The owners were presumably dead. By the law of the land in those days, all such ownerless property reverted to the Crown. The massacre of the missing owners was a fault that leant to virtue’s side, but the careless destruction of the missing records was fraud on the exchequer――a very grave crime indeed. =4. Treatment by Richard.=――Richard, probably, showed himself altogether averse from such riotous proceedings. He had lost his coronation presents through it, and the intermittent plundering which went on during his crusading expeditions, he must have reflected, was all a distinct and further loss to the treasury. On his return from captivity he put the whole thing on a legal footing. The Jews were registered as chattels of the Crown, and a special court in the king’s exchequer was set apart for the management of Jewish matters. The amount of every Jew’s property throughout the kingdom was ascertained as nearly as it was possible, was duly entered on the books, and then a scale of tolls and taxes was drawn up in accordance with this list, and an efficient staff of Jews and Christians appointed to act as responsible collectors. It was a hard system, but it was open and to-be-reckoned-upon robbery, and the Jews were infinitely the gainers by it. Richard was not cruel, nor capricious, nor persecuting. He constituted them ‘his Jews,’ and it was his interest, and it probably was his pleasure, to protect them, and to permit no extra nor unauthorised plunder at the hands of priests or barons or populace. It was unfortunate for the Jews of England that Richard only reigned ten years.