University of Exeter

Course: Persecution and Toleration in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Teacher: Dr Alex Walsham

Lent/Trinity Term 1997

Viola Voss

7 Brunel Close

Exeter EX 4 4BT

Contents

1. Introduction 3

2. The Legal Status of the Jews and their Position in Society in the 12th century 5

3. The First Ritual Murder Charge: Saint William of Norwich, 1144 7

4. The Development until 1192 11

5. A Case reported from Winchester, 1192 13

6. The Establishment of a Connection of the Jews with Child Murder 15

7. Little Hugh of Lincoln, 1255 17

8. The Last Decades before the Expulsion in 1290 20

9. Conclusion 22

10. Bibliography 23

Thinking about Langmuir's reflections I tried to become aware of the reasons why I decided to write a paper about antisemitism in medieval England. I think that as a German student, who has been taught the history of the holocaust at school over and over again, I unconsciously try to demonstrate that although the Germans have committed the most recent indescribable atrocities against the Jewish people they were by no means the first ones to do so. Under no circumstances do I try to justify what has happened in Nazi-Germany. I would rather like to stress that it was no new phenomenon and that there are rational explanations behind this. As our seminar "Persecution and Toleration in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe" has shown intolerance and persecution are often motivated by the fear of difference and deviance and the need of a scapegoat; they serve the purposes of ensuring uniformity, group-formation and defining one's one identity in contrast to "the alien other". The reasons for persecution must therefore be searched to a great extent in the persecutors themselves, as the only triggering factor on the side of the victim is most often only its "otherness", its deviance from the rest.

The history of the Jews in medieval England covers hardly more than two centuries: it begins with the Norman Conquest of 1066 and ends with the expulsion of all Jews from England under Edward I in 1290. However it was England where for the first time in the middle ages Jews were accused of committing ritual murders, and England was the first country in Western Europe from which the Jews were permanently expelled. These pattern were repeated all over medieval Europe.

A lot of scholars dealing with the history of the Jews in medieval England have concentrated on the rich evidence of their economic activities and on the financial background of their expulsion through Edward I, whereas "the factor of antisemitism (in medieval England) still awaits its historian" as Rokeah points out.

This paper deals with the ritual murder charges against Jews which became quite common in medieval England and are mainly reported in chronicles and other literary sources. I will use these reports to obtain information about antisemitic feelings and activities in medieval England.

First of all however the legal status of the Jews in medieval England needs to be defined as knowledge about their position in society is a necessary precondition for understanding and evaluating the behaviour of society towards them. After having established this basis the paper examines several ritual murder charges (presented in chronological order) and their historical surroundings. Although the cases are described by individuals and represent first of all their ideas about what has happened and why one can try to draw conclusions from these reports about how people in medieval England behaved towards Jews in general and what they thought about them.

Far from trying to present all the accusations that were made against the Jews this paper wants to highlight and compare some specific well-documented cases and examine their importance for the image and the situation of the Jews in medieval England.

2. The Legal Status of the Jews and their Position in Society in the 12th Century

According to William of Malmesbury it was William the Conqueror who introduced the Jews to England. There is no proof of any permanent settlement before the Norman Conquest. The first settlement of the Jews was restricted to London and therefore exclusively urban. These London Jews are mentioned in the Pipe Roll 31 of Henry I's reign dating 1130-31, which states that the Jews paid fines to the king to be allowed to bring their actions of debt before the barons of the exchequer. Their early occupation with money lending in England might be explained with the favourable conditions for them: their juridical affairs were settled only in the royal courts which seemed to have secured and safeguarded their business. The interest of the kings themselves in this protection can be traced from the Laws of Edward the Confessor dating from about 1135, in which the conditions of the English Jewry are described as dependent upon the king: they were regarded as the king's property and without his permission they were not allowed to place themselves under the protection of anyone else. This principle that the Jews and their possessions belonged to the king seems to have been developed in England as it hasn't been stated anywhere before in medieval Europe. Although the Jews were protected by the kings they were not protected from them and had to pay fines and taxes which became extremely high in the middle of the 13th century.

Henry II (1154-1189) issued a charter which was confirmed by Richard I and John, according to which the Jews were allowed to settle freely in England and to succeed to their fathers' estates. As Langmuir notes "Thus there seems to have been remarkably little to differentiate Jews from non-Jews in the daily routine of the law". Under these circumstances the Jewish community prospered and spread out in the 12th century. There is evidence that during the reign of Stephen (1135-1154) Jewish communities were established at Norwich, Cambridge and Oxford and in a list from 1159, which compiles the amounts contributed by each community to the tax, already ten settlements outside of London are mentioned. The average size of a Jewish community in the English provincial towns must have been according to Dobson about 150 persons, and Lipman estimates the number of the total Anglo-Jewish population in the early and middle 13th century about 4000-5000.

According to Langmuir ritual murder can be defined "as the killing of a human, not merely from motives of religious hatred, but in such a way that the form of the killing is at least partly determined by ideas allegedly or actually important in the religion of the killers or the victims". To this might be added that the idea of a ritual also implies some kind of custom of habit that might be performed at special recurrent occasions. Although the Jews had already been charged with ritual murder in antiquity these accusations didn't seem to have any influence of the charge of annually crucifying children as a sacrifice and in mocking of the Passion of Christ as it emerged in medieval England.

The first ritual murder case is at the same time one of the earliest events concerning the history of the Jews in England which is richly described in a literary source: the murder of a boy called William in Norwich around Easter 1144 who was later venerated as a miracle-working saint. In his "The Life and Passion of Saint William the Martyr of Norwich", written in several parts between 1149/50 and 1172/73, Thomas of Monmouth describes the martyrdom of the boy who according to him was tortured, murdered and crucified by the Jews. Thomas states that the sacrifice of a Christian in contempt for Christ is practised annually by the Jews.

Thomas of Monmouth's report is the only independent evidence that such an accusation has ever been put forward in Norwich. As Langmuir has shown Thomas was the only one to have explicitly asserted this accusation and can therefore be regarded as the one who contributed the idea that Jews ritually murder Christians to western culture. Thomas's primary aim was to praise William and to confirm and attest his martyrdom. He composed his report according to this purpose and accepted anything he heard which supported his view of the events but which was not necessarily the truth.

The only thing one can be sure of is that the boy has been murdered. Thomas is unable to provide any sufficient proof that he has been crucified or killed by Jews at all and contemporaries as well as modern scholars doubt his version. Thomas seems to have collected most of his "proofs" after the first part of his report has been published and criticised in about 1150. The fact that no Jew was arrested, tried or punished for the murder speaks for itself. However the situation of the Jews in Norwich might have been dangerous for some time, but the sheriff managed to protect them (page 42, 48) and after that the Jews continued to live in Norwich as before; there were no riots, lootings or massacres whatsoever.

Nevertheless the cult around William grew, more and more miracles were reported and the body was transferred from the cemetery into the church. The expansion of the cult in spite of the lack of convincing evidence might be explained with the advantages it brought to the church and the city as pilgrims from all over might be attracted by it. It seems that the people of Norwich have been far more interested in the miracle-working Saint William than in the victim of a ritual murder; the Jews didn't seem to have been regarded as posing any permanent threat to them as one might expect from a group which is believed to ritually crucify children. Thomas as well doesn't portray them as extremely dangerous.

In the following I shall try to summarise how Thomas describes the Jews in his account of the events: First of all it can be stated that he was more concerned to strengthen William's martyrdom and his miracle-working quality than to stress the deeds and the malignity of the Jews. This is reflected in the quantity of the descriptions of the torture which cover hardly more pages than three pages (19-22) of the 294 pages of the whole story. Throughout the whole story there is no emotional outburst of hate against the Jews. They are only referred to in connection with the course of the events. In contrast to this Thomas rails against those who didn't believe in William's martyrdom on 13 pages (57-62; 85-88). Only one time, right in the beginning of his report Thomas describes the Jews with an attribute which characterises them as actual evil-doers: he calls them "Christian-slaying Jews" (page 6). Further below they are only referred to as "enemies of the Christians (page 28), of the Christian name (page 44) and the Christian religion (page 42), of Christ" (page 47) which are rather passive attributes. The simple religious antagonism seems to be the predominant determining factor in Thomas's view of the Jews rather than irrational fears.

The descriptions of the torture are partly held in a rather matter-of-fact tone: on page 20 there are almost no attributes describing the cruelty of the torture. In the progress of the report however Thomas presents this cruelty as one of the major characteristics of the Jews and as one clue which points to them as being the murderers (page 35, 44).

As has already been suggested the crucifixion theory has been developed by Thomas. He was also the only one who has discovered testimonies which gave proof that the Jews were involved in the crime and that they annually sacrifice a Christian. None of the persons originally involved in the case seems to have spoken about crucifixion or a ritual murder before Thomas's arrival in Norwich about 1149. The only connection of the Jews with the crime is derived from the alleged typical Jewish cruelty of the crime and an undefined fear of his family concerning the Jews: without mentioning any reasons they forbade William any contact with the Jews (page 16) and after his death his aunt remembers a dream which indicated that she might "lose one of my dear ones through the Jews" (page 40).

At this point some remarks about the Jewish community of Norwich are necessary: Thomas's report is the first evidence at all for the Jewish community of Norwich. It has already been stated in chapter 2 that it is most likely that the Jews began to settle outside of London only in the reign of Stephen (1135-1154). Therefore the community of Norwich has most probably been established only a few years before 1144. It is most probable that the people of Norwich when confronted with such a horrible crime as child murder looked for culprits outside their community and found them in those people which had only recently arrived in Norwich and furthermore belonged to a different and foreign religion. By using the Jews as a scapegoat they turned down the idea that someone belonging to their community might be able to commit such a crime. It should be noted that right from the beginning the Jews are seen and accused as a whole and as a unity.

Another feature which seems to be typical of the Jews according to Thomas's description is their constant attempt to bribe and corrupt people. First they managed to get the sheriff on their side by offering him hundred marcs if he protects them (page 29); then Thomas indicates that they might even be able to corrupt the king with their money (page 48) and that they tried to bribe William's brother (page 91) and the bishop (page 93) but failed. The Jews seem to have already been clearly connected with money and wealth which certainly has caused the envy of their neighbours.

Finally Thomas stresses the tension that is provoked by the special legal status of the Jews. They could be judged only by a royal court and therefore the sheriff acted according to the law when "he gave notice ... to the bishop that he had nothing to do with the Jews, and that in the absence of the King the Jews should make no answer to such invitations (to summon before the Synod of the bishop)" (page 46). The clergy however declared "that a manifest outrage was being done to GOD and Christian law, and they advised that it should be straightaway vindicated with rigorous Ecclesiastical justice" (pages 46f.). Although the bishop certainly doesn't agree that the Jews should only be judged by the royal authorities in the end he is too afraid to oppose the king and his officers (page 49).

In conclusion one might say that Thomas apparently doesn't try to drive his readers against the Jews by spreading irrational fears. His aversion against them is originated in the religious antagonism between Christianity and Judaism. From this fact, that the Jews were supposed to have cruelly crucified Jesus, might also derive his stress on the Jewish cruelty in general. His description of the cruelty however is not very emotional or unusually mystical. Other features described by Thomas which make the Jews appear rather unsympathetic and unpopular are also of a rather factual and materialistic nature as their connection with money and wealth and their special legal position in relation to the king. So one might conclude from Thomas's report that right from the beginning the Jews weren't very popular and liked in Norwich but however not necessarily feared which was possible the general situation.

The point of the story for the modern historian cannot be to try to identify the murder. Thomas's description is the only source for the course of the events and he cannot provide the reader with sufficient and reliable evidence. Furthermore he has the specific aim to promote William's martyrdom and hence he is not objective in his report. Nevertheless a lot of scholars have been putting forward their suspicions. Anderson supposes that the Jews of Norwich were alarmed when William wasn't allowed to visit them any further. They questioned him brutally about it and finally they killed him. Lipman suggests that William must have been killed by the person he was last seen with which was according to Thomas's description not necessarily a Jew, and that the crime had a sexual background.

The most important thing about Thomas's report is that for the first time in the medieval world the Jews were associated with a ritual form of child murder. Rather than to "play detective" I tried to derive from the story some elements of the general conception of the Jews which became important in the subsequent history of the Jews. In this respect the story might be placed in the beginning of a development of "irrational ideas about the activities of contemporary Jews ... (which) began to gain currency in the second half of the twelfth century".

Unfortunately the hagiography of William of Norwich is the only contemporary source which deals at this length with a case of alleged ritual murder. All other sources that are examined in the following are chronicles entries which are sometimes rather short and factual.

Thomas of Monmouth's ritual murder charge was adopted into the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle around 1155 surprisingly without any further comment on the fact itself. It seems that after the mayrtrdom of William had been proven by various miracles the people of the day were ready and willing to accept the idea that he had been crucified by the Jews. However the chronicle doesn't state that this is a recurrent or known custom but simply describes the course of this single event.

The case which followed probably directly on the accusation of Norwich is reported from Gloucester. Around Easter 1168 a boy named Harold is said to have been ritually tortured and murdered by the Jews which are supposed to have come to Norwich from all parts of England for this occasion. Like William Harold was buried as a martyr in the church. In contrast to Thomas's report no evidence or witnesses for the deed is mentioned. There is no reference to a trial or that a Jew was officially held responsible and no popular riots are mentioned. The case is presented as an accepted fact according to "plurimorum opinione" and the tone is rather factual: no supplementary emotional or judging terms are used.

Jessop and James indicate that "the reputation of St William was notorious at Pershore" which is very close to Gloucester. Therefore the rise of the accusation there might be directly influenced by the Norwich one. Both accusations originated in the discovery of a child murder around Easter and in both cases the Jews of the city or even of all of England are blamed. But there is no explicit reference to Norwich and furthermore no allusion to a customary or ritual nature of the crime.

In the 1160s or the 1170s ritual murder accusations appear in France, at Orleans, Blois and Paris. It might be possible to connect these cases to Norwich as well as the Bishop of Norwich went to France and died there.

The martyrdom of a boy at Bury in 1181 and his burial in the church are briefly mentioned in several chronicles but none of them gives any detail of the crime. The Jews are not everywhere connected with it and one chronicle explicitly speaks of only one Jew ("quidam Judaeus").

But nevertheless by 1189/90, the years when many Jews were killed in England in connection with Richard I's accession to the throne and his departure for the crusade three boys were venerated as martyrs murdered by Jews in England. As Dobson notices in his study about the massacres in York in 1190: "The long-term effects of the establishment of such cults for such reasons on the way in which Christians viewed Jews everywhere must have been incalculable." These effects are "incalculable" indeed as it is difficult to determine them. This study has shown that at least up to 1190 the Jews were not generally connected with the custom of recurrent ritual murder of children. Only Thomas indicates that this is a Jewish habit whereas the other sources describe the cases as isolated events. If one sees this is an indicator for the general opinion the link between Jews and the ritual murder of children had not yet been firmly established at this time.

A further ritual murder case is described by Richard of Devizes in his "Chronicle of the Time of King Richard the First", written before 1198. This description is very interesting because of the author's attitude to the events.

Richard describes how the Jews of Winchester martyred a boy there in 1192. Already at the beginning of his account it becomes clear that he is a rather mocking and cynical writer: "... the Jews of Winchester, zealous, after the Jewish fashion, for the honour of their city ... brought upon themselves, according to the testimony of many people, the widely known reputation of having made a martyr of a boy in Winchester." (page 64) He implies that the Jews have murdered the boy simply because they wanted to make a martyr for their city and that there wasn't any ritual or other purpose. Furthermore he himself declares the "testimony of many people" invalid when further below he says about the people of Winchester they "lie like sentries" (page 67). His account of the events is that a boy from France which was employed by a Jewish cobbler in Winchester disappeared on Good Friday 1192. His friend asked the Jew about his fate and when the Jew answered rather harshly he accused him of having, murdered, crucified and eaten the boy. A Christian woman testified that she had seen the boy going into the Jew's house without returning. The testimonies of both the boy and the woman failed at court because the boy was too young and the woman worked for a Jew. Finally gold was given to the judges and the matter was dropped. (pages 64-69)

It is obvious that Richard "pokes sharp fun at the legends ... of the boy-martyrs". He doesn't even try to give a clue why the friend should have accused the Jews of having crucified and eaten the boy. There is not even a body. Some unreliable "evidence" for the crime which is featured in Thomas's story is also described by Richard. The friend of the victim has some terrifying dreams as well as William's aunt (page 66), and in both cases a woman who works for Jews appears as a witness. This resemblance is striking even if one cannot be sure if Richard has read Thomas's account of the events in Norwich. He tries to make fun of the legends and stresses the unreliability and dubiousness of the evidence. A dream cannot serve as convincible proof as well as the witness of somebody who might want to make up for something.

What is also striking about Richard's story is that explicitly only one Jew is accused of the crime and not the Jews as a community or as a whole as in the preceding cases. In this point the story clearly diverges from Thomas's report. Furthermore there is also no indication that Jews crucify Christians regularly as a habit. The case is described as a singular act. On the other hand a lot of negative characteristics are attributed to the accused Jew in Richard's story which might be seen as hints to the general image of the Jews: "You son of a dirty whore ... you thief, you traitor, you devil" (page 68). He also mentions that the Jew used money to settle the affair (page 69) what according to Thomas has also happened in Norwich. Especially the connection with the devil is repeated although always with a specific individual attribution: "This Jew is a devil ... A certain son of the devil, a French Jew ..." (page 68, 69).

Richard's description is difficult to judge. It might be suspected that he has invented the whole story to make the ritual murder accusations look silly. This view is supported by the fact that it is not mentioned in any other source. In this case it is clear that he has chosen all the elements of the story with care. It seems that he wanted to emphasise the fact that there is no convincing proof for such accusations. His choice of attributing the crime only to one Jew without referring to any habit might indicate his refusal of seeing the whole of the Jews guilty or it might point to the fact that this view was still not generally adopted. However he gives some examples of the prevailing negative image of the Jew which include their association with evil and the devil and their occupation with money.

For the further development of the ritual murder charges it is important to note that this source like the one which describes the events in Norwich indicates that there was no universal belief in the accusations and that people were sceptical about them.

In the first half of the 13th century several Jewish communities in England were accused of having murdered children. But not always a ritual motive as crucifixion was mentioned and in none of these cases a shrine for a martyr was established. Only in one case two Jews were found guilty by the secular authorities but there was most probably no ritual murder charge and it is not sure whether the victim was a child at all. Especially the Jews of Winchester were accused several times so that Langmuir suspects that "Winchester wanted a ritual murder shrine" because a martyr would bring advantages to the church. Apart from these materialistic excesses it seems however that the Jews had became predisposed of being suspected whenever a child was missing or a child's body was found.

It has to be noted that society's view of the Jews was changed in this time by ecclesiastical measures. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 issued several restrictions concerning Jewish life and declared that Jews had to wear an outward mark of distinction. In England these regulations, which were designed to segregate Jews from Christians, were confirmed by a synod in Oxford in 1222. From no on the Jews were not only believed to be different but this difference was confirmed by the ecclesiastical authorities and was supposed to be seen right away.

In his contemporary Chronica Majora Matthew Paris reports a case from a cemetery in London where in 1244 the body of a baby boy was found which was marked with Hebrew words. Miracles were attributed to the boy and he became the fourth martyr of a Jewish ritual murder. As often no riots are described and no Jew seems to have been found guilty of this crime. Regarding the possibility that the boy might have been crucified Paris explicitly declares "a circumstance stated to have often happened" (page 21) and "it was discovered that the Jews had sometimes perpetrated such crimes" (page 22). Unlike Thomas who only describes a theoretically existing custom without hinting at any earlier known incidents of this kind Paris refers explicitly to such cases.

Although by this time certainly a connection of the Jews with the murder of children had been established in ecclesiastical and popular thought it is difficult to determine the influence of this image. Jews seems to have been perceived as child murderers only if the situation was acute, e.g. if a child was actually missing or found dead since it appears that there has been no general widespread fear of the Jews. It has to be noted that no riots whatsoever are reported in connection with these cases probably because the Jews stood under the protection of the king. The secular authorities in general still had not reacted seriously to such accusations which indicates their doubts.

On the part of the church Innocent IV had issued a bull in 1247 concerning accusations against the Jews in Germany. According to these accusations Jews were murdering children to obtain their blood which they needed for ritual purposes. The Pope stated explicitly: "Christians believe that the Law of the Jews prescribes this to them, whilst in their law the very reverse is ordained. In fact ... they ascribe every murder, wherever it chance to occur, to Jews." But he had only forbade definitely accusations that Jews were supposed to use human blood in their rites. This charge however was not used in England and it is misleading when Menache refers to the ritual murder cases as "blood libels".

The murder of a boy called Hugh in Lincoln in the summer of 1255 and the charge against the Jews had the most far-reaching effects and consequences of all the ritual murder charges in England. When Chaucer wrote "The Prioress's Tale" at the end of the 14th century which also deals with a child murder committed by Jews he explicitly refers to this case: "O yonge Hugh of Lincoln, slayn also/With cursed Jews, as it is notable,/For it nis but a litel whyle ago". What distinguishes this case from all previous ritual murder accusations is that two months after the discovery of the body the king passed through Lincoln and ordered an investigation in the course of which a confession was made by a Jew and several Jews were executed. As there is no evidence of any secular action prior to this or of any popular attacks it might well be possible that there would have been no executions at all if the king had not by chance passed through Lincoln.

In contrast to the events surrounding the death of William of Norwich this case is described in detail in three different contemporary chronicles and an Anglo-Saxon ballad. The Annales of Burton offer the most detailed description and are the most reliable account of the events according to Langmuir who checked all version against each other and compared them. But again as in the case of William I do not try to find the murderer; it is sufficient to say that like in all the other cases there was no real and unmistakable evidence against the Jews. I will rather use the sources to find out what they reveal about the attitudes to the Jews of the writer and in general.

In the Annales of Burton we find for the first time in connection with the ritual murder accusations a reference to the bible concerning the Jews: "vos ex patre diabolo estis" (page 341). They are also referred to as "ministri diaboli" (ibid.). In this version of the events the Jews are already suspected when the boy was missing and not only after the discovery of the body. The suspicions were aroused by the presence of a large number of Jews in the city (page 342). It seems that the author of this report initially has a very negative view of the Jews and has already fully adopted the image of the Jews as a community which recurrently and ritually murders children. He seems to support the view that the disappearance of a child and the presence of a large number of Jews are sufficient to justify suspicion against them.

The Annales of Waverly contain a much shorter account of the events in Lincoln. The author concentrates on the miraculous fact that the Jews could not sufficiently hide the body neither in a river nor in the ground as it always came to the surface again (page 347). In this case it are the marks of torture and crucifixion which reveal that it was a crime committed by Jews which are referred to as "Christianae religionis inmici" (page 346) and "inmici Christi" (page 347).

The most dramatic though distorted description is given by Matthew Paris. As Langmuir notes "Matthew was more concerned with spinning a striking anti-Jewish yarn than with accuracy." But this fact makes his report even more interesting for this study. In his account of the events the Jews are supposed to "practice magical operations" and the body is found in the well of a Jewish house (page 139). It is stressed that "We have already learned ... that the Jews have not hesitated to attempt such proceedings as a reproach and taunt to our Lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified..." (ibid.). There is an allusion to the Jewish tendency to use their wealth and bribe people: "Not all the gold of England will avail to ransom you, and save you from your fate." (ibid.) Furthermore the confession of one Jew is described in detail. This Jew admits that the Jews annually crucify a boy and even explains that a body is not every year because of their secrecy (ibid.). Finally he declares that "Almost all the Jews of England agreed to the murder of this boy..." (page 140). Matthew also falsified the course of the events and omits the two months which lay between the discovery of the body and the arrival of the king.

Although Matthew describes the Jews at some points in his chronicle as pitiable victims who are extorted more and more heavily by the king it is exaggerated to say that because of this he has "no very deep-seated prejudices" against them. In contrast to the other reports Matthew apparently composed his story to strengthen the accusations and the hostility against Jews. He produced undeniable evidence and stressed the recurrent ritual aspect of the murder. Furthermore he included allusions to some apparently existing negative images of the Jews, their connection with money and magic.

Stacey indicates that Matthew's negative view of the Jews is a reflection of changing popular attitudes in the middle of the 13th century. He demonstrates that between 1240 and 1260 the Jews had to pay increasingly severe and high taxes and tallages and therefore had to resolve debts or had to transfer them to the king's favourites which intensified their unpopularity. Another factor was that in 1253 Henry III finally issued a "Statute of Jewry" which imposed several restrictions on Jewish life. These restrictions were similar to those issued by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 and the Synod in Oxford in 1222 but from now on they had juridical support. Among other things the Statute laid down that Jews had to wear a special badge, that they were not to have Christian servants and that no new synagogues or new communities were to be established. This hardening of the financial and juridical policy show that the attitude of the king towards the Jews had changed to the worse. It may account for his initial belief in the ritual murder accusation in Norwich.

It can not be doubted that the intervention of the king in this ritual murder case made it very popular. The Jew who had confessed was executed immediately; 91 others were brought to London where 18 of them were hanged in November. It was evident that the king believed in the accusation and in the guilt of the Jews which must have reinforced the image of the Jews as ritual murderers: "(this) fantasy (was given) the blessing of royal authority". But in May the remaining Jews were set free although they had been found guilty and sentenced to death in a trial in January. Some friars as well as the king's brother, Richard of Cornwall had intervened and the king must have started to doubt himself. This prominent scepticism must have weakened the ritual murder theory whereas on the other hand Matthew criticises this decision: "But these Jews, I say, were found guilty on their trial by jury..." (page 168).

The case of Hugh of Lincoln shows the importance of a actual confession of a Jew to the ritual murder accusation which was a novelty. But in spite of this confession the scepticism of the authorities won through.

In the last decades before 1290 the general situation of the English Jewry changed to the worse. Due to the increasing taxes most of the Jews became impoverished and the communities declined in numbers. Several enactments from 1269 on which restricted the Jewish money-lending led to a statute in 1275 according to which the Jews were no longer allowed to lend any money at all and which led to a further impoverishment. In the end of the 1270s the Jews were charged with coin-clipping on a large scale. Many Jews were arrested and several were hanged. Although Christians were involved in this business as well it seems that the juridical proceedings were undermined by anti-Jewish prejudice. The houses of arrested Jews were plundered by the mob.

In this time of common actions against Jews on the part of the authorities and the people Rokeah can only proof two further ritual murder accusations: One is mentioned only years after the alleged occurrence and has probably a financial background whereas the other one is only related to an attempted murder. First of all one has to note that the king's intervention in the case of Hugh of Lincoln has not changed the situation drastically: On the one hand his "royal blessing" in 1255 has not led to a visible increase of the accusations but on the other hand his later doubts and his release of the convicted Jews have not stopped them completely. Therefore one can conclude that the ritual murder charges were a rather popular affair which did not depend on the authorities. But moreover it seems that the image of the Jews as ritual child-murderers did not have that much importance in this time. It is possible that due to the pressure from all sides the Jews seemed to be very weak and no longer capable of harming Christians. The fact that there were not so many Jews after all might also have contributed to this.

Finally I want to take a short look at the expulsion of 1290 and see if any connection with the ritual murder accusations can be found. In a royal writ of 1290 Edward I gives as reason for the expulsion that the Jews had continued to act as usurers against his laws. As Pollins puts it: "... the expulsion ought not to be seen as the culmination of two centuries of growing antisemitism." Ovrut as well dismisses "any religious motive as the cause of the expulsion." He works out that strong political and economical reasons which were only indirectly related to the Jews led the Edward I to this decision. One additional point was that the Jews due to the impoverishment were no longer able to pay the high taxes and to meet the royal financial needs and were replaced as money-lenders by Italian bankers which transactions were profitably taxed by the king. Furthermore the king profited financially from the expulsion right away because he confiscated all their property and their the remaining debts owed to them.

As there weren't any antisemitic reasons behind the decision for the expulsion made by the king the role of the public needs to be examined. It is obvious from Edward's reason that if at all he reacted to a public demand which was based on the usury practised by the Jews. There is no reference to any religious reason or to the threat they might have posed to society as ritual murderers or due to their use of magic. The same applies to the contemporary sources which deal with the expulsion and which have been examined by Menache. There is no praise to be found that the Jews as the alleged ritual murderers of innocent Christian children have finally been expelled. It seems that after all the ritual murder charge what not a major factor which determined the public image of the Jews at the time of their expulsion from England in 1290.

At the beginning of this conclusion I would like to bring together some general features of the ritual murder accusations against Jews in medieval England which can be derived from the sources I have examined:

To conclude one might say that the image of the "Christian-slaying Jews" was apparently not the predominant element in the perception of the Jews. Only one writer uses this attribute. Most of the cases as presented as single events. After all only five dead children were venerated as martyrs of a Jewish ritual murder in all of England in around 150 years. However the ritual murder accusations surely played a part, if only a minor one, in the general deterioration of the image and the situation of the Jew in medieval England. But they hardly produced any religious fanaticism. The decline of the Jewish communities and their expulsion was due to rational factors, e.g. the political and economic situation and developments.

For further studies it might be interesting to compare the ritual murder accusations in England with similar developments on the continent like the blood libel and the charges of host desecration.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, transl. by D. Whitelock, London 1961

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