ere was only
one King John?"

[Illustration: RICHARD PORSON. (_From an Authentic Portrait._)]

The regent of the early part of the reign of Henry III. protected the
Jews, and exempted them from the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical
courts, but they were compelled to wear on their breasts two white
tablets of linen or parchment, two inches broad and four inches long;
and twenty-four burgesses were chosen in every town where they resided,
to protect them from the insults of pilgrims; for the clergy still
treated them as excommunicated infidels. But even this lull was
short--persecution soon again broke out. In the 14th of Henry III. the
Crown seized a third part of all their movables, and their new synagogue
in the Old Jewry was granted to the brothers of St. Anthony of Vienna,
and turned into a church. In the 17th of Henry III. the Jews were again
taxed to the amount of 18,000 silver marks. At the same time the king
erected an institution in New Street (Chancery Lane) for Jewish
converts, as an atonement for his father's cruelty to the persecuted
exiles. Four Jews of Norwich having been dragged at horses' tails and
hung, on a pretended charge of circumcising a Christian boy, led to new
persecution, and the Jews were driven out of Newcastle and Southampton;
while to defray the expense of entertaining the Queen's foreign uncles
20,000 marks were exacted from the suffering race. In the 19th year of
his reign Henry, driven hard for money, extorted from the rich Jews
10,000 more marks, and several were burned alive for plotting to destroy
London by fire. The more absurd the accusation the more eagerly it was
believed by a superstitious and frightened rabble. In 1244, Matthew of
Paris says, the corpse of a child was found buried in London, on whose
arms and legs were traced Hebrew inscriptions. It was supposed that the
Jews had crucified this child, in ridicule of the crucifixion of Christ.
The converted Jews of New Street were called in to read the Hebrew
letters, and the canons of St. Paul's took the child's body, which was
supposed to have wrought miracles, and buried it with great ceremony not
far from their great altar. In order to defray the expenses of his
brother Richard's marriage the poor Jews of London were heavily mulcted,
and Aaron of York, a man of boundless wealth, was forced to pay 4,000
marks of silver and 400 of gold. Defaulters were transported to Ireland,
a punishment especially dreaded by the Jews. A tax