The Magna Carta and the Jews

Hidden in plain sight for nearly eight decades, a $27.50 purchase by Harvard in 1946 has just been revealed as an authentic copy of the Magna Carta—offering fresh insight into one of the most iconic legal documents in history and its often-overlooked implications for the Jews of medieval England.

Fewer than thirty original Magna Cartas are thought to exist today. The stunning find is being hailed as the biggest discovery in the history of Harvard’s Law Library. “It is an icon both of the Western political tradition and of constitutional law. If you asked anybody what the most famous single document in the history of the world is, they would probably name Magna Carta,” explained Prof. Nicholas Vincent, one of the experts who helped authenticate Harvard’s version.

1225 version of Magna Carta issued by Henry III, held in the National Archives

Though the Magna Carta is celebrated as a cornerstone of Western democracy, few realize one of its more surprising features: it devotes a notable portion of its text to the treatment of England’s Jews. At a time when limiting the power of England’s monarchy was a radical idea, the charter also reflected—and reinforced—the complex and often precarious position of Jewish communities in medieval England.

The King’s Jews

Jews likely lived in England since Roman times, but the first substantial Jewish community there dates to the years after 1066, when William the Conqueror invaded England from France and crowned himself King William I. The new king required vast sums of money to ensure loyalty and put down local rebellions. In the Middle Ages, this was a tricky challenge.

The Catholic Church forbade all Christians to engage in any money lending. At the same time, local rulers throughout Europe prevented Jews from entering other professions; the Medieval guilds that were beginning to spring up representing the emerging artisan middle class were firmly closed to Jews. Money lending was the only business open to Jews, positioning Jews as the unofficial bankers of Europe, lending to nobles and commoners alike.

King William I financed his wars with loans from Jewish businessmen in the French towns of Rouen and Normandy. Once he established his court in England, the king encouraged French Jews to settle in England and provide financing closer to his new home.

Known as the “King’s Jews”, they occupied a special position in English society, answering only to the King, not to local Barons, like their non-Jewish neighbors. The King could tax them with impunity, without going through Parliament. In return, the King’s guards protected Jews as “property” of the Crown. King Henry III offered the Jews of England as collateral for at least two loans during his lifetime.

Widespread Antisemitism

English Jews were widely hated, in part because they were so closely identified with despotic kings. The English religious thinker William de Montibus (1140-1213) famously claimed: “Jews are the sponges of kings, they are bloodsuckers of Christian purses, by whose robberies kings despoil and deprive poor men of their goods.” It was a popular sentiment at the time.

Jew-hatred adopted a religious form. The first blood libel against Jews took place in England when local Jews were accused of murdering a Christian boy in the town of Norwich in 1144. Subsequent blood libels in England and elsewhere soon followed, marked by violence against local Jewish communities.

The Magna Carta (originally known as the Charter of Liberties) of 1215, written in iron gall ink on parchment in medieval Latin, using standard abbreviations of the period, authenticated with the Great Seal of King John. The original wax seal was lost over the centuries. This document is held at the British Library and is identified as “British Library Cotton MS Augustus II.106”.

In 1189, England’s King Richard I launched the Third Crusade to rid the Holy Land of infidels, sparking massive pogroms in English towns where Jews resided. Mobs murdered Jews in London and the towns of Norwich, Lynn, Stamford, and Dunstable.

Ostensibly, the King was charged with protecting his “property.” In 1190, a pogrom broke out in the northern English city of Lincoln. A mob clambered up a hill in the city that led to a royal castle. Along the way lay the town’s Jewish quarter, nestled close to the king’s residence. As the rioters advanced, all of Lincoln’s Jews – several dozen families – rushed into the castle’s courtyard. They received royal protection until the mob outside the castle gates subsided.

Royal guards were not always able or willing to help Jews. In the Spring of 1190, the violence against Jews that was engulfing England spread to the northern English city of York, where a huge mob attacked the town’s Jews. Terrified, York’s Jews – about 150 men, women, and children – fled into a local castle called Clifford’s Tower. As property of the King, they ought to have been safe there. Yet as the mob brayed for Jewish blood outside, the Jews saw that no help was forthcoming and killed themselves rather than fall into the mob’s hands.

Clifford’s Tower, where the Jews of York were killed in 1190. (Wiki commons)

While the king ostensibly protected Jews from pogroms, they were not protected from imprisonment and torture at the hands of the King himself. When a Jewish man died, his estate went to the Crown, while his wife and children were left destitute. English kings also regarded Jews as their own personal bank account, forcing them to come up with enormous sums of money whenever they needed some cash.

King John (of Magna Carta fame) forced “his” Jews to pay ruinous taxes to finance his wars. He grew enraged at the Jewish community, claiming that they were hiding their assets from him in order not to pay his tax. In 1210, he called all of the leaders of England’s Jewish communities to see him in the city of Bristol, where he threw them all in jail. Soon afterwards, King John ordered all of the Jews of England imprisoned in various dungeons. They were forced to pay a total of 66,000 marks – a huge sum – in order to be freed.

One contemporary account, written by a man named Roger of Wendover, describes the fate of a local Jewish leader who was unable to raise the 10,000 marks his community was forced to raise. “The King, therefore, ordered his torturers to pull out one of his molar teeth each day until he should have paid the sum of 10,000 marks. For seven days, a tooth was extracted with almost intolerable suffering….”

King John and the Magna Carta

When King Richard I died in 1199, it was England’s powerful landed gentry which chose his successor: King Richard’s younger brother John. King John was an unpopular leader. He waged war with Spain, losing most of England’s possessions in France as a result, quarreled with the Pope, and taxed his subjects heavily. King John’s excesses (or, in an alternative view, the English barons’ chafing against funding John’s unsuccessful wars abroad) led to a huge uprising in which England’s barons – landed gentry who wielded local power – rose up against their king.

King John of England, 1167-1216. Illuminated manuscript, De Rege Johanne, 1300-1400. MS Cott. Claud DII, folio 116, British Library.

In 1215, the barons raised an army and quickly captured London. They forced King John to meet them in a marshy field west of the city called Runnymede and to sign a document limiting his powers. This Magna Carta – literally, a “Big Document,” contained 63 provisions. They constrained the king’s power and emphasized that England’s monarch was not above the laws of the nation he led.

The Magna Carta of 1215 offered some basic protections for English subjects, such as not being imprisoned without trial, but its major winners were the barons. By constraining their king, they were able to conduct their own affairs more freely.

The Magna Carta’s Jewish Clauses

One key way to limit the king’s power was to weaken his Jewish moneylenders. Two clauses in the Magna Carta are devoted to rigging the money lending system to harm England’s Jews – and thus indirectly, the king.

Clause 10 limits the amount of interest Jewish businessmen could collect from the estate of a borrower who passed away:

If anyone who has borrowed a sum of money from Jews dies before the debt has been repaid, his heir shall pay no interest on the debt for so long as he remains under age….

Clause 11 placed even greater limits on money lenders’ ability to collect debts from a deceased borrower’s heirs:

If a man dies owing money to Jews, his wife may have her dowry (back) and pay nothing towards the debt from it. If he leaves children that are under age, their needs may also be approved for on a scale appropriate to the size of his holding of lands. The debt is to be paid out of the residue (only)…..

King Henry III and the Statute of Jewry

When King John died in 1216 his nine-year-old son Henry became king. The baron’s rebellion continued for some time, and they forced the young King Henry III to sign versions of the Magna Carta again in 1216, 1217, and in 1225. Subsequent versions were shorter and did not mention Jews directly. This was likely not as a result of any concern for Jews’ welfare but was a reflection of the declining wealth and importance of Jews.

The position of Jews in England was becoming more and more precarious. In 1253, King Henry III issued draconian new legislation curtailing Jewish life in England. His “Statute of the Jewry” declared that “no Jew (can) remain in England unless he do the King service, and that from the hour of birth every Jew, whether male or female, (must) serve us in some way.”

The Statute forbade the construction of new synagogues, forbade Jews from making any noise inside a synagogue that could be heard outside, and forced Jews to adopt some Christian practices and to pay money to their local churches. Jews and Christians were forbidden from visiting each other or working for each other. Jews were forced to wear a special badge on their clothes identifying them as Jewish, and had to receive express permission to visit a new town.

Jews realized there was no future for them in England. The highest leader of England’s Jewish community, a sage named Elias l’Eveske, requested permission for Jews to flee England. King Henry III refused.

Expelling Jews from England

King Henry’s successor, King Edward I, passed his own Statue of Jewry in 1275 which banned Jews from lending money for interest. The Statute also contained new humiliations and restrictions on Jews’ behavior, but it was this prohibition on money lending which crippled the Jewish community. Jews were blocked from engaging in other professions: without the ability to offer financing and loans, they were plunged into penury.

Edward I was the first English monarch to use antisemitism as an instrument of state policy

Thirteen years later, King Edward I found a solution to his own financial problems: he decreed that every Jewish man, woman, and child, must leave England upon pain of death. Jews were prevented from bringing property or funds out of England with them: all belongings passed to the Crown. The vast majority of England’s Jews moved to France, where they continued working as money lenders, again prevented from engaging in other forms of work.

About two dozen versions of the Magna Carta survive, including the one in Harvard’s Law Library. They form an eloquent testament to a time when England’s wealth and prosperity relied on Jewish businessmen – and when the Jews of England toiled in fear, considered the human chattel of their king.