e laid upon the Jews, in 1243, amounted to sixty thousand
marks;[***] a sum equal to the whole yearly revenue of the crown.

To give a better pretence for extortions, the improbable and absurd
accusation, which has been at different times advanced against that
nation, was revived in England, that they had crucified a child in
derision of the sufferings of Christ. Eighteen of them were hanged at
once for this crime;[****] though it is nowise credible that even the
antipathy borne them by the Christians, and the oppressions under which
they labored, would ever have pushed them to be guilty of that dangerous
enormity. But it is natural to imagine, that a race exposed to such
insults and indignities, both from king and people, and who had so
uncertain an enjoyment of their riches, would carry usury to the utmost
extremity, and by their great profits make themselves some compensation
for their continual perils.

Though these acts of violence against the Jews proceeded much from
bigotry, they were still more derived from avidity and rapine. So far
from desiring in that age to convert them, it was enacted by law in
France, that if any Jew embraced Christianity, he forfeited all his
goods, without exception, to the king or his superior lord. These
plunderers were careful lest the profits accruing from their dominion
over that unhappy race should be diminished by their conversion.[*****]

Commerce must be in a wretched condition where interest was so high, and
where the sole proprietors of money employed it in usury only, and
were exposed to such extortion and injustice. But the bad police of
the country was another obstacle to improvements, and rendered all
communication dangerous, and all property precarious. The Chronicle of
Dunstable says,[******] that men were never secure in their houses, and
that whole villages were often plundered by bands of robbers, though no
civil wars at that time prevailed in the kingdom.

*M. Paris, p. 606.

**M. Paris, p. 160.

***Madox, p. 152.

****M. Paris, p. 613.

*****Brussel, vol. i. p. 622. Du Cange, verbo Judaei.

******Vol. i. p. 155.

In 1249, some years before the insurrection of the barons, two merchants
of Brabant came to the king at Winchester, and told him that they had
been spoiled of all their goods by certain robbers, whom they knew,
because they saw their faces every day in his court; that like practices
prevailed all over England, and