Like deeds were perpetrated at Norwich, Bury St. Edmunds, Lynn, Lincoln, Colchester, and Stamford, and in all these places, as in London, the King’s officers found themselves powerless to prevent or punish. Richard, however, could not afford to have his Jews butchered or driven out of the country. He, therefore, issued a charter, confirming to the wealthiest among them the privileges which they had enjoyed under his predecessors: the privilege of owning land, of bequeathing and inheriting money-debts, of moving to and fro in the country without let or hindrance, and of exemption from all tolls. In return for his protection, the King claimed a closer supervision of their property and profits. His Treasury was to know how much they had, and how much they made. Staffs of Jewish and Christian clerks, appointed in various parts of the country, were to witness their deeds, enter them into a special register, and see that three copies were made of every bond: one to be placed into the hands of a magistrate, another into those of some respectable private citizen, and a third to be left with the Jew. Debts due to the Jews were really due to the King, and might not be compounded or cancelled without his consent. Disputes between Jews were to be settled at the royal Courts, and, in a word, a severe and vigilant eye was to be kept on the Israelites and their money-bags. ♦1199–1216♦ John, Richard’s miserable successor, whose reign brought nothing but ruin to himself and shame on his country, found it expedient to continue towards the Jews the lucrative generosity initiated by better men. The oppression of the Jews was a monopoly of the crown, and John made it quite plain that he would not tolerate any rivals. He invested Jacob of London with the dignity of Chief Rabbi over all the Jewish congregations throughout England and styled him his “dear, dear friend,” warning his subjects that any insult or injury offered to him would be regarded by the King as an insult to himself. He extended to the whole colony the favours and immunities granted to a privileged few by Richard, and, like him, accompanied this act of grace with an even more rigorous control of their affairs. The Jews had to pay dearly even for this limited and precarious protection. The sole difference between the treatment of them on the part of the King and that meted out to them by his subjects was that the latter despoiled them spasmodically, the former systematically. It was no longer a question of occasional contributions, such as the £60,000 wrung from them by Henry II., and like impositions levied to defray the expenses of Richard’s Crusade, but a steady and unsparing bleeding: tallages, inheritance duties and a heavy percentage on all loan transactions, in addition to confiscations and general fines, or fines for breaches of the law, with which the King would now and again diversify the monotony of normal brigandage. The procedure was perfectly immoral and yet perfectly legal. The