tried to escape, were butchered by “the furious and disordered people” with spears, swords, and bills (a type of polearm with a hooked, chopping blade and protruding spikes). The massacre continued until the afternoon of the following day, when, exhausted, the crowd dispersed.9
Shortly after the riot, Richard departed English shores to join the third crusade leaving England without a monarch. His crusade was costly. The ships being readied for the campaign were stocked with silver, furs, food and spices, weapons, and much more. Funding came from taxes that were exacted from all quarters of society. Heretics’ property was confiscated, donations were expected from all towns, and tariffs were imposed on the Jews. Richard’s need for military campaign funds prompted him not only to tax Jews in England but also to levy a special tax on the Jews in Normandy, which was part of the Angevin empire under English rule during the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. As usual, non-payment of government taxes meant fines, confiscation of property, and imprisonment.10
It was not only heavy taxation that was a problem. With the king absent and his troops assembled as they prepared to follow him, lawlessness increased. More attacks on Jews spread throughout England in spite of Richard’s command that the Jews should be left unmolested. The reason for the violence, in Holinshed’s opinion, was the “unmercifull usurie practised [by the Jews] to the undooing of manie an honest man.” In Lincoln and Norfolk, Jews were slaughtered while in other towns they were beaten and robbed. The worst attack occurred in York on the sabbath before Passover, March 16, 1190 which was also the eve of Palm Sunday. According to the chronicler Ephraim of Bonn, the houses of the richest Jews were looted and burned. As the Jewish community sought protection at the royal castle keep, a decision was apparently made to either die by their own hand or that of their family rather than by infidels. Those who ignored this command and fled from the fire were slaughtered by the mob storming the castle.
The exact details of the story are lost to us but it is clear that the issue of usury was a critical factor. Bonds owned by the Jews were often left in churches for safekeeping, and in York they were kept at the Minster. With the Jews massacred, people swarmed into the Minster, broke into the chests where the promissory notes were kept, and, in the middle of the church, the bonds were burned. With this action, all debt was erased. William of Newburgh one of the contemporary chroniclers of the disturbances, evaluated the source of the violent riot:
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Of the Jews of York … the principal were Benedict and Joceus, men who were rich, and who lent on usury far and wide. Besides, with profuse expense they had built houses of the largest extent in the midst of the city, which might be compared to royal palaces; and there they lived in abundance and luxury almost regal, like two princes of their own people, and tyrants to the Christians, exercising cruel tyranny towards those whom they had oppressed by usury … when the king was afterwards resident in the parts beyond sea, many people in the county of York took an oath together against the Jews, being unable to endure their opulence while they themselves were in want; and, without any scruple of Christian conscientiousness, thirsted for their perfidious blood, through the desire of plunder. Those who urged them on to venture upon these measures were certain persons of higher rank, who owed large sums to those impious usurers. Some of these, who had pledged their own estates to them for money, which they had received, were oppressed with great poverty; and others who were under obligations, on account or their own bonds, were oppressed by the tax-gatherers to satisfy the usurers who had dealings with the king.
The killings, the theft, the destruction, were all justified by Newburgh as a legitimate response to the illegitimate and vile practice of moneylending on the part of the Jews. There was only one Christian account, by Ralph of Diss, that condemned the killings outright and without equivocation. In general, even those who despised the aims of the murderers understood the hatred of moneylenders. William of Newburgh did not condone the massacre, which he believed to be motivated by avarice and conducted with immense cruelty. The carnage, in his assessment, was less a spontaneous outburst of anti-Jewish hatred and more a well concerted and organized murder of men to whom some highly ranked Christians owed considerable sums of money. Nevertheless, he placed most of the blame not on the murderers but on the usurious and rich Jews.11
Like all chronicles of the time, Ephraim’s account of the massacre needs to be handled with caution. He had no interest in history; he was, after all, writing a martyrology, the important message of which was the holiness of dying for God. Nevertheless, the end result was without doubt: York’s Jewish community was brutally butchered, their money and goods stolen, and the debts owed to the Jewish moneylenders in the city were wiped clean.
Noblemen such as Richard Malebisse owned large estates—in his case, in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire—and actively sought to harness royal power, which he believed was encroaching on the rights of the barons. He was also in debt to Aaron of Lincoln, whose estate had fallen into the hands of the king after the moneylender’s death in 1186. Malebisse’s aggrievement led him to join the ←30 | 31→conspiracy headed by the future King John against his absentee brother Richard. He was further accused of joining forces with members of the Percy family, to whom he was related, to plot the attack on the Jews of York. Other leaders accused of the riot were similarly indebted to Jews, including Robert of Ghent and Robert de Turnaham, who both owed money to Aaron of York. In addition, Robert of Ghent was in debt to another Jewish creditor, Brun of Stamford.12
When news of the assault on the Jews reached him in Normandy, Richard I took action against his rebellious lords and ordered his chancellor, the bishop of Ely William de Longchamp, to travel to York. Once there, he removed the sheriff and the constable of the castle. Most of those culpable for the riot had already escaped to Scotland or had joined the crusade. In their absence, the bishop confiscated a considerable amount of land. Fines were attributed to some of the richest subjects regardless of whether they were the most liable for the massacre or not. The estates of Malebisse were also taken and his esquires imprisoned.13
The attack in York was not only an assault against Jews as moneylenders. It was an attack on the king and his power. In the spring of 1199, on campaign at the Château of Châlus-Chabrol in the duchy of Aquitaine, forty-one-year-old Richard I succumbed to gangrene caused by a crossbow arrow wound. His rule had lasted ten-years, most of which time was spent outside of England on crusade, in captivity until ransomed, or, as at Châlus-Chabrol, devastating the lands of his rebellious vassals in France. His successor was his short, fat brother John and it was during his reign that the instigator of the riots against the Jews, Malebisse, had his estates restored to him. It was a case of one bad man being rewarded by another, for John was “a very bad man” who was “brim-ful of evil qualities,” in the words of a contemporary. He was treacherous, lecherous, and cruel. “Nature’s enemy” is how William of Newburgh described him. Starving his enemies to death was one of his favorite methods of execution and, fearful of his teenage nephew Arthur’s popularity, he had him imprisoned and then murdered.
With high taxes, bad harvests, unsuccessful business ventures, and any other of the multitude of reasons debt is accumulated, the nobles’ challenge to the monarch and talk of civil war led to the signing of Magna Carta by King John in 1215. An early form of political representation between the king and his barons, Magna Carta included, as one of its provisions, a proscription against the continuation of usury on Jewish debts after the death of the debtor if the heir was a minor. John’s signature on that celebrated treaty failed, however, to suppress the tyranny of kings and the demands of hostile barons.14
Within five years of the York massacre, Jews resumed their moneylending activities, providing financial services even more prominently
