meadows beneath the hardly
less stately Abbey of Osney. In the fields to the north the last of the
Norman kings raised his palace of Beaumont. The canons of St. Frideswide
reared the church which still exists as the diocesan cathedral: the
piety of the Norman earls rebuilt almost all the parish churches of the
city and founded within their new castle walls the church of the canons
of St. George.

But Oxford does more than illustrate this outburst of industrial effort;
it does something towards explaining its cause. The most characteristic
result of the Conquest was planted in the very heart of the town in the
settlement of the Jew. Here as elsewhere the Jewry was a town within a
town, with its own language, its own religion and law, its peculiar
commerce, its peculiar dress. The policy of our foreign kings secured
each Hebrew settlement from the common taxation, the common justice, the
common obligations of Englishmen. No city bailiff could penetrate into
the square of little streets which lay behind the present Town-hall; the
Church itself was powerless against the synagogue that rose in haughty
rivalry beside the cloister of St. Frideswide. The picture which Scott
has given us in 'Ivanhoe' of Aaron of York, timid, silent, crouching
under oppression, accurately as it represents our modern notions of the
position of his race during the Middle Ages, is far from being borne out
by historical fact. In England at least the attitude of the Jew is
almost to the end an attitude of proud and even insolent defiance. His
extortion was sheltered from the common law. His bonds were kept under
the royal seal. A royal commission visited with heavy penalties any
outbreak of violence against these "chattels" of the king. The thunders
of the Church broke vainly on the yellow gaberdine of the Jew. In a
well-known story of Eadmer's the Red King actually forbids the
conversion of a Jew to the Christian faith: it was a poor exchange which
would have robbed him of a valuable property and given him only a
subject.

At Oxford the attitude of the Jewry towards the national religion showed
a marked consciousness of this royal protection. Prior Philip of St.
Frideswide complains bitterly of a certain Hebrew with the odd name of
"Deus-cum-crescat," who stood at his door as the procession of the
saint passed by, mocking at the miracles wrought at her shrine. Halting
and then walking firmly on his feet, showing his hands clenched as if
with palsy