In the third year of this reign, the king, in order to please his Christian subjects, was pleased to pass the statute which is known by the name of the STATUTUM DE JUDAISMO. This statute acknowledged that the king and his ancestors had had great profit from the Jews, yet that many mischiefs and disinheritances of honest men had happened by their usuries; and it therefore enacted, that from thenceforth no Jew should practise usury,――that no distress for any Jew’s debt should be so grievous as not to leave the debtor the moiety of his lands and chattels for his subsistence; that no Jew should have power to sell or alien any house, rents, or tenements, without the king’s leave, but that they might purchase houses in cities as heretofore, and take leases of land to farm for ten years; and that they should be at liberty to carry on mercantile transactions in the cities where they resided; provided, however, that they should not, by reason of such dealings, be talliable with the other inhabitants of the cities, seeing that they were only talliable to the king, as his own bondsmen; and it directed that they should reside only in such cities and boroughs as were the king’s own; and that all Jews above the age of seven years should wear a badge, in the form of two tables of yellow taffety,¹ upon their upper garments; and that all above twelve years of age should pay to the king, at Easter, the sum of three pence. Lord Coke recommends that statute as very worthy to be read. It was drawn up in French, and the following is an English translation of the same:――