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Reviewed by:
  • Expulsion—England’s Jewish Solution
  • Suzanne Bartlet
Expulsion—England’s Jewish Solution, by Richard Huscroft. Stroud, UK: Tempus Publishing Ltd., 2006. 191 pp. $29.95.

This is a very readable book long overdue as an up-to-date account of the history of the medieval Jews in England. It covers the entire duration of their stay from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, totalling less than 200 years. Huscroft has read widely all the current books on the subject and has produced an easily read yet thoughtful assessment of the immigrants’ ability to [End Page 240] adjust and thrive in the changing conditions of their new environment, and to cope when their adoptive countrymen turned on them and eventually ejected them. He recounts how they came, escaping from persecution and murder, some of it at the hands of Crusaders on their way to the Holy Lands, while others were attracted by the business opportunities that they heard were on offer in Britain. Jews came from France, Germany, Italy and one from as far away as Russia. Kings from Henry II, Richard, and John to Henry III appreciated the financial benefits they offered and gave them Royal protection in exchange for the taxation they could be pressured to pay to the Throne. They were seen as the king’s serfs by the barons, who resented the riches and the independence it brought him even while they formed part of the many the perpetrators were severely punished really hold up, as after several customers who borrowed heavily from Jewish moneylenders paying interest. Violence first surfaced at King Richard’s coronation in 1190, and then spread to many of the provincial cities. The tragedy of Clifford’s Tower in York, where Jews committed mass suicide to escape the mob, is well known. One of Huscroft’s few mistakes is to place the main persecutor, Richard Malebisse, as Constable of York Castle instead of one John Marshall. Neither does the statement that years even Malebisse got his estates back and was knighted.

The thirteenth century witnessed increasing persecution and maltreatment, although many Jews became very prosperous in the first half, some working closely with the king. Simon de Montfort led the attacks on foreigners and the Jews, and after his defeat and death at Evesham in 1265 left a legacy of bitterness and antisemitism that smoldered on, fueling attacks on Jewries, which climaxed in the massacre of the coin clipping pogrom of 1278/9. While examining the reasons for the decline of wealth in the thirteenth century that precipitated the downfall of the entire community, Huscroft seems to underestimate the importance of the coin-clipping trials, which literally decimated Jewry. Over 269, out of a total of about 2,000–3,000 Jews, among them some of the most prosperous leading members of the community, were hanged, and the remainder severely impoverished by having to pay heavy fines and support the surviving dependents of the executed. As the survivors struggled to regain a foothold for some sort of recovery from this heavy loss, they were repeatedly knocked back by King Edward’s efforts to stamp out their money dealings, to turn them into farmers and merchants, and to persuade them to convert to Christianity. Their recovery was impossible in the face of these demands during the twelve years left to them.

While this is a lucid and well informed account, there is a flaw. The problem lies with the title. This book deals with the Expulsion itself only in the last 24 pages, and although it can be argued that the seeds of that ejection can [End Page 241] be found throughout their stay, “Expulsion” implies that the most outstanding moment was the events of 1290. Not only would this be an injustice to the account of their lives, it’s also an injustice to the book itself, as the author highlights the great contribution they made to the country. It’s an interesting thought that without the Jews many of our great monasteries and some of our cathedrals might not have been built at least to the standard that we can still see when we view their remains today.

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