All sorts of ridiculous and base calumnies began to be invented against them, in order to furnish a warrant for inflicting upon them fines, extortions, imprisonment, banishments, and other unheard of cruelties. My Lecture this evening commences, as you perceive, by the syllabus in your hands, with the sufferings of the Jews of Norwich――sufferings which owe their existence to the venomous calumnies invented by Christians in order to possess themselves of their Jewish neighbour’s wealth. In the year 1235, a year when Henry was greatly in need of money, in consequence of his great outlay on his sister Isabella’s marriage to the emperor of Germany, as well as his own contemplated marriage with Eleanor of Provence: poor Count Berenger having positively declined giving the twenty thousand marks which the mean Henry asked as a dowry, Henry must, therefore, have been very glad of getting an opportunity, be it ever so foul, of extorting the required sum from the poor Jews. The Jews of Norwich were at that time enormously rich. Seven of them were therefore accused of circumcising a Christian child of that city, and they were brought before the king himself, whilst he was celebrating his nativity at Westminster. The poor Jews were condemned to be drawn and hanged, and, of course, their property confiscated, and thus were the king’s wants supplied for that time. You next perceive in the syllabus, briefly noticed, the famous trial of Jacob of Norwich. The syllabus, however, can give you no idea of the nature of that _in_famous process, or of the absurd charge which originated that trial. In the year 1240, the afore-mentioned rich Jew was accused of stealing a boy from his parents, and circumcising him. The monkish historians tell us, that it proved a case of such difficulty, that the _postea_ was thought proper to be returned to parliament. Parliament could not decide. Indeed, the strangeness of the accusation would have puzzled any body of men to decide. Four years were allowed to elapse before the charge was brought, and the principal witness was a little boy, of about nine years of age, who stated that when he was about five years old he was playing in a certain street; the Jews allured him into the house of one Jacob, where they kept him a day and a night, and then blindfolded him and circumcised him. Yet strange to say, with his eyes blinded, and amidst the confusion of so painful an operation, the youthful boy was able to notice several minute particulars, which he narrated, but which certainly never had any existence, inasmuch as the particulars he related to have taken place after the circumcision, have no connexion with that rite.