Across the road from the Round Church, in the angle of land caused by the branching apart of the High Street and the Bridge Street, was planted one of the earliest Jewries established in England. The coming of the Jews to England was one of the incidental effects of the Norman Conquest. They had followed in the wake of the invading army as in modern times they followed the German hosts into France, assisting the Normans to dispose of their spoil, finding at usurious interest ready-money for the impoverished English landowner, to meet his conqueror's requisitions, and generally meeting the money-broking needs of both King and subject. In a curious diatribe by Richard of Devizes (1190), Canterbury, Rochester, Chichester, Oxford, Exeter, Worcester, Chester, Hereford, York, Ely, Durham, Norwich, Lincoln, Bristol, Winchester, and of course London are all mentioned as harbouring Jewish settlements. The position of the Jew, however, in England was all along anomalous. As the member of an alien race, and still more of an alien religion, he could gain no kind of constitutional status in the kingdom. The common law ignored him. His Jewry, like the royal forest, was outside its domain. He came, indeed, as the King's special man--nay, more, as the King's special chattel. And in this character he lived for the most part secure. The romantic picture of the despised, trembling Jew--the Isaac of York, depicted for us in Scott's "Ivanhoe"--cringing before every Christian that he meets, is, in any age of English history, simply a romantic picture. The attitude of the Jew almost to the last is one of proud and even insolent defiance. In the days of the Red King at any rate, he stood erect before the prince, and seemed to have enjoyed no small share of his favour and personal familiarity. The presence of the unbelieving Hebrew at his court supplied, it is said, William Rufus with many opportunities of mocking at the Christian Church and its bishops. In a well-known story of Eadmer, the Red King actually forbids the conversion of a Jew to the Christian faith. "It was a poor exchange," he said, "which would rob me of a valuable property and give me only a subject." The extortion of the Jew was therefore sheltered from the common law by the protection of the King. The bonds of the Jew were kept, in fact, under the royal seal in the royal archives, a fact of which the memory long remained in the name of "The Star" chamber; a name derived from the Hebrew word (_ishtar_) for a "bond." [Illustration: Oriel Windows from House in Petty-Cury now demolished _To face p. 46_]