ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



century.' The Jews' quarter in our English towns was always, as might be ex- 

 pected, near the market-place, and in Northampton it was placed to the west 

 of the great market-square, chiefly in Silver Street and part of Gold Street.^ 



There was a strange notion current among the antiquaries of the seven- 

 teenth and eighteenth centuries that the round church of St. Sepulchre was 

 the old Jewish synagogue.* Such an idea was, of course, absurd, but it is 

 true enough that near St. Sepulchre's lay the Jewish burial-ground, just out- 

 side the north gate.* Where the synagogue stood can now be determined 

 from the recently calendared charters at the British Museum. 



The schola of the Jews is mentioned soon after their expulsion as 

 being on the west side of Northampton, beyond the bridge.^ It afterwards 

 became the property of the abbey of St. James, Northampton, and was the 

 scene of a curious incident in connexion with one of those widespread out- 

 bursts of anti-Semitism which marked the first year of Richard I, when the 

 popular dislike of the Jew was fanned by the enthusiasm attending the third 

 crusade.* On 7 March, i 190, a number of young men who had joined the 

 crusade and had assembled from various districts at Stamford, where a great 

 market or fair was being held, organized an attack on the Jews in that 

 town, partly from religious motives, but even more with a view to defraying 

 their crusading expenses out of the plunder.'' Many Jews were killed, and 

 Jewish houses were ruthlessly pillaged. One of the plunderers named John 

 carried off his spoils to Northampton, where he was robbed and murdered 

 by the man in whose house he lodged. The murderer threw the body over 

 the town wall and decamped with the booty. When the corpse was found, 

 the excited anti-Semitic feeling at once ascribed the crime to the Jews, and 

 the dead man soon began to be regarded as a martyr. Miracles were 

 reported to have been performed at his tomb, and matters went so far that 

 pilgrimages as to a shrine began to be organized from surrounding, and even 

 from comparatively remote, districts.* The fraud was encouraged by the 

 local clergy on account of the material gain.' News of these proceedings 

 came, however, to the ears of the diocesan, St. Hugh, who hurried at once 



' There was apparently no Jewry here in 5 Hen. II (Jacobs, The Jews of Angei'in Engl., p. 28, § 9), 

 but the roll of a general subscription made by the Jews for Richard I, probably towards his ransom, 

 shows that the Jewish settlement at Northampton had attained to a position of considerable importance 

 by 1 194. It was at Northampton, also, that the promise of this subscription was made, on behalf of the 

 Jews of all England (Ibid. 162-3, 381-2)- 



' Cox and Serjeantson, Hist, of St. Sepulchre's, Northampton, 26, n. 



' Ibid. 26, n. 160. The same idea used to be current with regard to the round church at Cambridge 

 (Ibid. 26, «.). 



' The burial-ground seems to have been rented from the prior of St. Andrew's. It was maintained 

 at least in part, by the rent of some houses in Stamford. A stone wall surrounded it {Trans. Jeteish Hist. 

 Soc. of Engl, ii, 98). In 1177 the king granted a licence to the Jews to have a burial-ground outside the 

 walls of any city where they could, without objection, purchase a convenient site {Roger de Hoveden (Rolls 

 Ser.), ii, 137). 



' ' Schola ' was then the regular term for a synagogue, and, as has been remarked, is strangely similar to 

 the familiar word ' school ' for synagogue still in common use among English Jews (Jacobs, Jewish Ideals, 

 p. 169). From a will of 1630 (quoted by Cox and Serjeantson, loc. cit.), it would seem that a synagogue 

 was then believed to have once stood in or near Silver Street. 



' Ralph de Diceto (Rolls Ser.), ii, 75. The motive of these outbre.iks seems to have been due to greed 

 quite as much as to religious ardour (Will, of Newburgh in Chron. of Steph. Hen. II, and Ric. I (Rolls Ser ), 

 i, 308. In 2 Hen. Ill the Jews throughout England were protected by royal writ to the local sheriffs and 

 officers against annoyance from ' Crucesignati ' (Tovey, Jnglia Judaica, ^. 77). The Jews were forced to 

 contribute towards the crusade. Roger de Hoveden (Rolls Ser.), ii, 338. 



' Will, of Newburgh in Chron. of Step. Hen. II and Ric. I (Rolls Ser.), i, 3 lo-l I. 



Mbid. 311. » Ibid. 



II 



