The priests, however, did not appreciate the buoyancy of their spirits, and were not backwards in depressing them, and their indulgence therefore was but of short duration. They watched every opportunity for doing so, and the king’s extremity afforded them a convenient season. The king wanted money, and the monks knew it; they therefore accused the Jews of crucifying a boy at Bury St. Edmund’s, Robert by name, which proved a source of great income both to Church and State. Bury St. Edmund’s had already become famous for its monastic establishments, and the monks, it seems, who were settled there, did not fail to derive advantage from the feelings which the belief of the crime excited. They caused the body of the child to be interred with great ceremony and every mark of respect; the shrine was declared capable of producing supernatural effects, and speedily became renowned for the miracles which it wrought. Persons from all parts, either led by curiosity, or induced by feelings of superstition, visited the shrine. The offerings which were made on the occasion could not fail to be productive of considerable profit to the Church. The king, on the other hand, took ♦advantage of the supposed crime, and banished the wealthiest Jews out of this country, and, as a matter of course, confiscated their properties, and fined heavily those he allowed to remain. ♦ ‘advanvantage’ replaced with ‘advantage’ This alone was enough to damp their spirits, and make them very low; but the measure of their sufferings was not as yet full in this reign. The crusading mania revived; King Henry determined to take an active part in that affair, together with Philip Augustus, King of France; the want of cash in such an expedition was inevitable. Though the Jews had by no means either any desire for, or any interest in, the planting of the cross at Jerusalem, the king saw fit, however, to assess them at £60,000 towards it, whilst the whole Christian population of England were only required to furnish £70,000. It is easy to imagine in what a state of consternation this poor, persecuted race must have been thrown. I can easily conceive a fast-day proclaimed, and an especial prayer-meeting announced, that God would avert that impending calamity. Happy for the poor Jews, however, that the then dispensation was a quarrelsome one: the harmony between Henry the Second of England and Philip Augustus, soon came to a termination――the British king is supposed to have died of grief in consequence, and with his death the Jewish prospects of prosperity revived; the Jews began to hope that their apprehended troubles had disappeared, and that an era of better days was on the eve of being introduced into their British annals.