These measures of conciliation had the desired effect: the Jews, placing reliance in the protection thus offered them by the king, again applied themselves, with full confidence, to the acquirement of property; and before ten years of this reign had passed away, their increasing wealth rendered them capable of affording a rich harvest to the crown. When the fickle tyrant found that this was the case, he did not any longer keep the mask of kindness on his face: he began to throw aside the disguise he had assumed, and by every means which lay in his power endeavoured to reap the advantages which his policy had placed within his grasp. It evidently appears that the reason he lavished so many privileges upon them, was for the diabolical purpose of alluring them into his power, that he might plunder and oppress them at pleasure. It was aptly said by a French historian, that the Jews were used like sponges――allowed for a time to suck up a large amount of wealth, which was wrung out into the coffers of the crown. In the year 1210, he laid a tallage upon the Jews, of 66,000 marks, and enforced payment by imprisonment, and by the infliction of various modes of bodily torture. He commanded all the Jews of both sexes throughout England to be imprisoned, till they would make a discovery of their wealth, which he appointed officers to receive in every county, and return to his exchequer. The generality of them had one eye put out. One Jew of Bristol, who hesitated to pay the sum at which he was assessed (no less than 10,300 marks of silver) is stated to have been condemned to the cruelty of having one of his teeth torn from his head each day, until he had discharged his quota. For seven days he submitted to the torture: on the eighth day, having lost all his teeth but one, he produced the amount demanded of him. Both these facts are briefly noticed in the chronological table of Valentine’s Hebrew and English Almanack. The many wars King John was engaged in about that time, pressed him very hard for money. He not only waged war against France, Ireland, and Wales, but also against his own barons. Money was indispensable, and the poor Jews were the sufferers. The next year a further tallage was levied, in respect of which one Jew alone paid 5,500 marks. In the sixteenth year of his reign, John imposed another heavy tax, and compelled its payment by imprisonment and other measures of violence. Some of the Jews of Southampton were rather backward in their payments; they were ordered to be imprisoned and sent to the castle at Bristol.