page_title: History of the Jews in England
section_title: Persecution and expulsion
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Jews in England / Norman England, 1066–1290 / Persecution and expulsion
caption_attribution_description: English: A selection of medieval artefacts recovered from Jewish houses in London. On display at the London Jewish Museum.
context_page_description: The history of the Jews in England goes back to the reign of William the Conqueror. The first written record of Jewish settlement in England dates from 1070. The Jewish settlement continued until King Edward I's Edict of Expulsion in 1290. After the expulsion, there was no overt Jewish community until the rule of Oliver Cromwell. While Cromwell never officially readmitted Jews to the Commonwealth of England, a small colony of Sephardic Jews living in London was identified in 1656 and allowed to remain.
  The Jewish Naturalisation Act of 1753, an attempt to legalise the Jewish presence in England, remained in force for only a few months. Historians commonly date Jewish Emancipation to either 1829 or 1858, though Benjamin Disraeli, born Jewish but converted to Anglicanism, had been elected twice as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1868 and in 1874. At the insistence of Irish leader Daniel O'Connell, in 1846 the British law "De Judaismo", which prescribed a special dress for Jews, was repealed. Due to the lack of anti-Jewish violence in Britain in the 19th century, it acquired a reputation for religious tolerance and attracted significant immigration from Eastern Europe.
context_section_description: Persecution of England's Jews could be brutal; recorded are massacres at London and York during the crusades in 1189 and 1190.
  To finance his war against Wales in 1276, Edward I of England 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. The heads of Jewish households were then arrested with over 300 being taken to the Tower of London and executed. Others were killed in their homes.
  On 17 November 1278 all Jews of England, believed to have numbered around 3,000, were arrested on suspicion of coin clipping and counterfeiting, and all Jewish homes in England were searched. At the time, coin clipping was a widespread practice, which both Jews and Christians were involved in, and a financial crisis resulted, and according to one contemporary source, the practice reduced the currency's value to half of its face value. In 1275, coin clipping was made a capital offence, and in 1278, raids on suspected coin clippers were carried out. According to the Bury Chronicle, "All Jews in England of whatever condition, age or sex were unexpectedly seized … and sent for imprisonment to various castles throughout England. While they were thus imprisoned, the innermost recesses of their houses were ransacked." Some 680 were detained in the Tower of London. More than 300 are believed to have been executed in 1279. Those who could afford to buy a pardon and had a patron at the royal court escaped punishment.
  Edward I increasingly showed antisemitism as in 1280 he granted a right to levy a toll on the rivulet bridge at Brentford "for the passage of goods over it, with a special tax at the rate of 1d. each for Jews and Jewesses on horse, 0.5d. each on foot from which all other travellers were exempt".  This antipathy eventually culminated in his legislating for the expulsion of all Jews from the country in 1290. 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. Almost all evidence of a Jewish presence in England would have been wiped out if it had not been for the efforts of one monk, Gregory of Huntingdon, who purchased all the Jewish texts he could to begin translating them.
  From then until 1655, there is no official record of Jews in England outside the Domus Conversorum, with a few exceptions such as Jacob Barnet, who was ultimately arrested and exiled.
caption: Artefacts from Jewish houses in Medieval London, in display at the Jewish Museum London
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