The collective Western mind still today erroneously sees “the Jews” of medieval England as moneylenders. It is generally accepted that the Jews functioned to create a more liquid economy and to provide the crown with much needed financial support. However, while it is true that a select handful of Jews did operate as professional moneylenders, I will argue that the vast majority of Jews could not, and did not, operate as professional financers. The method I have employed to prove this thesis is to conduct a close economic analysis of the document E. 101/249/4. This document is the result of an archa scrutiny (an archa was a chest, held in each major town, within which were deposited any and all loans contracted within the town) that King Henry III ordered in preparation for the collection of his 1241-42 tallage of 20,000 marks. It is composed of two sections. The first section is found on membrane one recto. It is a summary of the returns of the aforesaid tallage and is especially valuable because it provides the names of every adult Jew in Lincoln in 1241-42. The second section provides the actual results from Henry III’s archa scrutiny. It contains eight hundred and eighty-six loans and takes up the vast majority of the document. The results of this economic study convincingly refute the idea that all Jews lent money and that all moneylenders were Jews. Of the one hundred and fifteen Jews listed in the first section (membrane one recto) only thirty-eight had loans in the Lincoln archa; the remaining seventy-seven Jewish residents of Lincoln simply did not lend money. Further, by carefully analyzing the loans found in the archa, one finds that a full seventy-four percent of all loans found in the archa were held by only ten men, and thirty-two percent were held by Aaron of York alone! The remaining seventy-five Jews with loans in the archa collectively held only twenty-six percent of the value of all the loans contained in Lincoln’s archa. These results are significant, for they overturn the nearly ubiquitous assumption that “the Jews” functioned only as moneylenders in medieval England. It is an assumption that is well entrenched in even academia today, and one that I hope to begin to dissolve with this thesis.
2019, Jewish Historical Studies
This study readdresses the question of whether or not there were Jews in medieval Ireland by re-examining the records that have previously been used to argue for Jewish contact with Ireland.
2005, ed. W. Maleczek, Fragen der politischen Integration im mittelalterlichen Europa (Vorträge und Forschungen LXIII, Thorbecke Verlag, 85 -135
Discusses the relationships between the various peoples ruled by kings of England and their neighbours in France, Ireland, Scotland and Wales
This is a teaching document I developed in support of my "Age of Chivalry" course. It began as a simple chronology of the Central Middle Ages and kept on growing.
2012, Historical Research
The thirteenth-century English exchequer carefully retained pipe rolls and referred to them over many decades. Most writers have concentrated on the annual audit function of the rolls, but they had a much longer-term significance for the exchequer's key task, collecting cash for the government. This article examines how the rolls were used to collect debts, and the procedures which made them manageable. It is based almost entirely on examples from pipe and memoranda rolls, mainly unpublished. It also demonstrates that use of the rolls is simpler than has recently been claimed.
Foundations v.3, no.3 (2010) 179-215
Recently published Gloucestershire fines reveal that Hamelin de Ballon had a second daughter and heiress, whose descendants are legion today. This study traces their descent via her son, Hugh de Gundeville, administrator of Henry II.
2011, Archaeologia Cantiana
Rose of Dover was heiress to several manors in Kent and Essex. She was married to king John's illegitimate son, Richard, who took the title of Richard of Chilham from one of Rose's manors. Richard tried repeatedly to sell, waste or mortgage Rose's property, and she obtained royal orders to prevent him doing so. The paper shows the problems of an heiress protecting her property from a profligate husband, and throws some light on a hitherto little-known half-brother of Henry III.
A dissertation for the study of a Masters in Medieval History at the University of Birmingham. It details the ups and downs the Cistercian Order had with King Richard and John, within the confines of the Angevin Empire. Sorry the Latin text is not translated.
2014, Foundations v.6, 13-46
The proposition of this paper is that Richard de Lucy, Chief Justiciar of Henry II, had another daughter other than those already known, named Rose. She was wife first of William de Mounteny, progenitor of the Mounteny family of Mountnessing, Essex, and secondly of Michael Capra, who founded Thoby Priory. Rose was also mother of Muriel de Mounteny, who with her husband Jordan de Bricett, was patron of St Mary's nunnery in Clerkenwell.
Accusations of Jewish ritual murder have persisted into the modern era, but the medieval origins of the accusation reflect the society from which it emerged. Between 1066 and 1290 the perception and position of the Jewish population in England changed. This period also witnessed the origins of the ritual murder accusations. In 1144 the accusation was dismissed by a majority of the population; by 1255 it was accepted by the Christian community and the Jews were the first place they turned when the body of the child was found. By locating the changing position of the Jewish community, and then comparing the development of the ritual murder accusations between the case of William of Norwich and Hugh of Lincoln, it allows the Jewish community to be viewed from a different vantage point. This dissertation will also critique Gavin Langmuir’s conception of medieval anti-Semitism, by exploring the alleged ‘irrational’ nature of the ritual murder accusation. The argument will be made, that they are also based in rational financial and societal concerns, and thus not the ‘irrational’ manifestations that Langmuir outlined. By the murder of Hugh in 1255, these accusations had passed into folk legend and taken on a more malevolent form but still had a rational financial underpinning. The accusation became part of the general perception of the Jews, and lasted long after the Jews were expelled. The development of the rituals, is key to understanding the way that the position of the Jews was changing in English society
2019
Covering warfare, politics, economy, finances, natural resources, structure of the government, population statistics, way of life and more.
2008, Cultural Diversity in the British Middle Ages
Three Greek chronicles from Cyprus recording the Third Crusade and the conquest of Cyprus by King Richard I of England will be discussed. Whether their information is corroborated by Western sources will also be examined. The Greek chronicles are the following: two references to the conquest of Cyprus in two minor chronicles of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the much fuller narrative and contemporary chronicle of the Greek monk Neophytos the Recluse, and the fifteenth-century chronicle of Leontios Makhairas. This last chronicle was written by a Greek with personal and familial connections to the Lusignan royal court. All the Greek accounts of the conquest of Cyprus relate that event and the campaigns in Syria and Palestine in extremely general terms, unlike the Western sources. They were probably unwilling to discuss in detail the Latins' defeat of the Greeks, which they found humiliating.
https://punctumbooks.com/titles/make-and-let-die-untimely-sovereignties/
2018, Legal History Miscellany
https://legalhistorymiscellany.com/2018/08/17/a-jewish-womans-appeal-of-murder-in-thirteenth-century-england/ Let us consider an inquest into allegations surrounding the homicide of Josce le Arblaster, Jew of Northampton, in the third year of the reign of King Edward I (1274/75). Olympias of Towcester, a Christian woman,[9] stood accused of the crime. Josce’s daughter, known only in the records as Floria the Jew, had come forward to lodge a formal accusation (known in medieval parlance as an “appeal”) against her. Olympias emphatically denied that she was in any way liable for Josce’s death. Indeed, she maintained that she was a victim to Floria’s malevolent plotting, accused out of hate and spite (de odio et atya) for a crime she did not commit. Nonetheless, Olympias had been arrested and imprisoned at Northampton while awaiting trial.
In 1247 the half-brothers of Henry III began to arrive in England. They were the sons of Henry's mother, Isabella of Angoulême, by her second marriage to Hugh de Lusignan. Coming from Poitou, they were welcomed by the King. He had already favoured other immigrants of alien birth including other relatives such as the uncles of his Queen, Eleanor of Provence, and their associates, the Savoyards. Whilst these men were often very effective royal servants and always loyal, the rewards that they received from the generous monarch stimulated hostility amongst the native-born English and especially those at court. Because of their often arrogant behaviour, the Poitevins gained the worst reputation and, following a court-centred revolution, they were expelled from England in 1258. Amongst the Poitevins who came in the wake of the Lusignans, was William de Sancta Ermina, a close associate of Geoffrey de Lusignan. He was extremely well-rewarded and this engendered unpopularity. This paper examines William's career in England which saw him become one of the King's closest and best rewarded servants but was twice interrupted by periods of enforced absence. Introduction The reliance of Plantagenet monarchs of the thirteenth century on men not born in the realm of England resulted in a series of waves of xenophobia flaring up until the 1260s. Firstly, King John recruited a series of foreigners as his trusted soldiers and officials. Most came from his duchy of Normandy which he lost to Philip II of France in 1204, but others were from Touraine and Poitou. Almost all of them were francophone in origin but there were some men from German lands. These men were loyal and effective servants of a tyrannical king and were, as a result, widely hated. Indeed a number of them were named as those who were to lose their positions in England as a result of chapter 50 of Magna Carta.
1999, Historical Research
The ‘Capitula de tonsura monete’ are previously unpublished articles of inquest originally issued in 1279 to special judicial commissions created to combat coin‐clipping and related monetary offences by Jews and Christians. The ‘Capitula’ are shown to shed light on Edward I's motivations and intentions during the coin‐clipping campaign of 1278–9. The author attempts to explain why this text was circulated, somewhat paradoxically, after the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290, and to determine why it was read along with authentic statues and ‘legal apocrypha’. A critical edition is appended, based on a collation of all manuscript copies and versions.
2013, British Numismatic Journal
The reforming council which took over the government of England in 1258 moved quickly to reform the royal mints and exchanges. The inquiries into the exchanges, and the successful measures to increase the royal share of their profits, have hitherto received little attention. Unpublished Exchequer records cast new light on the administration of a significant contributor to government revenues.
Aaron of Lincoln (c. 1123-1186) was a Jewish financier of medieval England. He was the wealthiest man of England during his time, in liquid assets. He lent money to a vast segment of society, from King Henry II to lower-level barons and knights. He financed great cathedral building works like the St. Albans Cathedral and the Lincoln Cathedral. With a network of agents, his business flourished throughout England. In an era of widespread popular anti-Semitism, he enjoyed the protection of the king. This article examines the life and works of Aaron of Lincoln in the context of the financial structure and political system of medieval England, as well as the Jewish life of the time. This article deals with the relation between the king and Jewish finance, the legal status of the Jews, and how Jewish wealth ultimately benefitted the king (as Aaron of Lincoln died, his property fell into the hands of the king). This article also examines the link between the moneylending business (usury) of the Jews, and popular anti-Jewish violence, culminating in the 'Massacre of York' (1190), and the expulsion of all Jews from England in 1290.
2012, Numismatic Chronicle
Earl Richard of Cornwall (1209–72), brother of King Henry III (1216–72), financed the recoinage of the entire English currency in 1247–50. In return he was granted control of the mints and exchanges, and half of all exchange revenues, for 12 years. These revenues included penalties for unauthorized exchanging, which were imposed by a special judicial inquiry. Unpublished Exchequer documents show how the earl, already a rich man, was made still richer by his control of the exchanges. Chronicles also show that he added to this wealth by taking bribes. The recoinage and the enforcement of the restrictions on exchanging were unpopular, and contributed to the discontent which emerged at the time of the baronial rebellion in 1258.
This piece examines the administrative contexts within which the contents of the archae were scrutinised and enrolled.
Walter de Goderville made his reputation as a brave and resourceful knight of Falkes de Bréauté. Falkes was one of the most successful of all the alien knights who served King John and then the boy King, Henry III; he rose from obscurity to such a position that he was entrusted with a wide swathe of royal castles, served as Steward to John and was one of the executors of John's will. Walter' de Goderville's career, indeed his life, was in grave doubt when he supported Falkes' rebellion in 1224 but he survived and went on to serve Henry III well in Ireland, Wales and Gascony. This paper looks at his life and achievements. The Arrival of the alien soldiers King John and Henry III were notorious for their recruitment of alien soldiers, clerks and other servants who were adjudged by the English to have been over-rewarded for their service to these kings to the detriment of native-born men who envied the positions and wealth that ended in alien hands. The kings were able to grant lands to these men and they could also rise in status by using wardships awarded to them to obtain heiress brides for themselves or their sons or they could marry their female relatives to English men who held hereditable lands. However, the kings did exercise some tact in these acts of patronage by steering their alien men towards older, widowed women rather than young spinsters. Most of the alien curiales were from trans-channel Francophone lands. Some originated in lands which were or had been, ruled by the English kings. John's character drove him to trust few men but he relied more easily on men from his non-English lands who would serve him faithfully in the hope of rewards. This tendency intensified after Normandy was lost in 1204. John distrusted even the loyalty of the epitome of chivalry, William Marshal, because he swore allegiance to the French king for his Norman possessions and retained a foot in both camps. A number of Normans settled in England during John'sreign. Other I would like to thank Drs. Richard Cassidy, David Crook and Paul Dryburgh for checking some of my references 1 during the Corona lockdown.
I look at the different notions of faith as used by Christians and Jews in the decades around 1200, and suggest ways in which these widened the gulf between the two religions, with special reference to the situation in and around York c. 1190.
In this essay, I propose to examine the situation of the Jews under the direct control of Philip Augustus, the "servi camarae", centering my investigation upon the years 1198 to 1215. I shall concentrate especially upon the political, religious, economic and social influences of this period, revealing how these currents originated in the late twelfth century and then combined to create the tides of opinion and circumstance in the early thirteenth century, in order to provide information about this obscure corner of medieval history. This paper takes a journalistic approach due to a lack of source materials about the Jews in this time and place, and even the most comprehensive modern studies of Philip's reign have failed utterly even to mention his Jewish subjects.
2008, Journal of Medieval History
Empire of Magic offers a genesis and genealogy for medieval romance and the King Arthur legend through the history of Europe's encounters with the East in crusades, travel, missionizing, and empire formation. The book argues that romance arose in the 12th century as a cultural response to the trauma and horror of taboo acts—in particular the cannibalism committed by crusaders on the bodies of Muslim enemies in Syria during the First Crusade. From such encounters with the East sprang the fantastical episodes featuring King Arthur in Geoffrey of Monmouth's chronicle, The History of the Kings of England, a work where history and fantasy collide and merge, each into the other, inventing crucial new examples and models for romances to come. After locating the rise of romance and Arthurian legend in the contact zones of East and West, Empire of Magic demonstrates the adaptability of romance and its key role in the genesis of an English national identity. Discussing Jews, women, children, and sexuality in works like the romance of Richard Lionheart, stories of the saintly Constance, Arthurian chivralic literature, the legend of Prester John, and travel narratives, the book shows how fantasy enabled audiences to work through issues of communal identity, race, color, class and alternative sexualities in socially sanctioned and safe modes of cultural discussion in which pleasure, not anxiety, was paramount. Romance also engaged with the threat of modernity in the late medieval period, as economic, social, and technological transformations occurred and awareness grew of a vastly enlarged world beyond Europe, one encompassing India, China, and Africa. Finally, the author suggests that romance locates England and Europe within an empire of magic and knowledge that surveys the world and makes it intelligible—usable—for the future. "
http://thewildpeak.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/william-longbeard-popular-agitator-or-dangerous-demagogue/
![William Longbeard - Popular Agitator or Dangerous Demagogue? [https://thewildpeak.wordpress.com/2014/11/23/william-longbeard-popular-agitator-or-dangerous-demagogue-2/]](https://0.academia-photos.com/attachment_thumbnails/35463175/mini_magick20190314-26552-1xcoir5.png?1552593898)
2021, The Massacres of the Jews under Richard I (A.D. 1189-1190)
Religions 2021, 12(10), 821; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12100821 (registering DOI) (This article belongs to the Special Issue The Premodern Mind: Scientific and Religious Thought from the Middle Ages to the Reformation)
2016, Foundations
A recent find from a British Library manuscript shows that Reginald was son of Richard de Lucy. This article examines the evidence and discusses the implications for the wider family network, including that of Reginald's little known daughter, Cecily, who the authors suggest was wife of Walter de Cherlecote (progenitor of the Lucys of Charlecote), Roger de St John and Richard Mallore. Foundations (2016) 8:53-72
