writer, of the 13th Century, wrote his well known treatise, " De Legibus et consuetudinibus Anglese," in the reign of Edward I, THE JEWS BANISHED. 39 in a letter to the Bishop of Ely) to Canterbury by the perfidious Jews, to be crucified among their other debtors, whom they ruin and torment with usury ;
the same sufferings also await me in London, if you do not mercifully interpose for my dehverance ; I beseech you, therefore, 0 most reverend father, and most loving friend, to become bound to Sampson, the Jew, for six pounds which I owe him, and thereby deliver me from that Cross."^ At length such a clamor was raised against the Jews as to lead to their total expulsion from the kingdom in the eighteenth year of the reign of Edward I., A. D. 1290. The Act of Parliament, for that purpose, commanded them, " under pain of hanging, to depart at a set day : for the effecting and hastening whereof the Commons gave the king a fifteenth." ^ However much the people might have congratu- lated themselves upon thus getting rid of the " Greedy Jews," the King was suspected of sincerely regret- ting it, for with their departure ceased the chief source from which his privy purse was most abun- dantly supplied.' Indeed, the Chroniclers did not ■ Epist.Paul Blesens, 156, p. 242. Kel. on Usury, p. 8. ^ Wm. Prynne, short dem., p. 46, cited in Kelly on Usury. By reason of this statute the number of Jews, who departed out of the realm, was 15,060.— (2 Inst., 89.)
' " In ancient times a great revenue, by reason of the usury of the Jews, came to the crown ; for between the 50th year of Henry III. and the 2d year of Edward I., which was not above seven years complete, there was paid into the King's coffers £420,000 of and for the usury of the Jews; and yet that" excellent King, for divers weighty reasons, mostly to be written in letters of gold, did, by authority of Parliament, utterly prohibit the same." — (2 Inst., 151.)