Anticapitalism and the Emergence of Antisemitism. Stephanie Chasin
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offenders by force of arms.” A murderous riot by Londoners who welcomed Montfort’s anti-royalist troops broke out a week before Palm Sunday in 1263. The Annals of Thomas Wykes that describes the rampage gives a simple reason for the violence: greed. According to one chronicler, the rioters pillaged the property of Jews who were “stripped naked, despoiled and afterwards murdered by night in sections.” Authorities loyal to the king stepped in to stop the slaughter, although London’s Jewry was “destroyed.” They did, however, manage to save the chest of chirographs that held the debts to Jewish moneylenders, which had been put in the Tower of London for safekeeping.36
A year later, Henry III had regained the throne and Simon de Montfort lay dead on the battlefield of Evesham, his body mutilated with his head cut off and his testicles hung either side of his nose, his hands and feet severed and sent to different parts of the country. Property in London was redistributed as a means of punishment for the city’s support of Montfort and a 20,000 mark fine was assessed in return for a pardon. All of Montfort’s lands and the title of Earl of Leicester were transferred to Henry’s son Edmund. The surviving rebels were able to regain their lands only by paying a hefty fine, which was in accordance with their culpability in the revolt.37
In 1264, Henry appointed the “twenty-four,” a “self-perpetuating” group of “trustworthy and wise” men to act as guardians to the Jewish community of Winchester. Among the most prominent of the Jews of Winchester was Licoricia’s son, Benedict, who, by 1280, owned nine properties in Winchester, Southampton, Bristol, York, and London. Like Elias of London and Benedict of Lincoln, Benedict of Winchester must have felt sufficiently secure to choose to make his home outside of the Jewish quarter. This is also borne out by the close commercial relationship between the Jews and the wealthy Christians of the town. Tension arose between the twenty-four and the general population when the group’s members made Benedict a guild member. As the “twenty-four” were wool merchants, the credit that the Jews provided was vital to their business but to those outside the business Benedict’s admittance was “a manifest scandal to Christian men.” In an attempt to restore the economic wellbeing of the Jews, Henry took the Winchester Jews under his special protection and appointed a further twenty-five men as “guardians and protectors” of the Jews. These included Simon le Draper, a wool merchant and mayor, and a convert, Henry de Winchester, an exporter of wool. The twenty-five were to inform the public that ←42 | 43→no one “do the Jews harm, on pain of life and limbs, and protect them and their households, lands, rents and possessions, and if harm be done to them to have it amended at once.”38
In order to rein in the abuses by courtiers who were buying up Jewish debt in the hope of grabbing the pledged land, legal restrictions were placed on Jewish moneylenders. Debts to Jews were no longer allowed to be sold without the king’s permission and, if he permitted the sale, there was to be no interest added. But there was little effort made to implement this restriction and so the practice and the resentment continued to fester as the power passed from Henry to his eldest son in 1272.39
Henry’s son and successor was Edward I, a tall, broad chested, blonde, imposing figure who was the first king to be crowned in Westminster Abbey, the building of which had been overseen by his father. He had a reputation for courage, exceptional ferocity, and spending his subjects’ money. The biggest armies, the largest parliaments, and the greatest chain of castles were built during his reign in Britain. Military campaigns in France, Wales, and Scotland and crusades demanded vast sums of money. His palaces, such as Windsor, as well as his castles were sumptuously decorated with elegant floor tiles, sculpted marble pillars, wall paintings, tapestries, and courtyard gardens. To meet these expenditures, Edward pressed parliament to approve taxes, while shire knights insisted the king confirm the tenets of Magna Carta and enforce the restrictions on Jewish moneylending.
It was said that Edward’s kingdom was “awash” in moneylending. But it was the Christian Riccardi bankers of Lucca, not Jews, who monopolized international finance and upon whom the king had become reliant to keep him in credit in the form of short-term loans that supplemented the king’s existing funds. These Lombardi moneylenders had the benefit of a well-developed Italian economy behind them and in the first seven years of Edward’s reign, he had received over £200,000 from them. As Edward’s bankers, they financed his military campaigns and provided for the construction of castles, in return for control over the new custom system for the wool trade. To raise more reliable sources of income, as opposed to his father’s irregular tallages, Edward introduced custom duties on England’s most profitable export which he placed in the hands of the Italian bankers. The Riccardis thus handled thousands and tens of thousands of pounds, infinitely more than the amounts handled by the majority of Jewish moneylenders.40
Edward’s deal with knights in 1270 for a crusader tax was in exchange for a renewal of Magna Carta. This bargain included a restriction on Jewish usury that allowed debtors more time to repay their loans. Curbing the ability of Jewish ←43 | 44→moneylenders to insist on prompt repayment was a popular demand by the barons, who were eager to delay settling their debts or willing to default on them. His debts from his crusade led him once again to ask parliament for another tax. In return, the knights of the shire demanded that he end the Jewish debt issue, which had led to smallholders losing their lands, once and for all. Resentment on the part of knights and the general population prompted Edward to take harsher action against Jewish moneylenders. As conflict continued in Winchester between the twenty-four and the community, Edward personally intervened, bringing the town under his control and destroying the power of the twenty-four. Benedict had already decamped to London, and by 1274, many other Jews left Winchester for other cities. In the fall of 1274, Edward ordered the mayor and sheriffs of London to issue a proclamation demanding that, “all merchant-usurers shall depart thence within twenty days from the date of these letters, and shall leave the kingdom, under pain of forfeiture of their bodies and goods, and if they be found in the city after that date, to cause them to be arrested and kept safely until otherwise ordered ….” This was not aimed specifically at Jews, but at all merchant usurers, including the Lombards who practiced the “vice” of usury over the “virtue” of charity. It is unclear whether the order was enforced or to what degree, but it did not eradicate moneylending as the Riccardi still contracted usurious loans after the proclamation.41
In the following year, legislation was written specifically against Jewish moneylenders, which was a concession to the knights in return for yet another tax. In October 1275, the Statute of the Jewry was sealed and sent to the Justices of the Jews before being widely circulated. It acknowledged that Edward and his ancestors had “received great benefit from the Jewish people in the past” and in return they had been “safely preserved and defended by his sheriffs and other bailiffs and faithful me” so that no harm should come to them “in their bodies or in their goods.” Nonetheless, the statute stated, Jewish usury pushed Christians into debt and destitution. The new legislation prohibited loans being secured on rents and limited the amount of money and goods that could be seized by a Jew from a Christian. The larger aim was to turn Jews away from moneylending and into other employment. The Statute ordered all Jews to “gain their living by lawful merchandise and their labour … by selling and buying.” This meant as “legal merchants” who traded cereal and wool. Lending money at interest was once more pitted against “honest” work that was physical in nature. Jews were only permitted to live in towns with an archa (chest), the repository where the contracts and deeds were kept recording loans, mortgages, vifgages, other pledges, lands, rents, houses, and chattels belonging to Jews. They were not to mingle with ←44 | 45→Christians and, just so there was no chance of mistaking a Jew for a Christian and vice versa, Jews were to wear a yellow felt badge so they were easily identified. Being separated from Christians it was thought unlikely that usury could continue. This was, as has been recently pointed out, a functional regulation, not akin to the Nazi yellow star of David. Jews did petition Edward to protest but their pleas fell on deaf ears, although it is not known whether Jews evaded wearing the badge or whether any effort went into enforcing the law.42
While Edward was trying to stamp out Jewish moneylending, his wife, Eleanor of Castile, was eagerly acquiring land and estates with the help of Jewish moneylenders. Eleanor, therefore, was complicit in the issue that was paramount in the knight’s argument for restricting