JEWS IN ENGLAND (1066–1290)
The history of the Jews in England dates back to at least the 8th century CE. The first recorded Jewish community in Britain was established in England in 1070 by King William the Conqueror, who believed the Jewish population’s commercial skills would make his newly conquered country more prosperous. Jews were viewed as being under the direct jurisdiction and property of the king, making them subject to his whims. The monarch could tax or imprison Jews as he wished, without reference to anyone else. A minimal number of Jews were wealthy because Jews were allowed to lend money at interest while the Church forbade Christians from doing so, which was regarded as the sin of usury. Capital was in short supply and necessary for development, including investment in monastic construction so Jewish loans played an important economic role, although they were also used to finance consumption, particularly among overstretched, landholding Knights.[8]
English Jews experienced a “golden age” of sorts under Henry II in the late 12th century due to massive economic expansion and increased demand for credit. Significant Jewish fortunes were made in London, Oxford, Lincoln, Bristol, and Norwich.
The Jews of London were the responsibility of the Constable of the Tower and could seek refuge in the Tower of London when at risk of mob violence. This was resorted to on several occasions, with large numbers staying there, sometimes for months at a time. Special weight was attributed to a Jew’s oath, which was valid against that of twelve Christians. They were not permitted to bury their dead outside London until after 1177.
Aaron of Lincoln (1123 – 1186) is believed to have been the wealthiest man in 12th-century Britain, surpassing even the king’s wealth. He made a specialty of money lending for the purpose of building abbeys and monasteries. Among those built were the Abbey of St Albans, Lincoln Minster, Peterborough Abbey, and no fewer than nine Cistercian abbeys. They were all founded between 1140 and 1152, and at Aaron’s death remained indebted to him in no less a sum than 6,400 marks. Aaron’s activity enabled the abbeys to get possession of the lands belonging to the smaller barons, and, on the other, how his death brought the abbeys into the king’s power.
Aaron not only advanced money on land, but also on corn, armour and houses, and in this way acquired an interest in properties scattered through the eastern and southern counties of England. Upon his death Henry II seized his property as the escheat of a Jewish usurer, and the English crown thus became universal heir to his estate. The actual cash treasure accumulated by Aaron was sent over to France to assist Henry in his war with Philip Augustus, but the vessel containing it went down on the voyage between Shoreham and Dieppe. However, the indebtedness of the smaller barons and knights remained, and fell into the hands of the king to the amount of £15,000, owed by some 430 persons distributed over the English counties.
So large was the amount that a separate division of the exchequer was constituted, entitled “Aaron’s Exchequer” and was continued till at least 1201, that is, fifteen years after his death, for on the pipe-roll of that year most of the debts to Aaron (about £7,500) are recorded as still outstanding to the king, showing that only half the debts had been paid over by that time, though, on the death of Aaron, the payment of interest ceased automatically, since the king, as a Christian, could not accept usury.
In 1190, Richard de Malbis (Richard Malebisse), a debtor of Aaron of Lincoln, led an attack on the family of Aaron’s late agent in York that resulted in a massacre of the entire Jewish community, some 150 men, women, and children. A windfall came to his treasury at Aaron’s death in 1186.
During the early years of Henry II’s reign, Jews lived on good terms, entered churches freely, resided in opulent houses, and contributed to the construction of many of the country’s abbeys and monasteries. However, by the end of Henry’s reign, Jews were mandated to wear Jewish badges or the Jewish hat,
The persecution of England’s Jews built up from the late twelfth century as a result of their prosperity and was brutal., The English were endlessly imaginative in inventing antisemitic allegations. England became the “principal promoter of literary anti-Semitism.” Blood libel was the key because it incorporates the themes that Jews are malevolent, constantly conspiring against Christians, powerful, and merciless. Variations include stories about Jews poisoning wells, twisting minds, and buying and selling Christian souls and bodies.
Fatal pogroms were perpetrated in England, particularly on the east coast. Mob violence increased. Massacres were recorded in London, Northampton and in March 1190, during the run-up to the Third Crusade, the Jewish population of York was massacred at the site where Clifford’s Tower now stands.
In 1215, in return for providing credit to the Crown, Jews were granted the following privileges: they could use the king’s highways without charge, hold land directly from the king, and receive physical protection within the vast network of royal castles. Especially important was that it granted Jews the right to move wherever they wanted, as if they were the king’s property and could be mortgaged whenever the monarch needed to raise revenue, and could be taxed without the permission of Parliament. Jews eventually became the main taxpaying population.
The kings’ depleted even the wealthiest Jews, and debtors’ hatred and mass violence spiked again in the mid-13th century. In 1269, Henry III made blasphemy by Jews a hanging offence. The 2-3,000 in England generated less income for the Crown. When Edward returned from the Crusades, he passed the Statute of the Jewry in 1275, restricting the community’s activities, most notably outlawing the practice of usury (charging interest). To finance his war against Wales in 1276, Edward I taxed Jewish moneylenders. When the moneylenders could no longer pay the tax, they were accused of disloyalty. Already restricted to a limited number of occupations, Edward abolished their “privilege” to lend money, restricted their movements and activities and forced Jews to wear a yellow patch.
On 17 November 1278 the heads of households of the Jews of England, believed to have numbered around 600 out of a population of 2-3,000, were arrested on suspicion of coin clipping and counterfeiting, All Jews in England of whatever condition, age or sex were unexpectedly seized … and sent for imprisonment to various castles throughout England. While imprisoned, their houses were ransacked.” Some 600 were detained in the Tower of London. More than 300 are known to have been executed in 1279, with 298 being killed in London alone.
With income denied to them and property confiscated, the Jewish population diminished. Fifteen years later, in 1290, when Edward found that many of these provisions were ignored, the Edict of Expulsion expelled the depleted Jewish community (probably only about 2,000). The expulsion had a lasting effect of embedding antisemitism into English culture, particularly during the medieval and early modern periods. England was unique because there were no Jews, and the English had superseded the Jews as God’s chosen people. It was the first time a European state was known to have permanently banned their presence.
After the expulsion, there was no overt Jewish community (as opposed to individuals practising Judaism secretly) until the rule of Oliver Cromwell.. Most were only allowed to take what they could carry. A small number of Jews favoured by the king were permitted to sell their properties first, though most of the money and property of these dispossessed Jews was confiscated.
The Jewish population emigrated to countries such as Poland, which protected them by law. A small English community persisted in hiding despite the expulsion. Jews were not banned from Scotland, which was an independent kingdom until 1707; however, there is no record of a Jewish presence in Scotland before the 18th century. Jews were also not banned in Wales, but when Henry VIII’s England annexed Wales, the English ban on Jews extended to Wales. There is only one known record of a Jew in Wales between 1290 and the annexation, but it is possible individuals did persist there after 1290.
RESETTLEMENT PERIOD, 16th–19th centuries
Hidden Jews in England
Still, it was not until the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1497 that a significant number of Sephardic Jews found refuge in England. From the beginning of the 16th century, in the wake of the Spanish Inquisition, Jews began to return to England. Although Jews had to conceal their religion for fear of raising discourse, they needed only to hide it loosely. A small community of conversos was identified in Bristol in 1609 and banished.
Throughout the sixteenth century, several individuals named Lopez, likely all from the same family, sought refuge in England, with the most notable being Rodrigo López, the physician to Queen Elizabeth I. The Spanish Crown allegedly bribed him to poison the Queen, and he was subsequently executed. This prompted a wave of anti-Jewish sentiment. Famous plays like William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta were written, both of which depict Jews in a negative, stereotypical manner.
The oldest Jewish community in Britain is the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community, Marrano merchants who trace back to the 1630s when it existed clandestinely in London. There, it formed a secret congregation, at the head of which were Antonio Fernandez Carvajal and Samuel Maylott, a French merchant.
Resettlement of the Jews in England
In 1656, Oliver Cromwell made it clear that the ban on Jewish settlement in England and Wales would no longer be enforced. This informal arrangement allowed Jews to practice their faith openly. Before their resettlement, a growing philo-Semitism in England had turned the environment there into a more hospitable one for Jews. Under Oliver Cromwell, philo-Semitism flourished, making the climate right for Jews to propose their official readmission.
In mid-nineteenth century British-ruled Ireland, Daniel O’Connell, known as “The Liberator” for his work on Catholic Emancipation, worked successfully for the repeal of the “De Judaismo” law, which prescribed a special yellow badge for Jews.[7] Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881), of Jewish birth although he joined the Church of England, served in government for three decades, twice as prime minister.
It happened directly after two events. First, in September 1655, a prominent rabbi and leader of the Dutch Jewish community, Menasseh ben Israel, came to England from the Netherlands and approached Cromwell with the proposition that Jews should be readmitted to England. But the majority of the Protectorate Government turned it down. Despite the Protectorate government’s rejection of the Rabbi’s petition, the community considers 1656 to mark the readmission of the Jews to England and Wales. Second, a Spanish marrano (a Jew forcibly converted to Christianity who still practiced Judaism in secret) merchant, Antonio Robles, requested that he be classified as a Jew rather than a Spaniard during the war between England and Spain.
Historians have disagreed about the reasons behind the resettlement, particularly regarding Oliver Cromwell’s motives. However, the move is generally seen as part of a current of religious and intellectual thought moving towards liberty of conscience, encompassing philosemitic millenarianism and Hebraism, as well as political and trade interests that favoured Jewish presence in England. The toleration of Jews was borne mainly by the hope of converting them to Christianity. Indeed, they saw the Jews as a superior group.
Cromwell believed that Jews could add foreign intelligence, toleration prevented disorder and promoted harmony, and he hoped to improve trade (he saw the Jews as an essential part of Amsterdam’s financial success). Oliver Cromwell sought to attract wealthy Jews from Amsterdam to London, aiming to increase trade with Spain.
A Torah scroll was sent from Amsterdam. Moses Athias relocated from Hamburg to serve as a religious preceptor. By December 1656, they had rented a house as a synagogue. By the end of the decade, the number of Jewish families had risen to thirty-five. In 1657, Solomon Dormido, a nephew of Menasseh Ben Israel, was admitted to the Royal Exchange.
By 1690, about 400 Jews had settled in England. German immigrants started a synagogue in 1690. William III knighted the first Jew, Solomon de Medina, in 1700. Bevois Marks synagogue was completed in 1701 and is the oldest synagogue in the UK, built by the first generation of readmitted Spanish-Portuguese Jews to England.
A Hebrew printing press started in London in 1705. By 1734, 6,000 Jews lived in England. The Jewish upper class still consisted of brokers and foreign traders, but Jews gradually began to enter all areas of life. The first Jews were Sephardim, but from 1690, a trickle of Ashkenazi immigration primarily from German countries to the early 19th century. Soon, Ashkenazim established congregations all over England.
18th CENTURY
The Jewish Naturalization Act 1753 received royal assent from George II on 7 July 1753 but was repealed in 1754 due to widespread opposition.
During the Jacobite rising of 1745, the Jews had shown particular loyalty to the government. Their chief financier, Samson Gideon, had strengthened the stock market, and several of the younger members had volunteered in the corps raised to defend London. Possibly as a reward, Henry Pelham in 1753 introduced the Jew Bill of 1753, which allowed Jews to become naturalized by applying to Parliament.
In 1798, Nathan Mayer von Rothschild established a business in Manchester and later the N M Rothschild & Sons bank in London, having been sent to the UK by his father, Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744–1812). The bank funded Wellington during the Napoleonic Wars, financed the British government’s 1875 purchase of Egypt’s interest in the Suez Canal, and funded Cecil Rhodes in the development of the British South Africa Company. Beyond banking and finance, members of the Rothschild family in the UK became academics, scientists and horticulturalists with worldwide reputations.
Some English ports, such as Hull, started to receive immigrants and trading “port Jews” from around 1750. In the 1780s and ’90s, English boxer Daniel Mendoza was an active prizefighter; Mendoza was of Sephardic Portuguese Jewish descent.
EMANCIPATION AND PROSPERITY, 19th CENTURY
In 1837, Queen Victoria knighted Moses Haim Montefiore; four years later, Isaac Lyon Goldsmid was made a baronet, the first Jew to receive a hereditary title. The first Jewish Lord Mayor of London, Sir David Salomons, was elected in 1855, followed by the 1858 emancipation of the Jews.
In mid-nineteenth century British-ruled Ireland, Daniel O’Connell, known as “The Liberator” for his work on Catholic Emancipation, worked successfully for the repeal of the “De Judaismo” law, which prescribed a special yellow badge for Jews,
On 26 July 1858, Lionel de Rothschild was finally allowed to sit in the British House of Commons when the law restricting the oath of office to Christians was changed; Benjamin Disraeli, a baptized Christian of Jewish parentage, was already an MP. In 1868, Disraeli became Prime Minister. In 1884, Nathan Mayer Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, became the first Jewish member of the British House of Lords; again, Disraeli was already a member. (Though born a Jew, Disraeli’s baptism as a child qualified him as eligible for political aspirations, presenting no restrictions regarding a mandated Christian oath of office.) Disraeli, as a leader of the Conservative Party, with its ties to the landed aristocracy, used his Jewish ancestry to claim an aristocratic heritage of his own.
By 1882, approximately 46,000 Jews lived in England, and by 1890, Jewish emancipation was complete in every aspect of life. Since 1858, Parliament has never been without practising Jewish members.
As for the second wave of Ashkenazi immigration, a large wave of Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in the Russian Empire due to pogroms and the May Laws between 1880 and the imposition of tighter immigration restrictions in 1905 sought their way to the Isles. Of the East European Jewish emigrants, 1.9 million (80 percent) headed to the United States, and 140,000 (7 percent) to the United Kingdom. The chief mechanism was chain migration, in which the first successful member(s) of the chain sent information, local currency (and sometimes tickets or money for tickets) to later arrivals. These Ashkenazi Jews were funnelled by the railways of Europe to the North Sea and Baltic ports, and entered England via London, Hull, Grimsby and Newcastle. They lived primarily in the large industrial cities, especially London, Manchester and Leeds.
Many German and Polish Jews seeking to escape the Nazi Holocaust arrived in Britain before and after the Second World War. Around 80–90% of British Jews today are Ashkenazi.
In 1917, Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, set up the conditions for the Balfour Declaration, which promised a homeland in Palestine for Jews in a new Zionist State.
Encouraging Jews to join the Armed Forces, saying that “Britain has been all she could be to Jews.” About 50,000 Jews served in the British Armed Forces during World War I. With the declaration of war, 74,000 German, Austrian and Italian citizens in the UK were interned as enemy aliens. After individual consideration by the tribunal, the majority, primarily comprising Jewish and other refugees, were released within six months. During WWI, many Ashkenazi Jewish families Anglicized their often German-sounding names.
Until the late 20th century, East London was the primary centre of Jewish life in England, with settlement heavily concentrated in an area around Whitechapel, extending from Bishopsgate to Cable Street. The location was chosen due to its affordable rents and the presence of independent trades, notably weaving and textiles, known colloquially as “the rag trade”. The district of Spitalfields lay within this area and gained the nickname Little Jerusalem.
ENTREPRENEURS
The Eastern European Jews brought with them a long history as skilled entrepreneurial middlemen. They were much more likely to become entrepreneurs than their gentile neighbours, with a heavy concentration in the garment industry as well as in retailing, entertainment and real estate. London provided excellent financing opportunities for entrepreneurs.
Following de-colonisation, the late twentieth century saw Yemeni Jews, Iraqi Jews, and Baghdadi Jews settle in the United Kingdom. A multicultural community, in 2006, British Jews celebrated the 350th anniversary of the resettlement in England. Jews in the UK number approximately 275,000, with 260,000 residing in England. The majority of the Jews in England live in and around London, with almost 160,000 Jews in London.
