in, see it, and indict him for the offence; or he puts the wafer into his purse, in which are a number of silver pieces, and these are turned into seven wafers, similar to the one he had placed among them. Staggered by the miracle, he becomes a convert to the gospel. Stories like these are continually to be met with. That the mass of the people believed them is beyond dispute; but whether the more intelligent among the clergy attached any real faith to such tales, or simply used them as a means of accomplishing their own ends, in exciting popular fury against the Jews, is a matter very difficult to determine. In 1285, Philip IV., called the Fair, the shameless murderer of the Knights Templars, succeeded his father. His first acts were extremely hostile to the Church, but he showed no lenity to the Jews. Six years after his accession, he repeated the act of several of his predecessors, and expelled them from the kingdom. It does not appear that the banishment was rigidly enforced, as we find a second expulsion taking place not many years afterwards. In fact, these repeated sentences of exile and subsequent recall read very much as though they were simply regular stages in a prescribed system of spoliation. After the Jews had been resident in a country a sufficient length of time to have amassed wealth enough to be worth seizing upon, it was discovered that they had been guilty of some terrible wickedness, which rendered it impossible for a Christian sovereign to tolerate them within his dominions. They had seized some Christian boy, perhaps, and indulged their natural hate at once of the Saviour and His worshippers, by subjecting him to death on the cross. The fact that they had done so was made abundantly clear by some astounding miracle, which rendered human testimony needless. The immediate authors of the deed were executed, and their property confiscated to the Crown, and their countrymen were condemned to forfeit all but their movables, and with these to quit the realm. Sometimes the charge was varied, and they were found to have poisoned wells, or leagued with some foreign enemies, or (as we have seen) profaned or insulted the Host. But it always came to the same result. The Jews were driven out of the land, until they were in a condition to pay a large sum for readmission; and then the king, in the midst of his just anger, remembered mercy, and allowed them to return and grow rich, until their renewed wealth brought some fresh wickedness to light.