=9. Expulsion of Jews from England.=――At last the wrongs and miseries of the Jews in England reached their climax. Heavy pressure from his clergy was brought to bear upon King Edward, and towards the end of the year 1290, he signed an edict which ordered every Jew in his kingdom, under penalty of being hanged if he remained, to leave England on November 1. All debts owing to Jews were cancelled, and only strictly portable property was to be carried away by them. Homes had to be broken up; old folks, sick folks, little children, to all of whom roughness and shifts and changes might mean agony or death, were not considered. The decree was absolute and unconditional, and none were exempt from it. King Edward was not wholly responsible for the barbarous act, nor personally vindictive in its execution, yet it seems to have been carried out with circumstances of peculiar cruelty. The safe-conducts granted by the king were not always respected. One party of refugees was left stranded on a desolate part of the coast at the mercy of the incoming tide, whilst the master of the vessel they had chartered sailed away with their poor belongings. Of the 15,000 or 16,000 Jews (accounts vary as to the exact numbers) who were expelled from England in 1290, very many perished on their outward bound journey, some by accident and illness, some, it may be feared, by more or less of direct cruelty. The survivors were deposited at the nearest foreign ports. Thence, they made their way inland to such places in Central Europe as still permitted Jews to lead sad lives under State ‘protection.’ BOOK III. 100‒1500. STARLIGHT. לְךָ יוֹם אַף לְךָ לָיְלָה PSALM lxxiv. 16. ‘_Then stars arise, and the night is holy._’ CHAPTER XXVI. CONCERNING JEWISH LITERATURE AND LITERARY MEN.