The Every-day Book and Table Book, v. 1 (of 3): or Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs and Events, Incident to Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-five Days, in past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Month, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the AlmanacHone, William
History
The Every-day Book and Table Book, v. 1 (of 3): or Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs and Events, Incident to Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-five Days, in past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Month, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac
Hone, William
Days; Great Britain -- Social life and customs
From the dispersion of the Jews they have lived peaceably in all nations
towards all, and in all nations been persecuted, imprisoned, tortured,
and put to death, or massacred by mobs. In England, kings conspired with
their subjects to oppress them. To say nothing of the well-known
persecutions they endured under king John, the walls of London were
repaired with the stones of their dwellings, which his barons had
pillaged and destroyed. Until the reign of Henry II., a spot of ground
near Red-cross-street, in London, was the only place in all England
wherein they were allowed to bury their dead.
In 1262, after the citizens of London broke into their houses, plundered
their property, and murdered seven hundred of them in cold blood, King
Henry III. gave their ruined synagogue in Lothbury to the friars called
the fathers of the sackcloth. The church of St. Olave in the Old Jewry
was another of their synagogues till they were dispossessed of it: were
the sufferings they endured to be recounted we should shudder. Our old
English ancestors would have laughed any one to derision who urged in a
Jew’s behalf, that he had “eyes,” or “hands,” “organs, dimensions,
senses, affections, passions;” or that he was “fed with the same food,
hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the
same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a
Christian is.” They would have deemed a man mad had one been found with
a desire to prove that
------- the poor _Jew_,
In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great
As when a _Christian_ dies.
To say nothing of their more obvious sufferings for many centuries, the
tide of public opinion raged against the Jews vehemently and
incessantly. They were addressed with sneers and contumely; the finger
of vulgar scorn was pointed at them; they were hunted through the
streets in open day, and when protected from the extremity of violence,
it was with tones and looks denoting that only a little lower hate
sanctuaried their persons. In conversation and in books they were a
by-word, and a jest.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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