[119] He was pressed at the trial at Osuna to put the accused Jews to the torture, in order to extract evidence which would satisfactorily prove whether they had done the deed or not. Alphonso refused. He said that he had, two years before, allowed two Jews to be racked in order to discover whether they had stolen two golden goblets. Under the torture they confessed the theft, and were executed for it. Shortly afterwards the goblets were found in the possession of a servant. ‘Therefore,’ said the king, ‘I will have no more examinations by torture. It is evident that the confessions extracted by them are worth nothing.’ No conclusion could be more sound. But before another judge it would have been urged and believed that the Jews, or their ally Satan, had hidden the goblets in a servant’s chest, in order that a Christian might be unrighteously charged with the crime of a Jew. [120] As these occurrences were nothing in those times without a miracle, it has been further declared that the Jews, when they entered the synagogue, perceived that their white dresses were covered with red crosses. This, however, is only the statement of a monk, a convert from Judaism who wrote two hundred years afterwards. [121] He is even believed by some to have forged the entire book, as it now exists. CHAPTER XX. A.D. 1200-1300—_continued_. THE JEWS IN ENGLAND. Henry III. was a minor when the death of his father, A.D. 1216, placed him on the throne. Pembroke and his colleagues, who governed England in his name, began by treating the Jews with greater mildness. They were released from prison; and twenty-four of the principal men in every town where they resided[122] were appointed to act as the protectors of their persons and possessions. They were declared exempt from spiritual authority, and the property of the sovereign alone; and the excommunications pronounced by their Rabbins were to be enforced by law. They were ordered, however, to wear the badge previously imposed, two strips of white cloth,[123] sewn on a conspicuous part of their dress, which may, as Milman remarks, have been intended to mark them as the royal property, and so save them from injury; but which was nevertheless far more likely to make them the objects of popular contumely.