to fortresses around the country. An estimated 600 Jewish males were taken from all parts of the realm and transported to the Tower of London and commissions were established to hear the charges against the accused. Officers of the king ransacked the homes of the accused looking for evidence of coin clipping and counterfeiting. The king let it be known that Jews might gain their release by paying a fine and some Jews bought their freedom. But the burden of heavy and increased taxation over the thirteenth century meant that the Jewish moneylenders no longer had the wealth or influence they possessed in the previous century.47
An unknown number of those arrested were found guilty and executed, including Benedict of Winchester who, along with a fellow Jew from Winchester, Deudone, was imprisoned before he could take up the position of queen’s gold ←47 | 48→keeper. He was taken to the Tower of London on charges of “certain trespasses concerning the king’s money.” Four of his properties were seized and then forfeited before he was found guilty of the charges. On a cold day in January 1280, he and Deudone were “hanged for felony” and their chattels sold. Where large sums of money were at stake, there was always the risk that the eradication of debt and the appropriation of property were motivating factors in the imprisonment and punishment of moneylenders or that such concerns ran roughshod over judicial procedures. It may also have been the case that he was guilty of the common crime of coin clipping.48
Around 200 Jews were executed and 29 Christians, including the king’s Master of the Exchange at the London mint, Philip de Cambio, and the assayer, William Harlewyn, who were hanged, drawn, and quartered for making and distributing inferior coinage. The prosecutions were an attempt to end a serious problem but in trying to stop coin clipping, money flowed into the king’s coffers. Primarily, Edward’s motivations, had more to do with solving the issue of debased coinage and filling his treasury, than it had to do with pursuing a policy based on prejudice toward Jews.49
After the appropriations and fines resulting from the arrests and executions, the king began the process of recoinage which netted him around £36,000 in profit. An increase in the money supply does not necessarily enrich society but it does enrich the person or government that monopolizes it; in this case, the king. In May 1279, it was announced that,
all of the Jews lately “charged, indicted, and convicted of clipping the king’s money have now been punished with death, and certain of them have forfeited all their goods and chattels … and are imprisoned during the king’s pleasure … many Christians … by … divers grievances heretofore inflicted upon Christians by Jews endeavour from day to day to accuse and indict certain Jews not yet charged or indicted with trespasses of money by light and groundless … accusations, charging them to their terror with being guilty of such trespasses, in order that they may by threats of such accusations strike terror into the Jews and that they may extort money from them.”
After a lull, in 1283, however, there was an upswing once more in coin offences and other crimes concerning metals.50
A costly expedition to Gascony and a large payment given to free Charles of Salerno, the son of Charles of Anjou, on top of the debt owed to the Riccardi (which was nearly £110,000), put Edward in the familiar situation of financial trouble. A clampdown on corruption by England’s justices—which brought in ←48 | 49→large fines and ended in the Chief Justice being exiled—brought in not nearly enough money. In addition, the problem over Jewish debt that grieved magnates and smallholders alike, had not vanished with the Statute. Instead, moneylending was now practiced covertly with false contracts. Deciding to rid himself of the issue once and for all, Edward decided on expulsion, a common punishment and one that Jews had experienced under rulers in France.51
In July 1290, Edward commanded that all Jews were to quit England before 1 November. His edict charged that in spite of a previous order that Jews should refrain from usury and earn a living from trade and labor instead, they had continued to lend at interest. The edict went on to scold the Jews for “maliciously deliberating amongst themselves,” and merely disguising their usury by calling it “courtesy” (curialitatum). Whatever they called it, the king stated, it was still a form of usury and one that he judged even more oppressive than before. He therefore concluded that edicts against usury were ineffective in restraining usurers. The only answer was to expel all Jews from England. In return, Edward was rewarded with the biggest tax of his reign. Even the Church agreed to a tax.52
Banishment had been used as a form of punishment since ancient times and the subject of the first biblical story which told of Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden. It was regularly used in ancient empires and in medieval times for political transgressions, criminal behavior, vengeance, or to maintain social order. It is difficult to class the expulsions as antisemitic as we commonly understand that word. Brutal, certainly, callous, undoubtedly, but it has to be placed in the context of thirteenth-century England. England was densely occupied with a rising population and many lived on the edges of subsistence, barely scraping enough together to survive. A bad harvest could bring famine and plague in its wake, carrying off the young, old, and weak. It was a world where lives were short and often worth little, where people jostled to see rebels and others rightly or wrongly convicted of crimes against the Crown hanged alive, disemboweled, beheaded or their bodies quartered, where heads were displayed on spikes at city walls or castles and left to rot as a warning to others not to defy the monarch, and where war was an almost constant part of life. Exile and confiscation of property were familiar punishments for those who were condemned for some act against the Crown and was suffered by people of all standing, including clergymen, nobles, and even members of the royal family who had fallen out of favor.
By the time Edward ordered the expulsion in 1290, the Jewish moneylenders had declined financially. Four years after the Jews left England’s shores, Edward had the Riccardi arrested as “men who had deceived him.” The arrest and ←49 | 50→confiscation of assets, including the deprivation of the custom seals, came shortly after they were financially crippled by the war between England and France and after the company had refused to extend him further credit. Further arrests and confiscations of the Riccardi in France led to a run on their bank, their demise, and bankruptcy. The king, meanwhile, found new bankers in the form of the Frescobaldi of Florence. In the case of the Jews, debtors and especially those at risk of losing their lands, rejoiced at the expulsion order, but the celebration would not last long. Edward continued to press his people for money, by frequent and onerous taxation, threatening the clergy with outlaw status unless they paid up, and seizing food to feed his armies and goods (such as horses, carts, and boats) in return for future recompense. The battle between the earls, lesser knights, and the king continued but the issue of Jewish debt was no longer part of the discussion.53
* * *
On Philip III’s death in 1285, his son with Isabella of Aragon was crowned king of France. Philip IV may have been handsome enough to deserve his nickname “the Fair,” but he was not universally admired. Bernard Saisset, the bishop of Pamiers, remarked that he was not a man, “but a statue,” or an owl because all he can do is stare, which may have been due to his extremely shy nature. He was, like Edward I, big on spending but permanently short of funds, obsessed with money and getting his hands on it however he could. If Edward was a petulant and difficult man for moneylenders, Philip was a creditor’s enemy, as the Riccardi found out to their ruin.54
Because Philip had expensive wars to wage against England and Flanders, impressive buildings to erect, officials to pay, and, not least, a grand lifestyle to fund, he tolerated usury so long as it benefited him. At the same time, he passed measures that appeared to protect his subjects from its “excesses.” He allowed debtors to escape imprisonment if the loans they left unpaid were owed to Jews, while instructing his administrators to collect debts owed to Jews of the king (Juifs du Roi). If the goods involved in the transactions were “tainted by usury” then the money was forfeited to the royal treasury.
In need of more money for his war against Flanders, Philip IV debased the currency
