We have had occasion, under Lincoln, to mention the attitude adopted by the citizens towards the Jews. If anything, the feeling was more intense at Norwich. It is uncertain when they first resided in England, though it is supposed they visited before the Conquest for purposes of the slave trade, of which they held a monopoly. The position of the Jews in a Christian State entirely depended upon the attitude of the Church, whose stringent measures effectually precluded any Semitic from the exercise of any public office unless the reception was confirmed by oaths of a Christian character. As this clause was foreign to the tenets of the Hebrew religion, and as the Church regarded the means of loans lent out on interest as prohibited by the Gospel, and as a disreputable calling and unworthy of a Christian, usury became the only means of subsistence to the Jew in England. They were not affected by the views of the Church, and soon made themselves felt. As, however, capital was needed for the building of monasteries, abbeys, and cathedrals by the Church, and the kings of England, especially John and Henry III., found it convenient to extort tallage, the Jews were tolerated. The rate of interest demanded for what was in the first place a trifling loan in a few years increased to a formidable debt. The means adopted by the Christian Church and kings of the middle ages to free themselves from this bondage in no way reflect any honour. The custom appears to have been for the king to seize the whole of the estate, both treasure and debts, of the Jew on his demise, though there may have been sons to inherit. Another was to burn the proofs of indebtedness after having slain the creditors, as the attack against the Jews organised by a set of nobles, who were deep in their debt, is recorded to have taken place at York. For the Jew being a usurer, the estate fell into the hands of the King, who might be influenced to cancel the debt for a much smaller amount. We cannot then wonder that the lower classes followed in the steps of their superiors. But above all, in the twelfth century the Church encouraged the circulation of a suspicion that the Jews sacrificed Christian children in their Passover. However, the suspicion or "blood accusation," as it was called, first took root with a case in which a boy of the name of William disappeared at Norwich. This terrible accusation against the Jews has since been proved to have been founded on the shallowest pretexts, but at the time the myth was nevertheless encouraged by the clergy, since it attracted vast numbers of pilgrims to any cathedral or church which might contain the martyred remains of these boy-saints. The example of Norwich was followed in the same century by one at Gloucester and Edmondsbury, whilst in the following century the supposed martyrdom of Hugh of Lincoln served only to increase and confirm the popular belief. Hence the intense ill-feeling between the Christian and the Jew. London