Article—A York "Pogrom"

times amusing, afternoon. Although no clear-cut answer could be provided many different suggestions were put forward. It was inevitable, from the nature of the subject, that the discussion should frequently stray from the point, but it was maintained at the high level characteristic of the Curia.

The highlights of the Society's activities were provided by two visits to the York Police Courts. These were both on the same day. In the morning we attended the Magistrates' Court and heard a representative cross-section of the type of cases dealt with. These including cycle thefts, robbery with violence, assault and drinking and driving offences, some of them tragic and some rather humorous.

The afternoon was spent in touring the Police Station. The cells were, however, "out of bounds" to visitors. Our thanks are due to Supt. Carter, who acted as our host and answered our many questions on this most interesting visit. J.H.C.

A YORK "POGROM"

This country has been so remarkably free from the violent outbreaks of anti-Semitism only too familiar in the history of many continental countries that it is almost forgotten that England too once had its Jewish . problem. And it may be of particular interest to recall that the most tragic massacre of English Jewry our annals have to record took place in our own city of York.

It occurred in the first year of the reign of Richard Cceur de Lion, and began with his coronation in September, 1189. The Jews settled in this country (they could claim with justice that they had "come over with the Conqueror", since it was Duke William who introduced them from the continent) were alive to the advisability of paying their respects to the new monarch. In the feudal organisation of the day they were the property of the king, his "chattels"; and above all they were anxious to secure his confirmation of Henry II's Charter which ensured their personal security and their freedom to travel and carry on their peculiar traffic of usury. Accordingly leaders of the various Jewish communities repaired to Westminster bearing costly coronation gifts. Unfortunately they were met by an immediate rebuff—a regulation forbidding their entry into Westminster Hall to witness the pageantry. From this came the spark which fired the train. A handful of Jews eluded the vigilance of the gatekeepers, and their discovery and ejection provoked a disturbance which led subsequently, both in Westminster and London, to serious riots involving the murder of large numbers. of Jews and the burning and pillaging of their houses.

In this affair two leaders of York Jewry were concerned. Indeed one of them, Benedict, only escaped with his life by accepting baptism; 34

though he renounced his conversion the following day when he was summoned to the King's presence. The knotty theological problem thus presented was solved by the Archbishop of Canterbury, to whom Richard appealed, by the eminently logical judgment that if the Jew "would not serve God, he must needs serve the devil". But the temporary conversion proved of no avail. Benedict died of his injuries on the journey home, and his companion, Josce, returned to York alone with the tidings of these ominous events.

For ominous they proved to be. In the next few months antiSemitism spread through England like a fire. The wealth of the Jews and their extortionate usury (justifiable, perhaps, as they claimed, since both their lives and their property were what a modern insurance company would describe as a bad risk) made them always unpopular, except with the King, who, by forced loans and more legitimate borrowing, found in them a convenient means of diverting the floating capital of the realm into his own coffers. The religious feeling engendered by the Crusading spirit, then sweeping the country, intensified the hostility. When, at the close of the year, Richard I went to France to raise an army for his campaign in the Holy Land, and his protecting hand was thus removed, the slumbering animosity awoke to violence. In the first months of 1190 there were savage outbreaks in Stamford, Lynn, Norwich, Lincoln, and, most tragic of all, in York.

In York the disturbances were deliberately engineered by certain of the neighbouring landowners. Richard de Malebysse (an ancestor of the Beckwith family, whose name is perpetuated in Acaster Malbis) was the ringleader of a group which included representatives of the Percy, the Darrel, and Faulconbridge families. So far from being inspired by religious fervour, they were moved by a very practical motive. They wished to avoid paying their debts to their Jewish creditors, a design in which, as events transpired, they were successful. But they found no lack of supporters in the crusaders, gathering then in York, as in all the more important towns and cities of England. Religious feeling ran high, and there was a ready acceptance of the belief that the Crusade could begin at home and that Christianity could be served no less meritoriously by vengeance on the race which had crucified its Founder than by ejecting the Saracen from the Holy Places.

The outbreak occurred on a night in March. Under cover of a conflagration, started deliberately in another part of the city to distract attention, an assault was made on the house in Coney Street occupied by Benedict's widow and family. It was a solid, stone-built house. In an age of timber construction the stone houses of the Jews were notable exceptions. Their wealth made them possible, and the need of security made them desirable. (The well-known "Jews' Houses" of Lincoln are remarkable survivals to this day). But Benedict's house 35

was not strong enough to withstand the mechanical contrivances which were brought up by the assailants. His treasures were pillaged, the building fired, and his wife, family, and servants butchered.

Immediately panic spread throughout the Jewish community in the city at this sign of imminent wrath to come. The next day Josce and other leading Jews applied to the Governor of York Castle for his protection. The Governor, of whose name we have no record, could do no other than afford them sanctuary. However unpopular they might be, the Jews were entitled to the King's Peace. As Richard's successor, King John, wrote to the Mayor of London not many years later, "if I give my Peace to a dog, it must be kept inviolate". And Richard himself, after the outbreak at his coronation, had despatched instructions throughout the realm that all Jews should go unmolested. Accordingly Josce and most of the prominent Jews of York were allowed to seek refuge in the castle. With their families and their precious possessions they were installed in the wooden keep where later was built the stone structure known today as Clifford's Tower. It seemed that the plans of Richard de Malbysse had miscarried. (In passing, his surname may derive from the sobriquet mala bestia, the "evil beast", which the Jews applied to him, though it is perhaps more likely that they were punning on his name). At any rate it seemed that the evil beast would not devour them. When, a few days later, de Malbysse and his satellites assailed Josce's house, they found it empty and were rewarded neither with blood nor treasure.

But the Jews in the castle made a fatal mistake. In the belief (whether justified or not we shall never know) that the Governor was negotiating with the conspirators and was intending to surrender them to the fury of the mob, they took advantage of his temporary absence to raise the drawbridge and barricade themselves within the keep. At once, of course, they had put themselves on the wrong side of the law. They had barred an officer of the King from a part of his own castle. The Governor immediately appealed to the Sheriff of the County, who happened to be in York at the time. The Sheriff promptly summoned his posse comitatus and laid siege to the keep. The tables were turned completely. The Jews were now the King's enemies, and a bloodthirsty mob, inflamed by the anti-Jewish propaganda of de Malbysse and his associates, reinforced the men-atarms in the investment of the tower. The Sheriff himself became alarmed at the ugly turn events had taken and repented of his precipitate action. But the situation was beyond his control. The imminence of Easter and the Passover, the anniversary of that first irreparable breach between Jew and Christian, aggravated passions and made the atmosphere electric. An inflamed and distorted religious fervour was added to the rapacious savagery of a mob already swollen by an influx from outside the city, as the record of the occupations of some of those ultimately punished for the outrage

seems to indicate. Indeed in the forefront of the assault on the keep was a giant, white-clad premonstratensian canon whose fanatic zeal led to his own death by a stone hurled from the battlements.

For Josce and the beleaguered Jewish families the position soon became desperate. Prolonged resistance was hopeless. On Friday, the 19th March, two days before Palm Sunday and on the eve of the Great Sabbath before Passover, they took thought for the morrow, and a terrible decision was made. The Rabbi Yomtob, an eminent teacher from Joigny who had recently come from the continent to instruct his English brethren, proposed that they should die by their own hands rather than surrender to the alternatives of baptism or butchery. The proposal was accepted by the majority. Their valuable possessions were destroyed or burnt in a conflagration which fired the keep itself, and in the midst of this holocaust the hideous selfimmolation took place. Josce set the example by cutting the throats of his wife, Anna, and their five children. The other heads of houses followed his lead. Last of all the Rabbi Yomtob did the like gruesome service to Josce before taking his own life.

When daylight came, those who had shrunk from this horrible sacrifice to Jehovah had no resource, with the keep burning above their heads, but to parley with the besiegers, confirming their story of what had happened by the irrefutable evidence of the dead bodies of their brethren which they rolled from the battlements. They were offered their lives on condition of accepting baptism. But the promise was not kept. When the survivors emerged from their sanctuary, a wholesale massacre ensued. And with their blood-lust at last sated, de Malbysse and his companions proceeded to their next step, which betrayed conclusively their true motive. The mob went to York Minster, forced the sacristan to deliver up his keys, and on the floor of the cathedral burnt all the bonds recording the debts contracted with the Jewish usurers. The account was closed and the slate wiped clean with the blood of the 150 persons who perished in and around the keep*

When the news of the disturbance reached the King in France, he at once sent his Chancellor, William Longchamp, to York to make full inquiries and punish those who had been responsible for the shameful episode. But the King's vengeance had been anticipated. Seven baronial ringleaders had already fled to Scotland, and although their estates were confiscated they were later restored to them. The leading citizens of York vehemently denied all complicity in the outrage and claimed that they had been powerless to stop it. The Justiciar had to

* One authority gives 500. But those who sought refuge in the castle were only a portion of the York colony. It is true that many others were slaughtered in the streets and in their homes. But in relation to the size of the community as a whole the smaller number is the more credible. Any attempt to compute the full total of those who lost their lives in this York massacre can only be conjectural.