But Oxford does more than illustrate this outburst of industrial effort; it does something towards explaining its cause. The most characteristic result of the Conquest was planted in the very heart of the town in the settlement of the Jew. Here as elsewhere the Jewry was a town within a town, with its own language, its own religion and law, its peculiar commerce, its peculiar dress. The policy of our foreign kings secured each Hebrew settlement from the common taxation, the common justice, the common obligations of Englishmen. No city bailiff could penetrate into the square of little streets which lay behind the present Town-hall; the Church itself was powerless against the synagogue that rose in haughty rivalry beside the cloister of St. Frideswide. The picture which Scott has given us in 'Ivanhoe' of Aaron of York, timid, silent, crouching under oppression, accurately as it represents our modern notions of the position of his race during the Middle Ages, is far from being borne out by historical fact. In England at least the attitude of the Jew is almost to the end an attitude of proud and even insolent defiance. His extortion was sheltered from the common law. His bonds were kept under the royal seal. A royal commission visited with heavy penalties any outbreak of violence against these "chattels" of the king. The thunders of the Church broke vainly on the yellow gaberdine of the Jew. In a well-known story of Eadmer's the Red King actually forbids the conversion of a Jew to the Christian faith: it was a poor exchange which would have robbed him of a valuable property and given him only a subject.