Jews and the Law in Medieval England

England’s first known Jewish inhabitants came from Normandy soon after the Norman Conquest and by the end of the twelfth century the community in England had been granted a right of residence and a right of free movement plus a substantial degree of autonomy in intra-communal disputes by king Henry II and his sons Richard and John. From the late twelfth century onwards there survives a substantial volume of royal legislation relating to the community. Its main focus was on controlling the money-lending activity of individual Jews both in the interests of the Crown and individual Christian debtors until a statute of 1275 prohibited any future lending at interest. Other legislation echoed contemporary ecclesiastical legislation limiting social contact between Christians and Jews. The end of the medieval community came with the Expulsion of 1290 after which only a handful of Jews remained in England, those who had converted to Christianity, many of them living in the House of Converts in Chancery Lane in London.

Paul Brand is an Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College in Oxford where he was a Senior Research Fellow from 1999 to 2014. He is a medieval legal historian and the author of The Origins of the English Legal Profession and The Making of the Common Law both published in 1992 and Kings, Barons and Justices: The Making and Enforcement of Legislation in Thirteenth-Century England in 2003. He is editor of four volumes of The Earliest English Law Reports for the Selden Society and volume VI of Plea Rolls of the Exchequer of the Jews. He lives in retirement in rural south Warwickshire.