[124] At the same synod he ordered a deacon of the Church, who had turned Jew for the love of a Jewess, to be hanged. [125] It appears to us that it must have been impossible for any traders, however lucrative their business, to endure such large and continued exactions. The enormous rate of interest levied by the Jews, amounting to 50 per cent. and upwards, goes far to explain it. [126] It has already been intimated that these charges were always made at times when the kings of England chanced to be in especial need of money. There is no evidence, that I am aware of, to show that the present accusation was due to that cause. But it is impossible to divest one’s mind of the suspicion. Henry’s extreme severity, at all events, had probably some connection with his urgent need of money. [127] Milman ingeniously suggests, in reference to these continually repeated charges of kidnapping and crucifying children, that the Jews might have brooded over the horrors imputed to them, until they became so diseased in mind that they actually executed the acts so persistently imputed to them. This is an ingenious suggestion, but nothing more. The confessions wrung by torture from the miserable Jews bear on the face of them the impress of fiction, and resemble the acknowledgment of witchcraft obtained by similar means. [128] This extraordinary law, which obtained in France also, is to be explained by the fact that by becoming a Christian a Jew was no longer subject to the exactions of the sovereign. And it was argued that it was not reasonable that his conversion should be at the king’s expense. [129] Not long previously to their expulsion he had imprisoned every Jew of any note, until they had paid him a subsidy of £12,000. [130] It is remarkable, that although the historians of those times describe the most heartrending sufferings endured by the Jews, there is nowhere any expression of pity or horror in their narratives. _PART II._ FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT TIME. CHAPTER XXI. A.D. 1300-1400. THE JEWS IN FRANCE.