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The Expansion of the English Jewish Community in the Reign of King Stephen*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Kevin T. Streit
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Extract

By the time Henry II imposed a large donum on cities, knights, moneyers, and Jews in 1159, the English Jewry dwelt in at least eleven communities throughout the realm. Of these, the London community was certainly the oldest, having been established by the Conqueror. The origins of the other communities are much less certain. Records from the end of Henry I's reign suggest that the Jews of England were still based in or around London, though some indirect evidence suggests the presence of isolated Jews elsewhere in the kingdom. It seems clear, however, that the years falling between Henry I's death and the accession of Henry II—the reign of Stephen, commonly known as the Anarchy—witnessed an expansion of Jews throughout the country, marking this period as very important to the history of English Jews. The meager evidence surviving suggests three important points: first, that it was, in fact, in the reign of Stephen that communities of royal Jews spread from London into other English towns; second, that significant Jewish communities existed only in areas that remained under royal control during Stephen's reign; and third, that these new Jewish communities may have been fostered by Stephen to further his own political and fiscal interests. The paucity of the available evidence makes any case for the English Jewry in this period uncomfortably conjectural; nevertheless, the few scraps that exist suggest these points to be at the least plausible, if not indeed likely.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , Summer 1993 , pp. 177 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1993

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Footnotes

*

This paper owes a significant debt to a number of people. I have greatly benefited from the indulgent guidance and valuable criticism of Professor Robert C. Stacey. My wife, Karen Neves Streit, generously devoted much patient effort to helping me with part of my research and to proofreading the draft. Mr. Ralph Johnson also donated his technical skill with the word processor to the final revision of the text. I alone am responsible for any errors that remain.

References

1 Richardson, H. G., The English Jewry under the Angevin Kings (London, 1960), pp. 8–9Google Scholar. Richardson expects clearer evidence for other communities in Pipe Roll 31 Henry I if they did in fact exist, but does not find it.

2 Pipe Roll 31 Henry I, ed. Hunter, Joseph for Record Commission (corr. ed.; London, 1929) pp. 146-49Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., p. 53.

4 Ibid., p. 150.

5 pro plac' Judeorum.

6 Ibid., p. 93. The same page lists the entry, “Roger de Scherdestona reddit Compotum de x li. pro placitis Judicii et de plac' de Tietford.” The word Judicii might be interpreted instead as Judex, though the entry appears to be the standard formula, “for pleas of judgment,” especially since Roger de Scherdestona is recorded in 1139 and 1140 as praepositus of Thetford (Crosby, Alan, A History of Thetford [1986], p. 31Google Scholar). The proximity to the entry on the mysterious Benjamin may suggest the alternate rendering of the word, however.

7 PR 31 Henry I, p. 149. Roth (History of the Jews in England [Oxford, 1940] p. 8Google ScholarPubMed), states that the fine of £2,000 represented a full tenth of the royal income for that year, cancelling royal debts to the Jews and putting the latter in the red at the Exchequer. However, only £833 6s. 8d. was paid in this year; the rest remained owing. Nevertheless, as Roth puts it, the “timeliness” of the charge may not have been accidental, for the amount paid still provided a substantial contribution to the royal coffers. The tables on the Roll given in Green, Judith, The Government of England under Henry I (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 223-25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, provide a useful check against Roth's figures.

8 O'Brien, Bruce R., “Studies of the ‘Leges Edwardi Confessoris’ and their Milieu” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1990), pp. 61–65Google Scholar. O'Brien argues that it was authored by a cathedral canon at Coventry.

9 Ibid., p. 202, # 2S.0, my emphasis. “Sciendum est, quia omnes Iudei, quocumque regna sint, sub tutela et defensione regis ligie debent esse; neque aliquis eorum potest se subdere alicui diuiti sine licentia regis, quia ipsi Iudei et omnia sua regis sunt.”

10 Ibid., # 23.1, my emphasis. “Quodsi aliquis detinuerit eos uel pecuniam eorum, requirat rex tanquam suum proprium, si uult et potest.”

11 Richardson, , English Jewry, pp. 161-62Google Scholar, warns against arguing from silence when working with the Pipe Rolls. Any seigneurial Jews who may have been dwelling in the kingdom would, by definition, have been beyond the grasp of the sheriffs and, therefore, have been beyond the scope of the Exchequer's records, rendering them invisible to the historian. The Leges here seems to break the silence of the Rolls.

12 Pipe Roll 2 Henry II, ed. Pipe Roll Society (London, 1884), pp. 8, 15, and 36Google Scholar.

13 For this family see Richardson, , English Jewry, p. 2Google Scholar.

14 PR 3 Henry II, pp. 72 and 96.

15 PR 4 Henry II, pp. 127 and 183.

16 Table of dona amounts (first column) is based on PR 5 Henry II, pp. 3, 12, 17, 24, 28, 35, 46, 53, and 65. Figures have been converted into marks for convenience of comparison, as per Lipman, , The Jews of Medieval Norwich (London, 1967) p. 4Google Scholar. Lipman takes his figures from Richardson, , English Jewry, p. 9Google Scholar. Lipman apparently has employed Richardson's list without examining the source itself: Richardson's misreading of Worcestershire (Wirecestrescira) as Wiltshire (Wiltescira)-an error that compromises one of Richardson's arguments regarding Jewish settlement during the Anarchy (English Jewry, p. 9, n5)-has passed unchecked into Lipman's account. The percentage of each town's donum (second column above) contributed by its Jewish community is calculated by the present writer, based upon the dona listed for each town, not county.

17 Although Richardson interpreted the figure listed in 5 Henry II, £44 6s. 8d., as 72.5 marks, the correct conversion is 66.5 marks.

18 The Thetford figure is problematic, because, while the Jews's donum is given as £30, that for the entire town is given as just 10m., making the Jews's “percentage” of the whole a whopping 447.8%—a doubtful figure as it stands. Though Richardson states that earl Hugh Bigod held Thetford during the war (English Jewry, pp. 12-13), this conclusion is not easy to prove; Stephen appears to have granted Thetford to William, third earl of Warenne, in 1139 or 1140 (Victoria History of the County of Norfolk, vol. 2, ed. Page, William [London, 1906], p. 391Google Scholar). Crosby's History of Thetford does not clarify the situation: he twice refers to Roger Bigod as lord of the manor of Thetford following the Conquest (pp. 25-27), but later says William I granted the manor to William, first earl of Warenne, in the wake of the Conquest (pp. 33-34). The lordship of Thetford, and its Jews, between 1140 and 1156 would seem to have been a double borough, a royal town granted out, evidently, to the first and third earls Warenne, and a linked, new urban settlement on a manor belonging to the Bigods.

19 No figure is given for the town donum of Bungay.

20 This entry is not actually called a donum, but is simply recorded as a payment “pro Judeo,” evidently a single Jew.

21 PR 5 Henry II, p. 55.

22 Richardson, , English Jewry, pp. 12–13Google Scholar.

23 Ibid., p. 9; list of castles held by Stephen and Matilda respectively, based upon Davis, R. H. C., King Stephen (3rd ed.; London, 1990), pp. 71, 89Google Scholar.

24 Richardson, , English Jewry, pp. 12–13Google Scholar.

25 Ibid.

26 See the recent, supporting numismatic evidence of King, Edmund, “The Anarchy of King Stephen's Reign,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5th ser., 34 (1984): 133-53; esp. 151-52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Which, suggestively, had a moneyer named David; see Roth, , History, pp. 11–12, n5Google ScholarPubMed. Roth proposes that the Thetford Jews's prominence in 5 Henry II may be due to the presence of the mint—a further suggestion of royal authority over the Jews of Thetford during Stephen's reign.

28 Richardson, , English Jewry, p. 9Google Scholar. The relative “newness” of these communities seems particularly true in the case of Worcester.

29 For the story of St. William of Norwich, see Jessopp, A. and James, M. R., The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich by Thomas of Monmouth (Cambridge, 1896)Google Scholar.

30 See James, , “The Legend,” in St. William, pp. lxii–lxxixGoogle Scholar; Langmuir, Gavin I., “Thomas of Monmouth: Detector of Ritual Murder,” Speculum 59 (1984): 820-46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Langmuir, , “Thomas of Monmouth,” p. 845Google Scholar. While the thrust of Langmuir's argument is that, in the Life of St. William, Thomas invented the lurid antisemitic accusations that became all too common in Europe in the following centuries, Langmuir's own remarks demonstrate that Thomas can be seen in places to report a distinctly English “anti-Normano-semitism,” distinct from Thomas' accusations, that the monk did not need to invent.

32 Richardson, , English Jewry, p. 3Google Scholar, wisely points out the Norman-French identity that the English Jews shared with the political masters of the kingdom. For the importance of the Norman-Jewish community based in Rouen in the eleventh-twelfth centuries, see Golb's, Norman landmark work, Les Juifs de Rouen au Môyen Age: portrait d'une culture oubliée (Rouen; 1985)Google Scholar.

33 The Life of Christina of Markyate, trans, and ed. Talbot, C. H. (Oxford, 1959), pp. 74–75Google Scholar. For a contrary interpretation of the incident concerning the Jewess, see Barlow, Frank, The English Church, 1066-1154 (London, 1979) p. 204Google Scholar.

34 Talbot, , Christina of Markyate, p. 12Google Scholar.

35 Langmuir, , “Thomas of Monmouth,” pp. 841-42Google Scholar.

36 See The Peterborough Chronicle: 1070-1154, ed. Clark, Cecily, (2nd ed.; Oxford, 1970), p. 57Google Scholar.

37 Cronne, H. A., The Reign of Stephen, 1135-1154: Anarchy in England (London, 1970) pp. 263-64Google Scholar.

38 Jessopp, and James, , St. William, p. 100Google Scholar: “Nos iudei tui sumus, mi quotennes tributarii, tuisque crebro necessarii necessitatibus, tibi siquidem semper fideles regnoque mo non inutiles. Tu quoque nos benigne satis ac tranquille moderaris; sed tranquillitatem nostram…Simon huius…perturbare presumpsit audatia…Tuum quidem, domine rex, iudeum peremptum esse constat…”

39 Cronne, , Reign of Stephen, pp. 263-64Google Scholar.

40 Davis, , King Stephen, p. 10Google Scholar.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid., p. 16.

43 Ibid., p. 11.

44 Ibid.

45 Cronne, , Reign of Stephen, p. 43Google Scholar.

46 King Stephen, pp. 54-55, cites William of Malmeabury's Historia Novella, para. 495, and the Gesta Stephant 6 as “explicit” evidence of London's commune status; he also cites a letter from the Archbishop of Rouen to the Londoners thanking them for their loyalty to Stephen, addrrtard to “the glorious senators, honored citizens, and all of the Communal Concord (commune concordie) of London” (from Round, J. H., Geoffrey de Mandeville [London, 1872] p. 116Google Scholar).

47 Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, 1066-1154, vol. 3, Regesta Regis Stephani ac Mathilidis Imperatrlels ac Gaufridi et Henrici Ducum Normannorum, 1135-1154, ed. Cronne, H. A. and Davit, R. H. C. (Oxford, 1968), pp. xxviii–xxixGoogle Scholar.

48 Ibid.

49 Roth, , History, p. 8Google ScholarPubMed.

50 Jessopp, and James, Sr.William, p. 100Google Scholar.

51 Biddle, Martin and Keene, D. J., “Winchester in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,” in Winchester in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Biddle, Martin (Oxford, 1976) pp. 241-448; p. 438Google Scholar.

52 Ibid.; see also Frank Barlow's “The Winton Domesday,” in ibid., pp. 1-141; p. 101, #443 and #444.

53 Regesta, p. xxix.

54 Source provided in Jacobs, Joseph, The Jews of Angevin England (London, 1893), p. 18Google Scholar; see also Roth, , The Jews of Medieval Oxford (Oxford, 1951), p. 2Google Scholar. The precise meaning of the term “exchange” is uncertain.

55 Roth, , Medieval Oxford, p. 110Google Scholar.

56 Norwich is the one community we have a date for—as witnessed by the events surrounding the death of “St. William” of Norwich, there was a Jewish community there by 1144. Oxford, if Anthony Wood's account is accepted, had a Jewish community by 1141. These facts would suggest that the “Old” and “New” communities may all have been in place by 1144.

57 And possibly Thetford, if it was not, in fact, a community of seigneurial Jews under Henry I and during at least part of Stephen's reign.

58 Another possible schema for relatively dating the spread of these Jewish communities is to take the figure for each donum as indicative of the length of time the Jews had been in each town without regard for the percentage of the town's total donum, thereby dating the spread of the Jews in the sequence given in Table 1: London, Norwich, Lincoln, etc. I find this method unsatisfactory, however, for it pulls each new community of Jews out of the context of the mercantile center that now fostered its growth. Consideration of that context seems necessary in evaluating the relative size, wealth, and, possibly, age of the Jewish community in question. This alternate dating may, however, be useful in dating communities within each of the three categories proposed above against one another.

59 Richardson, , English Jewry, pp. 12–13Google Scholar.

60 Cited in ibid., p. 10, n1. As is often remarked, the citation actually reads creditores for debitores, and here William fitz Stephen seems to have simply erred in his choice of words, substituting the former for the latter. It is possibly, however, a mere scribal error in which the verb repetere, “to demand satisfaction/repayment,” has been mistakenly inserted for rependere, “to repay,” thus rendering the observation “The Jews, safe, are going out from cities and towns…in order to repay their creditors.” The rendering offered in the text above is the sense that is commonly understood, and it seems more likely on historical grounds.