A few words must be said about the Jew, or Jew’s daughter, mentioned in the different versions of the ballad and in the chronicles. We ought not to overlook the fact that the Jews at an early period of their history sacrificed, and at a later period redeemed, their first-born children, as many passages in Exodus and Numbers plainly indicate. But to say, as Matthew Paris does, that the Jews of Lincoln stole a boy named Hugh, and scourged, crowned, and crucified him, as a parody of the crucifixion of Jesus, is to make a very large demand on our credulity. The Jews of Lincoln were not at all likely to have risked their lives and property by such an act of wanton and hideous cruelty. Nor is the evidence afforded by the different versions of the ballad sufficient to establish the fact that the Jews sacrificed children in Great Britain for any purpose or in any way. These different versions seem to have all sprung from the same original, and the thing to be tested is the credibility of that original. Its value as evidence against the Jews in Britain is impaired by the different places in which the deed is alleged to have been done, and, moreover, we have seen that the prose version from Castleton speaks of a “magician,” not a Jew. Still more is the evidence vitiated by the existence of that well-known popular hatred of the Jews, which gave rise to all sorts of libels and slanders. A good example of this hatred appeared in London as late as 1758, when a man— “published a sensational account of a cruel murder committed by certain Jews said to have lately arrived from Portugal, and then living near Broad Street. They were said to have burnt a woman and a new-born babe, because its father was a Christian. Certain Jews who had arrived from Portugal, and who then lived in Broad Street, were attacked by the mob, barbarously treated, and their lives endangered. A criminal information was granted, although it was objected that it did not appear precisely who were the persons accused of the murder.”[113] [113] Odgers on _Libel_, 1896, p. 445. What the evidence does suggest is the former existence of a custom of sacrificing children to make rain. It is not even alleged that the Jews sacrificed children to the Spey, the Dee, or the Don. There is, however, a document of much greater evidential value than ballads and chronicles, which declares that a boy was crucified by Jews at Lincoln. In the _Hundred Rolls_ for 3 Edward I. (1274), a sworn jury found that “certain land in the parish of St. Martin [in Lincoln], which belonged to Leo the Jew, who was condemned for the death of a crucified boy, and which land was then in the tenure of William Badde, was forfeited to the King as from the year 1256.”[114]