=5. Under John.=――The dissolute, unprincipled, and untrustworthy John of Anjou succeeded his brother in 1199. During Richard’s frequent absence from England, John had plotted for the crown, and had found Jews very useful in supplying the wherewith for him to keep up the character he had assumed of a liberal, open-handed prince. He had been lavish in profession and in promises of good-will, and the grateful Jews had sought by good offices to keep and deserve the favour of their future sovereign. Lulled into a sense of security by his fair speeches, they had even persuaded many of their rich Continental co-religionists to come to England, and in the first years of John’s reign, so encouraged, the Jews began to hide their money a little less, and to enjoy it a little more. It may be that in their security they were even a trifle ostentatious. And it is possible that the populace had grown irritated at the royal favour shown to the despised Jews, and somewhat jealous of the wealth they now displayed, and of which, for many years past, royalty alone had reaped the benefit. Or it may be that such favour as John had bestowed was wholly capricious, and that he had played with his victims as a cat with the mouse she means to devour. At any rate, his mood changed, and in 1210, quite suddenly, without warning or provocation of any sort, all the Jews in the kingdom were imprisoned, and their goods declared to be confiscated. Those who would not disclose the whereabouts of their treasures were tortured, and John is said to have himself stood over a certain Jew in Bristol, seeing tooth after tooth extracted, till a ransom was agreed on for the victim’s right to retain the two or three that were left in his head. CHAPTER XXV. JEWS IN ENGLAND (_continued_). (1216‒1290.)