community, they were an important element on his side in the triangular struggle between king, barons, and municipalities which makes up the constitutional history of England during his reign and that of his son. Even in Magna Carta clauses were inserted preventing the king or his Jewish subjects from obtaining interest during the minority of an heir.

Increasing Persecution, 1200s

With the accession of Henry III. (1216) the position of the Jews became somewhat easier, but only for a short time. Innocent III. had in the preceding year caused the Lateran Council to pass the law enforcing the Badge upon the Jews; and in 1218 Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, brought it into operation in England, the badge taking the form of an oblong white patch of two finger-lengths by four. The action of the Church was followed by similar opposition on the part of the English boroughs. Petitions were accordingly sent to the king in many instances to remove his Jews from the boroughs, and they were expelled from Bury St. Edmunds in 1190, Newcastle in 1234, Wycombe in 1235, Southampton in 1236, Berkhamsted in 1242, Newbury in 1244 With the outbreak of the Barons' war violent measures were adopted to remove all traces of indebtedness either to the king or to the higher barons. The Jewries of London, Canterbury, Northampton, Winchester, Cambridge, Worcester, and Lincoln were looted (1263-65), and the archæ either destroyed or deposited at the headquarters of the barons at Ely. Simon de Montfort, who had at an early stage expelled the Jews from his town of Leicester, when at the height of his power after the battle of Lewes annulled all indebtedness to the Jews. He had been accused of sharing the plunder, but issued edicts for their protection after the battle (Kingsford, "Song of Lewes," pp. 59, 80, Oxford, 1890). Both the Jewry and the king as its representative must have suffered incalculably by this general wiping out of indebtedness. The value of the Jewish community to the royal treasury had become considerably lessened during the thirteenth century through two circumstances: the king's income from other sources had continually increased, and the contributions of the Jews had decreased both absolutely and relatively. Besides this, the king had found other sources from which to obtain loans. Italian merchants, "pope's usurers" as they were called, supplied him with money, at times on the security of the Jewry. By the contraction of the area in which Jews were permitted to exercise their money-lending activity their means of profit were lessened, while the king by his continuous exactions prevented the automatic growth of interest. By the middle of the thirteenth century the Jews of England, like those of the Continent, had become chattels of the king. There appeared to be no limit to the exactions he could impose upon them, though it was obviously against his own interest to deprive them entirely of capital, without which they could not gain for him usurious interest. Further prejudice had been raised against the Jews just about this time by the revival of the blood libel, a charge of ritual murder. The king had sold the Jewish community to his brother Richard of Cornwall in Feb., 1255, for 5,000 marks, and had lost all rights over it for a year. But in the following August a number of the chief Jews who had assembled at Lincoln to celebrate the marriage of a daughter of Berechiah de Nicole were seized on a charge of having murdered a boy named Hugh. Ninety-one were sent to London to the Tower, eighteen were executed for refusal to plead, and the rest were kept in prison till the expiry of Richard's control over their property.

The "Statutum de Judaismo," 1275

Shortly after his coronation Edward I., in 1275, determined to solve by a bold experiment the Jewish question as it then existed in England. The Church laws against usury had recently been reiterated with more than usual vehemence at the Council of Lyons (1274), and Edward in the "Statutum de Judaismo" absolutely forbade Jews to lend on usury, but granted them permission to engage in commerce and handicrafts, and even to take farms for a period not exceeding ten years, though he expressly excluded them from all the feudal advantages of the possession of land. This permission, however, regarded as a means by which Jews in general could gain a livelihood, was illusory. Farming can not be taken up at a moment's notice, nor can handicrafts be acquired at once. Moreover, in England in the thirteenth century the guilds were already securing a monopoly of all skilled labour, and in the majority of markets only those could buy and sell who were members of the Gild Merchant. By depriving the Jews of a resort to usury, Edward was practically preventing them from earning a living at all under the conditions of life then existing in feudal England; and in principle the "Statute of Judaism" expelled them fifteen years before the final expulsion. Some of the Jews attempted to evade the law by resorting to the tricks of the Caursines, who lent sums and extorted bonds that included both principal and interest. Some resorted to highway robbery; others joined the Domus Conversorum (see below); while a considerable number appear to have resorted to clipping the coin as a means of securing a precarious existence. As a consequence, in 1278 the whole English Jewry was imprisoned; and no less than 293 Jews were executed at London.

Leadership Chief Rabbis, 1200s

Jews were allowed to have their own jurisdiction, and there is evidence of their having a bet din with three judges. Reference is made to the parnas (president) and gabbai (treasurer), of the congregation, and to scribes and chirographers. A complete system of education seems to have been in vogue. At the head of the Jewish community was placed a chief rabbi, known as "the presbyter of all the Jews of England" ; he appears to have been selected by the Jews themselves, who were granted a congé d'élire by the king.

For more detail see: History of the Jews in England--Organization; Chief Rabbis

The Expulsion, 1290

After the experience in Jewish legislation which Edward I. had from 1269 onward, there was only one answer he could give as a true son of the Church to these demands: If the Jews were not to have intercourse with their fellow citizens as artisans, merchants, or farmers, and were not to be allowed to take usury, the only alternative was for them to leave the country. He immediately expelled the Jews from Gascony, a province still held by England and in which he was traveling at the time; and on his return to England (July 18, 1290) he issued writs to the sheriffs of all the English counties ordering them to enforce a decree to the effect that all Jews should leave England before All Saints' Day of that year. They were allowed to carry their portable property; but their houses escheated to the king, except in the case of a few favored persons who were allowed to sell theirs before they left. Between 4,000 and 16,000 Jews were expelled.

For more detail see: History of the Jews in England--The Expulsion

Between the expulsion of the Jews in 1290 and their formal return in 1655 there is no official trace of Jews as such on English soil except in connection with the Domus Conversorum, which kept a considerable number of them within its precincts up to 1551 and even later.

For more information on the Intermediate Period see: History of the Jews in England--Intermediate Period

Resettlement Period, 1655-1800s

Hidden Jews in England

Toward the middle of the seventeenth century a considerable number of Marano merchants settled in London and formed there a secret congregation, at the head of which was Antonio Fernandez Carvajal. They conducted a large business with the Levant, East and West Indies, Canary Islands, and Brazil, and above all with the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal.

For more information on the Intermediate Period see: History of the Jews in England--Maranos in England and History of the Jews in England--Menasseh Ben Israel's Mission

The Resettlement, 1655

In the 1650s, Menasseh ben Israel, a rabbi and leader of the Dutch Jewish community, approached Oliver Cromwell with the proposition that Jews should at long last be readmitted to England. Cromwell agreed, and although he could not compel a council called for the purpose in December 1655 to consent formally to readmission, he made it clear that the ban on Jews would no longer be enforced. In the years 1655–56, the controversy over the readmission of Jews was fought out in a pamphlet war. The issue divided religious radicals from each another as well as from more conservative members of society. William Prynne was vehemently opposed to permitting Jews to return, the Quaker Margaret Fell no less passionately in favor. In the end, Jews were readmitted in 1655, and, by 1690, about 300 Jews had settled in England.

Jews in England During the 1700s

For information the Jews in this period, see:

For more information on the Jew Bill of 1753 see: History of the Jews in England--The Jew Bill of 1753
For more information on the Oath of Abjuration see: History of the Jews in England--The Oath of Abjuration
History of the Jews in England--Other Influences on the Jewish Standing in the Community

Emancipation and Growing Influence, 1800s

With Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the hopes of the Jews rose high; and the first step toward a similar alleviation in their case was taken in 1830 when Mr. Huskisson presented a petition signed by 2,000 merchants and others of Liverpool. This was immediately followed by a bill presented by R. Grant on April 15 of that year which was destined to engage the English legislature in one form or another for the next thirty years. In 1837, Queen Victoria knighted Moses Haim Montefiore; four years later, Isaac Lyon Goldsmid was made baronet, the first Jew to receive a hereditary title. The first Jewish Lord Mayor of London, Sir David Salomons, was elected in 1855, followed by the 1858 emancipation of the Jews. On July 26 1858, Lionel de Rothschild was finally allowed to sit in the British House of Commons when the law restricting the oath of office to Chrisitians was changed; Benjamin Disraeli, a baptised Christian of Jewish parentage, was already an MP. In 1874, Disraeli became Prime Minister having earlier been Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1884 Nathan Mayer Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild became the first Jewish member of the British House of Lords; again Disraeli was already a member. [[Nathan Mayer Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild.]] By 1882, 46,000 Jews lived in England and, by 1890, Jewish emancipation was complete in every walk of life. Since 1858, Parliament has never been without Jewish members.

For more information see: History of the Jews in England--The Struggle for Emancipation

Modern Times

Immigration of Jews fleeing persecution in Russia brought the Jewish population to 250,000 before the First World War. About 50,000 Jews served in England's army during the war, and around 10,000 died on the battlefield. Though there was some growing anti-semitism during the 1930s, there was never wholesale persecution of the Jews before or during World War II. After the War, the Jewish community continued to grow. Currently, approximately two-thirds of Great Britain’s 350,000 Jews currently live in London

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