History of the Jews in England
The history of the Jews in England can be reliably traced to the period following the Norman Conquest of 1066, when England became integrated with the European system for the first time since the Roman evacuation of 410 CE, and thus came to the awareness of the Jewish communities of Continental Europe.
The first Jews likely came to England circa 70 CE during the time of Roman rule, but were probably wiped out in the tumultuous period that followed the Roman evacuation, when the Anglo-Saxons gradually took power from the Romano-Celts.
In 1290 King Edward I issued the Edict of Expulsion, expelling all Jews from the Kingdom of England. After the expulsion, there was no overt Jewish community until the rule of Oliver Cromwell. While Cromwell never officially readmitted Jews to the Commonwealth of England, a small colony of Sephardic Jews living in London was identified in 1656 and allowed to remain. The Jewish Naturalisation Act 1753, an attempt to legalise the Jewish presence in England, remained in force for only a few months. Historians commonly date Jewish emancipation to either 1829 or 1858, while Benjamin Disraeli, born a Sephardi Jew but converted to Anglicanism, had been elected twice as the prime minister of the United Kingdom in 1868 and in 1874. At the insistence of Irish leader Daniel O'Connell, in 1846 the British law "De Judaismo", which prescribed a special dress for Jews, was repealed.
Due to the rarity of anti-Jewish violence in Britain in the 19th century, it acquired a reputation for religious tolerance and attracted significant immigration from Eastern Europe. By 1939, about half a million European Jews had fled to England to escape the Nazis, but only about 70,000 were granted entry. Jews faced antisemitism and stereotypes in Britain, and antisemitism "in most cases went along with Germanophobia" during World War I to the extent that Jews were equated with Germans, despite the British royal family having partial German ethnic origins. This led many Ashkenazi Jewish families to Anglicise their often German-sounding names.
In the 21st century Jews in the UK now number around 275,000, with over 260,000 of these in England. The UK contains the second largest Jewish population in Europe and the fifth largest Jewish community worldwide. The majority of the Jews in England live in and around London, with almost 160,000 Jews in London itself and a further 20,800 in nearby Hertfordshire, primarily in Bushey, Borehamwood, and Radlett. The next most significant population is in Greater Manchester with a community of slightly more than 25,000, primarily in Bury, Salford, Manchester itself, and Trafford. There are also significant communities in Leeds, Gateshead, Brighton, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Southend.
Roman Britain
It is probable that there were Jews in Roman Britain under the Roman Empire, perhaps as soldiers, slaves, silversmiths or traders. However, there is little or no definitive evidence. One piece of circumstantial evidence is from a tradition in Caerleon, a major legionary base, of two Roman-era Christian martyrs, Julius and Aaron, with the name Aaron suggesting Jewish origin.Norman England, 1066–1290
states that William the Conqueror brought Jews from Rouen to England during the Norman Conquest. William the Conqueror's object may be inferred: his policy was to get feudal dues paid to the royal treasury in coin rather than in kind, and for this purpose it was necessary to have a body of men scattered through the country who would supply quantities of coin.Status of Jews
Prior to their expulsion in 1290, the status of Jews in England was completely dependent on the will of the Crown. As a result of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, Christian authority, in the guise of the king, imposed certain discriminatory practices upon the Jews of England, one being the mandate on the wearing of a badge symbolising the two Tablets of Stone. The year 1215 also coincided with the two entries in the Magna Carta, dated 15 June, regarding debts due to Jews. In return for their economic function, Jews were offered some privileges and protection under the jurisdiction of the king. As "royal serfs", they were allowed freedom of the king's highways, exemption from tolls, the ability to hold land directly from the king, and physical protection in the vast network of royal castles built to assert Norman authority.The Jews of London were the responsibility of the Constable of the Tower and for this reason they were able to seek refuge in the Tower of London when at risk of mob violence. This was resorted to on a number of occasions, with large numbers staying there, sometimes for months at a time. There are records of a body of Jewish men-at-arms forming part of the garrison of the Tower in 1267, during a civil conflict, the Second Barons' War.
A clause to that effect was inserted under Henry I in some manuscripts of the so-called Leges Edwardi Confessoris. Henry granted a charter to Rabbi Joseph, the chief Rabbi of London, and 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 a Jew's oath, which was valid against that of twelve Christians. The sixth clause of the charter was especially important: it granted to Jews the right to move wherever they wanted, as if they were the king's own property. As the king's property, English Jews could be mortgaged whenever the monarch needed to raise revenue and could be taxed without the permission of Parliament, eventually becoming the main taxpaying population.
English Jews experienced a "golden age" of sorts under Henry II in the late 12th century due to huge economic expansion and increased demand for credit. Major Jewish fortunes were made in London, Oxford, Lincoln, Bristol, and Norwich. The Crown, in turn, capitalized on the prosperity of its Jews. In addition to many arbitrary taxes, Richard I established the Ordinance of the Jewry in 1194 in an attempt to organize the Jewish community. It ensured that mandatory records would be kept by royal officials for all Jewish transactions. Every debt was recorded on a chirography to allow the king immediate and complete access to Jewish property. Richard also established a special exchequer to collect any unpaid debts due after the death of a Jewish creditor. The establishment of the Exchequer of the Jews eventually made all transactions of the English Jewry liable to taxation by the king in addition to the 10% of all sums recovered by Jews with the help of English courts. So, while the First and Second Crusades increased anti-Jewish sentiments, Jews in England went relatively unscathed beyond occasional fines and special levies. Though they did not experience the same kind of social mobility and cultural advancements that Jews under Muslim rule did, the Jews of England's population and prosperity increased under the protection of the king.
The status of Jews in England dramatically worsened with the consolidation of governmental authority as well as the deepening of popular piety in the late 12th century; further isolating Jews from the greater English community. Though rulers of both church and state exploited and monopolized on the advancements in commerce and industry of English Jews, popular anti-Jewish sentiments grew as a result of their prosperity and relationship with the king and the courts. External pressures such as the circulating myth of the blood libel, the religious tensions in light of the Crusades, and the interference of Pope Innocent III in the late 12th century created an increasingly violent environment for English Jews. Mob violence increased against the Jews in London, Norwich, and Lynn. Entire Jewries were murdered in York. Because of their financial utility, however, English Jews were still offered royal protection, and Richard I continued to renew orders to protect the Jews, formalizing the Exchequer and designating "archae", or centralized record chests monitored by panels of local Christian and Jewish key holders to better protect records of all Jewish transactions.
The incompetence of King John in the early 13th century depleted even the wealthiest Jews, and though they had more than a decade to recover, Henry III's equally mismanaged finances pressed roughly 70,000 pounds out of a population of only 5,000. To do so, they had to sell off many of their mortgage bonds to wealthy nobles. The Jews then became a focal point of those debtors' hatred and mass violence spiked again in the mid-13th century. Their legal status, however, did not change until Henry's son, Edward I, took control of the Jewries. He issued restrictive statutes, forbidding them from taking any more property into bond, the means by which they could lend money and how they lived. With almost all means of income denied them and property being confiscated, the Jewish population diminished. New waves of crusading zeal in the 1280s in conjunction with debt resentment pressured Edward into the expulsion of the depleted Jewish community in 1290.
Attitudes of the kings and the church
-Jewish relations in England were disturbed under King Stephen, who burned down the house of a Jew in Oxford because he refused to pay a contribution to the king's expenses. In 1144 came the first report in history of the blood libel against Jews; it came up in the case of William of Norwich. Anthony Julius finds that the English were endlessly imaginative in inventing antisemitic allegations against the Jews. He contends that England became the "principal promoter, and indeed in some sense the inventor of literary anti-Semitism." In his 2010 book, Julius argues that blood libel is the key, because it incorporates the themes that Jews are malevolent, constantly conspiring against Christians, powerful, and merciless. Variations include stories about Jews poisoning wells, twisting minds, and buying and selling Christian souls and bodies.While the Crusaders were killing Jews in Germany, outbursts against Jews in England were, according to Jewish chroniclers, prevented by King Stephen.
With the restoration of order under Henry II, Jews renewed their activity. Within five years of his accession Jews were found at London, Oxford, Cambridge, Norwich, Thetford, Bungay, Canterbury, Winchester, 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 their resources as occasion demanded. He repaid them with demand notes on the sheriffs of the counties, who accounted for payments thus made in the half-yearly accounts on the pipe rolls. Strongbow's conquest of Ireland was in part financed by Josce, a Jew of Gloucester; and the king accordingly fined Josce, five pounds, for having lent money to those under his displeasure, pipe rolls also indicate Strongbow borrowed monies from Aaron of Lincoln. As a rule, however, Henry II does not appear to have limited in any way the financial activity of Jews. The favourable position of 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 immigration to England of Jews who were exiled from the king's properties in 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 to Normandy, and imposed a tallage on the rest of the community of 5,000 marks. When, however, he asked the rest of the country to pay a tithe for the Crusade against Saladin in 1188, he demanded a quarter of all Jewish chattels. The so-called "Saladin tithe" was reckoned at £70,000, the quarter at £60,000. In other words, the value of the personal property of 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.
Aaron of Lincoln is believed to have been the wealthiest man in 12th century Britain. It is estimated that his wealth may have exceeded that of the king. The king had probably been led to make this large demand on English Jewry's money by the surprising windfall which came to his treasury at Aaron's death in 1186. 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 worth of debts owed to him. Besides this, Aaron's large fortune passed to King Henry but much of it was lost on the journey to the royal coffers in Normandy. A special branch of the treasury, known as "Aaron's Exchequer", was established in order to deal with this large account.
During the earlier years of Henry II's reign Jews lived on good terms with their non-Jewish neighbours, 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 many 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. Anti-Jewish sentiment, fostered by the Crusades during the latter part of the reign of Henry, spread throughout the nation and began to be reflected in official policy.
During the thirteenth century, English monarchs were increasingly careless and finally actively hostile in their policies. This was in part due to changes in church policy, which was becoming increasingly hostile after the Fourth Lateran Council. The church demanded the separation of Jews and Christians as a means of arresting the spread of heretical ideas and interfaith sexual relations. To this end, as a means of identification, Jews were mandated to wear Jewish badges or the Jewish hat, as depicted in the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre in Winchester Cathedral.
John and Henry III both overtaxed the Jews, regarding them as an easy source of income. The result was that Jews were forced by the crown to pull in all overdue debts, and as debt was generally secured against land, this meant dispossessing members of the middling gentry of the source of their feudal status, land. The crown's immediate allies, in their inner circle and court, benefited from these sales as they picked up these assets cheaply; Jews could not by law hold onto land holdings. This repeated cycle bred resentment and anti-Jewish sentiment, but monarchs continued this process until Jewish assets had in essence run out.
Henry III's official attitudes moved from protection to hostility when he became the first monarch to lend credence to a blood libel, when he ordered investigations and arrests of Jews concerning the death of a child, Hugh, in Lincoln. He was locally venerated, and stories about him this clearly circulated widely, including in prose and folk songs.