It appears that there were two distinct colonies of Jews――the one within the walls of the city of London, the other in the liberties of the Tower. I am inclined to adopt the idea that the Jews who came to this country under the encouragement of the Conqueror, settled within the jurisdiction of the constable of his Palatine Tower; and that the Jews who settled in England before the Conquest, and who, according to the laws published by Edward the Confessor, were declared to stand under the immediate authority and jurisdiction of the king, were found immediately adjoining that quarter of the city which appears to have been the court end under the Saxon monarchs. Mathew Paris, a monkish historian, asserts that St. Alban’s Church, which stands nearly in the middle of a line drawn from “the Jewerie” within the city, to the angle of the wall at Cripplegate, was the chapel of King Offa, and adjoining to his palace. Mund mentions in his edition of Stow, that the great square tower remaining at the north corner of Love-lane, in the year 1632, was believed to be part of King Athelstan’s palace. The name of Addle-street is derived by the same antiquarian from Adel or Ethel, the Saxon for noble. The original council chamber of the alderman is known to have stood somewhere in Aldermanbury, which had its name from it. Without a certain, a positive belief in any one of these statements, their coincidence seems to render it extremely probable that the royal residence was in that quarter, which may account for the king’s men――the Jews――taking up their residence near it.¹ ¹ See Knight’s London. William the Conqueror, as soon as he got the Jews into this country, adopted the policy of Edward the Confessor. The chronicler Hoveden states that in the fourth year of William the Conqueror’s reign, he held a council of his barons, in which, among other things, it was provided “that the Jews settled in this kingdom should be under the king’s protection; that they should not subject themselves to any other without his leave: it is declared that they and all theirs belong to the king; and if any should detain any of their goods, the king might challenge them as his own.”¹ ¹ See Appendix D.