whole body of the Jews. The principal pretence for this proceeding appears to have been that the Jews had been the chief clippers of the coin. The principal motive, no doubt, was the replenishing of the royal exchequer by the spoil of the hated and helpless race; for the Jews had always been regarded, not only as foreigners and aliens, but as, in a manner, the absolute property of the crown, which, under that view, was restrained from pillaging and otherwise oppressing them to any extent it chose by neither law nor custom, nor by anything except a prudent calculation of how far it might go without injury to its own interests—without impairing the productiveness of the source from which it drew its iniquitous profits. In the present instance even this consideration gave way under the pressure of some strong excitement or urgent need, the popular feeling, we may be sure, eagerly seconding the royal passion or policy. The manner of the proceeding was as barbarous as the motive, whether fanaticism or thirst of plunder, might prepare us to expect. Only two months' warning was given before the fatal 1st of November, on which day it was ordered that every Jew should quit England, never to return, on pain of death. Not only all their houses and tenements, but also all their bonds for money owing them by Christians, were seized by the king, who afterwards exacted payment of the debts, as if the money had been lent by himself. The accounts difer as to whether they were allowed to carry their moveable property with them; as much, of course, was left them as might defray their charges in crossing the sea, and we may suppose they secretly conveyed away as much more as they could; it is affirmed that whole ship-loads of them were made away with by the sailors on their passage for the sake of what they had with them. The common account is that the exact number thus driven out was 16,511; and no Jew was ever after wards allowed to set foot in this country, till, without any change having been made in the law, they quietly began to reappear alter the Restoration, three hundred and seventy years subsequent to their general expulsion.
VOL. I.
