een devoted to the use of the
Jews. Thus, at Southampton there are Jews' houses built close against
the town wall. At Leicester the Jewry was situated quite close to the
town wall, and some of the residences appear to have been built against
the inside of the Roman wall there, a considerable portion of which
still remains. In London in the thirteenth century there was a Jewry, or
dwelling-place for Jews, within the liberty of the Tower of London. The
street now known as Old Jewry, leading northward from Cheapside to
Lothbury, had become deserted by the Jews, it is believed, before the
date of the expulsion in 1291, and the inhabitants had removed to a
quarter in the eastern part of the city afterwards indicated by the
street-names "Poor Jewry Lane" and "Jewry Street."

In several cases, therefore, it is evident that the pomerium, or the
space between the inhabited part of the town and the actual walls of its
outer defence, was devoted to the Jews, who took up their residence
there.

One circumstance which embittered the Church against the Jews was the
spread of Judaism among certain classes. One Jewish list of martyrs
includes twenty-two proselytes burnt in England, and even if the number
be exaggerated, there is other evidence of Jewish proselytism in this
country. To counteract the movement the Church founded a conversionist
establishment in "New Street" on the site of the present Record Office.
Here converts were supported for life, and the building continued to be
utilized for this purpose down to the time of Charles II.

[Illustration: OLD LONDON BRIDGE: SHOWING ITS WOODEN HOUSES WITH
PROJECTING STORIES.]

The classic pages of Sir Walter Scott's romances contain much which
illustrates the popular antipathy against the Jews. The pictures he
draws are, perhaps, somewhat over-coloured for the purpose of romance,
but that they were not without foundation in fact is evident from the
following curious incident relating to a Jew in London, narrated in the
_Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London_, under the date 1256:--

"Thys yere a Jew felle in to a drawte on a satorday, and he
wolde not be draune owte that day for the reverens of hys
sabbot day, and sir Richard Clare, that tyme beynge erle of
Gloucseter, seynge that he wolde not be drawne owte that day,
he wolde not suffer hym to be drawne owte on the sonday, for
the reverens of the holy sonday, and soo thus the false Jue
perishe