Edict of Expulsion (1290): Edward I Expels England's Jews

The Edict of Expulsion was the order issued by King Edward I on 18 July 1290 requiring every Jew to leave England by All Saints’ Day, 1 November 1290. It ended more than two centuries of Jewish life in medieval England, in communities that had grown up after the Norman Conquest. England became the first major European kingdom to expel its Jews permanently, and Jewish communities did not openly return until the 1650s.

Background: Jews in medieval England

Jews first settled in England after 1066, when Jewish families from Rouen in Normandy followed William the Conqueror’s new regime. Over the twelfth century communities grew in London and in towns such as York, Lincoln, Norwich, Oxford and Winchester. Some, like the Jew’s House in Lincoln, lived in stone houses that still stand.

Jews were treated as belonging directly to the king. They enjoyed royal protection but had few rights of their own, and the crown could tax them almost at will. Since Christians were forbidden by the Church to lend money at interest, and Jews were excluded from most guilds and from holding land, many Jews became moneylenders. This made them useful to the king and resented by their debtors.

The royal government built special machinery to manage them. After 1194, Jewish loans were recorded in official chests, called archae, kept in certain towns, and a separate department, the Exchequer of the Jews, handled their affairs. When a Jewish lender died or was fined, his debts could pass to the crown.

Jewish life and learning

Medieval English Jewish communities were small but active. Each had a synagogue, a cemetery and scholars who taught Jewish law and wrote commentaries. Until 1177 all English Jews had to bring their dead to a single cemetery in London; after that, other towns were allowed burial grounds of their own.

Some Jewish financiers became very wealthy. Aaron of Lincoln, who died in 1186, lent money to barons, monasteries and the crown, and his debts were so large that the government created a special office to collect them. In the thirteenth century Licoricia of Winchester, a widow, became one of the leading financiers of the kingdom and dealt directly with Henry III. Elijah Menahem of London was both a prominent moneylender and a respected rabbinic scholar.

Most Jews, however, were not rich. Many were small lenders, pawnbrokers, physicians, teachers or servants, and by the late thirteenth century a large proportion were poor.

Growing hostility

From the twelfth century, Jews in England suffered rising religious hostility and violence. The death of a boy, William of Norwich, in 1144 gave rise to the first known accusation of ritual murder, a false charge later called blood libel. At Richard I’s coronation in 1189 a mob attacked Jews in London, and in March 1190 the Jewish community of York took refuge in the royal castle, where around 150 people died by suicide or were killed.

The church also pressed for separation. Following the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, England in 1218 required Jews to wear a badge on their clothing. In 1255 the death of a boy in Lincoln, later called “Little Saint Hugh”, led to a further false ritual murder accusation and the execution of nineteen Jews.

Under Henry III, royal taxation fell on Jews with crushing weight, especially in the 1240s and 1250s, and many families were impoverished. During the baronial war of the 1260s, supporters of Simon de Montfort attacked Jewish communities, killing hundreds in London in 1264 and destroying records of debts. The provisions on Jewish debts in Magna Carta already showed how politically sensitive the issue was.

Edward I’s policies

In 1275 Edward I issued the Statute of the Jewry. It banned Jews from lending money at interest and allowed them, in principle, to trade and to lease farmland. In practice most were still barred from guilds and could not easily find new livelihoods, and the statute did little to help them.

In 1278–1279 the government launched an investigation into the clipping of coins. Hundreds of Jews were arrested, and chroniclers record that about 269 were hanged in London, a far higher proportion than among Christian suspects. Royal pressure on Jewish wealth continued, and Queen Eleanor of Castile was criticised, including by the Archbishop of Canterbury, for acquiring lands through Jewish debts.

In 1287 Edward expelled the Jews from his French duchy of Gascony, using their confiscated property to help pay his costs there.

The expulsion of 1290

In 1290 Edward needed money badly. Parliament agreed to grant him a tax of a fifteenth on movable goods, one of the largest single taxes of the medieval period, and the expulsion of the Jews appears to have been part of the bargain. On 18 July 1290 writs were sent to the sheriffs ordering that all Jews must leave the kingdom by 1 November.

The order allowed Jews to take their movable goods and promised them safe passage, but their houses, synagogues and outstanding debts passed to the crown. Most travelled to France, while others went to Flanders and elsewhere. Chroniclers record that at least one ship’s master abandoned his Jewish passengers on a sandbank in the Thames estuary, where they drowned as the tide rose, and that others were robbed on the journey.

Key people

• Edward I (1239–1307): King of England from 1272, who issued the expulsion order.
• Henry III (1207–1272): Edward’s father, whose heavy taxation impoverished England’s Jews.
• Eleanor of Castile (1241–1290): Edward’s queen, criticised for profiting from Jewish debts.

Consequences

The expulsion earned Edward political support and a large tax, but the crown’s direct gain from Jewish property was limited, since the communities had already been heavily drained. Lending and banking for the crown passed largely to Italian merchant companies.

For England’s Jews, it meant exile and the end of their communities. Records of their houses, contracts and families survive in royal archives and in buildings such as those in Lincoln. A few Jews who had converted to Christianity remained at the Domus Conversorum, a house for converts in London founded by Henry III in 1232.

Similar expulsions followed elsewhere, including from France in 1306 and, two centuries later, from Spain under the Alhambra Decree of 1492.

Myths and facts

Myth: no Jews at all lived in England between 1290 and 1656. Open Jewish communities ceased to exist, but a few converts lived in the Domus Conversorum, and in Tudor times small groups of conversos, Jews from Spain and Portugal who outwardly lived as Christians, settled in London.

Fact: the expulsion was not mainly about money for the crown. Historians stress that by 1290 England’s Jews were impoverished. The large tax granted by Parliament and the political popularity of the measure mattered more than the seizure of Jewish property.

Timeline

• c. 1070: Jewish families from Rouen begin settling in London.
• 1144: The death of William of Norwich leads to the first recorded ritual murder accusation.
• March 1190: Massacre of the Jews of York.
• 1218: England requires Jews to wear a badge.
• 1275: Edward I’s Statute of the Jewry bans Jewish moneylending.
• 1278–1279: Mass arrests and executions over coin clipping.
• 1287: Edward expels the Jews from Gascony.
• 18 July 1290: The Edict of Expulsion is issued.
• 1 November 1290: Deadline for all Jews to leave England.
• 1656: Jews begin to resettle openly under Oliver Cromwell.

Why it matters

The Edict of Expulsion was a turning point in the history of European Jews and of English religious intolerance. It shows how financial exploitation and religious prejudice combined to destroy a whole community, and it set a pattern later followed by other European rulers.