King’s treasury was replenished out of the pockets of men who were as absolutely his as his own palaces, and whom he could sell or mortgage as any other property, according to his convenience. Even the King’s commissioners--Jews deputed to collect the tallage--had power to seize the wives and children of their own co-religionists. It is computed that at this period the Jews contributed about one-twelfth of the whole royal revenue. ♦1210♦ But John’s cruelty was boundless as his meanness. Not content with ordinary measures of extortion, he suddenly ordered all the Jews--men, women and children--to be imprisoned and forced to yield all they possessed. Thus by one fell swoop were snatched from them the fruits of a life’s laborious accumulation, and many were brought to the verge of starvation. Men and women, until yesterday opulent, were seen begging from door to door in the day time, and at night prowling about the purlieus of the city like homeless and hungry curs. Those who were suspected of being the owners of hidden treasure were tortured until they confessed, and, in the case of a Jew of Bristol, at least, a tooth a day was found an efficient test of a Jew’s squeezability. Grinder after grinder was drawn from his jaw in horrible agony, till the victim, after having lost several teeth, paid the 10,000 marks demanded of him. By such a fiscal policy the King’s _protégés_ were made to feel the full weight of royal favour. But even this condition of serfdom and occasional torture was preferable to the lot that was in store for them in the future. John, whatever his own standard of humanity might have been, when the citizens of London threatened an attack upon the Jews, stood boldly forth in their defence, and told the Mayor and burgesses that he held them responsible for the safety of the Jews, vowing a bloody vengeance if any harm befell them. ♦1216–1272♦