Guilds -- England -- London; London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History
“It is allowable to celebrate mass in a church where faithful and pious
ones have been buried. But if infidels or heretics or faithless Jews be
buried, it is not allowed to sanctify or celebrate mass; but if it seem
suitable for consecration, tearing thence the bodies or scraping or
washing the walls, let it be consecrated if it has not been so
previously.”
The earliest mention of the Jews occurs in the _Terrier of St. Paul’s_,
1115:
“In the ward of Haco ... in the Jew’s street (?Old Jewry) the land of
Lusbert, in the front on the west side, is 32 feet in breadth. Towards
St. Olave’s is fourscore and fifteen feet; again towards St. Olave’s is
65 feet, and in the front 13 feet. The land in the front is 73 feet, and
in depth 41 feet, and pays 10s.”
In 1264, and again in 1267, the popular hatred of the Jews broke out
with unmistakable violence. They fled to the Tower, while the mob
destroyed and sacked their buildings.
In 1290 they were banished.
Their synagogue, which stood in the north-east corner of the present
street, was given to the Fratres de Saccâ (see _Mediæval London_, vol.
ii. p. 365), and on their dissolution it was ceded to Robert FitzWalter
and converted into a merchant’s residence. Here lived and died Robert
Large to whom Caxton was apprenticed.
The later history of the street may be quoted from Cunningham:
“The last turning but two on the east side (walking towards Cateaton
Street) was called Windmill Court, from the Windmill Tavern, mentioned
in the curious inventory of ‘Innes for Horses seen and viewed,’
preparatory to the visit of Charles V. of Spain to Henry VIII., in the
year 1522. ‘From the Windmill,’ in the old Jewry, Master Wellbred writes
to Master Knowell, in Ben Jonson’s play of _Every Man in his Humour_.
Kitely, in the same play, was a merchant in the Old Jewry. The house or
palace of Sir Robert Clayton (of the time of Charles II.), on the east
side, was long a magnificent example of a merchant’s residence,
containing a superb banquetting-room, wainscotted with cedar, and
adorned with battles of gods and giants. Here the London Institution was
first lodged; and here, in the rooms he occupied as librarian, Professor
Porson died (1808). Dr. James Foster, Pope’s ‘modest Foster’—
Let modest Foster, if he will, excel
Ten Metropolitans in preaching well—
was a preacher in the Old Jewry for more than twenty years. He first
became popular from Lord Chancellor Hardwicke stopping in the porch of
his chapel in the Old Jewry, to escape from a shower of rain. Thinking
he might as well hear what was going on, he went in, and was so well
pleased that he sent all his great acquaintances to hear Foster.”
Alexander Brown, the cavalier song-writer, was an attorney in the Lord
Mayor’s Court in this street, and Bancroft, who built the almshouses of
Mile End, was an officer in the court. Sir Jeffrey Bullen, Lord Mayor,
1457, lived in this street, where he was a mercer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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