held of King Henry, our great grandfather; and all those things which they now lawfully hold in land, bonds, and mortgages, and their chattels. That they may have all their liberties and customs which they had in the time of the said Henry, the grandfather of our father, in a better and more quiet and more honourable manner.

"And if complaint shall arise between a Christian and a Jew, let him who shall have appealed against the other procure witnesses to substantiate his plaint, viz., a lawful Christian and a lawful Jew. And if a Jew shall have a writ concerning his plaint, his own writ shall be his witness. And if a Christian shall have a plaint against a Jew, the plaint shall be tried by the Jew's peers. And when a Jew dies, his body shall not be detained above the ground; and let his heirs have his money and his debts, so that he be not disturbed thence, that is to say, if he have an heir who would be responsible for him, and do justice as touching his debts and forfeitures. And let it be lawful for Jews to buy everything offered to them, and to receive them, except such things as belong to the Church, and crimson cloth.

"If a Jew be summoned by one without a witness, let him be free from such a summons by his single oath taken on his book; and if he be summoned concerning things which belong to the Crown, let him likewise be free by his single oath on his roll. If a difference arise between a Christian and a Jew about the lending of money, the Jew should prove the capital, and the Christian the interest; that a Jew may lawfully and quietly sell a mortgage made to him, when he is certain that he held it a whole year and a day, that the Jew should not be entered into any plea, except before us, or before the keepers of our castles, in whose bailiwicks the Jews reside. That the Jews, wherever they are, may go whither they please, with their chattels, nor may any man detain or hinder them; and we ordain that they should be free throughout England and Normandy, of all customs, tolls, and modiations of wines, just as much as our own chattels are. And we command and order you to keep, defend, and protect them; and we prohibit any one from impleading them in opposition to this charter, touching the things mentioned above, under pain of forfeiture, as the charter of our father, King Henry II., did reasonably command."

And as a particular encouragement to the English Jews, John granted, moreover, by another charter, dated the same day, that all differences among themselves, which did not concern the pleas of the crown, should be heard and determined by their rabbis, according to their own law: a privilege which must have been of great importance to them, as the Jews consider it strictly unlawful to go to judgment before Gentiles.

In return for these Charters the Jews paid the sum of 4000 marks. The synagogues which were sometimes closed-such as that of Bury St. Edmund's, Dunstable, and other towns-were re-opened. Again three times a day, morning, noon, and evening, were they frequented by Jewish worshippers.

The Jews, encouraged by such extraordinary marks of respect and kindness, fancied once more that they had found in England a home, and great nunbers began to come over from the continent. The royal favour, however, tended to excite the envy of their Gentile neighbours, who began again to accuse the Hebrew financiers of various crimes, such

as crucifying children, and falsifying the coin, &c. In the fourth year of this reign, a Jew of Bedford, Bonefand by name, was indicted for a crime of a very incredible nature; which alleged crime, however, could not be proved, and the Jew was, therefore, honourably acquitted.

In the fifth year of this reign, the Jews were subjected to many illtreatments and indignities from the citizens of London; but the King still continued to show a desire of affording his Hebrew subjects protection. They petitioned him to interfere his authority, and obtain some security from a recurrence of like grievances; whereupon he immediately wrote a sharp letter to the mayor and barons of London, in which he told them that, "as they knew the Jews were under his special protection, he wondered that any ill had been suffered to come upon them;" and after committing the Jews to their guard and protection, concluded with saying, that if any fresh injuries should be allowed to befall them, he should require their blood at the hands of the citizens.

The measures of conciliation had the desired effect the Jews, placing reliance in the protection thus offered them by the king, again applied themselves, with full confidence, to the acquirement of property; and before ten years of this reign had passed away, their increasing wealth rendered them capable of affording a rich harvest to the Crown. When the fickle tyrant found that this was the case, he did not any longer keep the mask of kindness on his face: he began to throw aside the disguise he had assumed, and by every means which lay in his power he endeavoured to reap the advantages which his policy had placed within his

grasp.

It clearly appears that the reason he lavished so many privileges upon them, was for the sinister purpose of alluring them into his power, that he might plunder and oppress them at pleasure. It was aptly said by a French historian, that the Jews were used like sponges, allowed for a time to suck up a large amount of wealth, which was wrung out, when filled, into the coffers of the Crown.

In the year 1210, he laid a tallage upon the Jews of 66,000 marks, and enforced payment by imprisonment, and by the infliction of various modes of bodily torture. He commanded all the Jews of both sexes throughout England to be imprisoned, till they would make a discovery of their wealth, which he appointed officers to receive in every county, and return to his exchequer.

The generality of them had one eye put out, which may be the origin of estimating riches by the price of a Jew's eye. One Jew, of Bristol, who resided on the Broad Weir, Abraham by name, who hesitated to pay the sum at which he was assessed (no less than 10,300 marks of silver), is stated to have been condemned to the cruelty of having one of his teeth torn from his head each day, until he had discharged his quota. For seven days he submitted to the torture: on the eighth day, having lost all his teeth but one, he produced the amount demanded of him.

The many wars King John was engaged in about that time, pressed him very hard for money. He not only waged war against France, Ireland, and Wales, but also against his own barons. Money was indispensable, and the poor Jews were the sufferers.

The next year a further tallage was levied, in which one Jew alone paid 5,500 marks. In the sixteenth year of his reign, John imposed another

heavy tax, and compelled its payment by imprisonment and other measures of violence. Some of the Jews of Southampton were rather backward in their payments; they were ordered to be imprisoned and sent to the Castle of Bristol.

Besides the sums that were thus raised upon the Jews by means of taxes affecting their whole community, the king derived considerable advantages from appropriating the property of individuals amongst them.

Was he desirous of making a handsome wedding gift to any one, he did so by sending the favoured one a full receipt of all the debts owed by the protégé to the poor Jew, as was the case with a certain Robert. In some instances he would seize upon their houses, and grant them away, as was the case with Isaac of Norwich, who had a house in London, which the king, without ceremony, presented to the Earl of Ferrars. But the mode he more generally adopted to turn their acquisitions to account, was to enter into agreements and compromises with their debtors-either releasing in full the sum which was due, or discharging the interest payable upon the amount.

It would appear that the right which the king thus assumed of treating the debts due to the Jews as his own, although it brought considerable advantage to the Crown, was found, in some instances, to be grievous to the people in general; it placed all persons who were under engagements to the Jews, in the same situation as the debtors to the king, and thereby subjected them to liabilities much more extensive than those to which, in common cases, they would have been exposed. When, therefore, the barons forced from King John the great charter of liberty, they included in it two several clauses, which had for their object the regulation of the claims in respect to these debts, and the twelfth clause in Magna Charta declares—“ If any one have borrowed anything of the Jews, more or less, and dies before the debt be satisfied, there shall be no interest paid for that debt, so long as the heir is under age, of whomsoever he may hold; and if the debt fall into our hands, we will take only the chattel mentioned in the charter or instrument." The thirteenth clause further declares, "If any one shall be indebted to the Jews, his wife shall have her dower, and pay nothing for the debt; and if the deceased leave children under age, they shall have necessaries provided for them, according to the tenement of the deceased, and out of the residue the debts shall be paid, saving, however, the service of the Lord."

The barons, who had assembled with the view of compelling the king to grant this charter, collected part of their forces in London; and whilst they remained there, imitated the king's conduct, and broke into the residences of the Jews, and pillaged them of whatever valuables they could find; and then, pulling down the houses, carried off the stones of which they were built, and used them for the purpose of repairing the walls of the city. About two hundred and seventy years ago, when Ludgate was rebuilt and enlarged, a very large stone was discovered with the following Hebrew inscription :

MATZABH R. MOSHEH BEN HARABH R. YITZCHAK. CH. W. "The tombstone of Rabbi Moses, the son of the Rabbi Isaac the wise and learned."

*

The absurd criticism of Dr. Tovey on the above epitaph has been already refuted by Dr. Jost. See "Geschichte der Israeliten," Vol, vii. p. 405.

There were some, however, in this reign who were interested in the spiritual welfare of the poor persecuted Jews.

The king himself was indeed an infidel, and cared for no religion, and loved no God but the god of money, and, therefore, cared for nothing but the treasure of the Jews. There was, however, a Prior, Richard by name, of Bermondsey, who, A.D. 1213, built a house for the reception of Christian Jews, and called the building, "The Hospital of Converts." The Prior did it in honour to St. Thomas.*

The last act of King John towards the Jews, was to employ them in a barbarous deed, to execute which he could not compel any of his Christian subjects. Having taken a great part of the Scotch army prisoners at Berwick, who assisted the barons, he determined to inflict such a variety of cruel and inhuman tortures upon them, that he could find none, except the Jews, whose obedience he was able to command. The Jews in the neighbourhood were, therefore, reluctantly obliged to become the executioners of those prisoners. It is not to be supposed that the Jews lamented much his decease, since even a modern Jew can yet exclaim at the mention of his name, "Thank God that there was only one King John."

THE TALMUD.

BY H. C. OXONIENSIS: A TALMUDIST OF TALMUDISTS.

INTRODUCTION. (Concluded from page 31.)

THE Connecting link may not be unnecessary as regards a certain class of readers of the Quarterly. The sparkling writer of the over belauded article on The Talmud had evidently taken the measure of his admirers' acquaintance with the contents of the New Testament.

The

sequel proved that his measure was not unjust; hence he dared make frequent allusions to the sacred volume, and that in the most flippant manner, feeling confident that he would have some readers that would pin their faith to everything that he thought proper to say, upon whom his lucubrations would "come with the force of a revelation." The connecting link which I am about to point out between the Saviour's withering invectives, when He for the last time addressed a congregation in the Temple, and the immediate events of the previous few days, will clearly show the character of the great bulk of the Pharisees, as sketched in the New Testament. The

connecting link will demonstrate by whom "the wholesale denunciations of Scribes and Pharisees' have been greatly misunderstood."

In the twentieth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, we have an account of the Redeemer's quitting Jericho for His last visit to Jerusalem, in the time of "His great humility." Whilst on His way, and a great multitude following Him, "two blind men sitting by the wayside, when they heard that Jesus passed by, cried out, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, Thou Son of David." This was on a Sunday, the Redeemer's last Sunday on earth before His crucifixion. The evening and night of that Sunday Jesus spent at Bethany, when He was anointed by Mary. On Monday He triumphantly entered Jerusalem. There was no "Palm Sunday;" it was on a Monday that the great demonstration took place. The excitement and enthusiasm which

* It appears that there was an institution of that kind in the city of Oxford. See Wood's "History of the University of Oxford."