A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



to Northampton to put an end to the imposture.^ A serious riot ensued, 

 which the biographer of St. Hugh mentions as affording an instance of the 

 courage and presence of mind which the saint could display. Writing 

 generally of this and certain other somewhat similar incidents, he tells how 

 the good bishop, while swords were flashing round him, and his attendants 

 were crouching in their terror beneath the very altars, could succeed bare- 

 headed and unarmed, in quelling the storm by his intrepidity and the 

 sternness of his rebukes, and how his remarkable personality subdued the 

 infuriated burghers of Northampton.^ The tomb which was the centre of 

 the disturbance is said to have been within the church of All Saints.'' 

 Wherever it was, the scandal associated with it was decisively checked. 

 St. Hugh profaned the votive offerings and forbade further reverence to be 

 paid to the false martyr under pain of excommunication.* 



After the erection of a special court in the latter part of the twelfth 

 century for the regulation of Jewish affairs, known as the Exchequer of the 

 Jews,' the members of this race were practically forced together in those 

 towns where chests were established for the registration of their bonds." 

 Northampton and Stamford, as well as Lincoln, are frequently mentioned in 

 the thirteenth century as towns containing these public chests.'' In 1218 

 ' the sheriff and constable of Lincoln and of Stamford . . . and the sheriff 

 and constable of Northampton,' as well as the authorities of various other 

 parts of England, received an important order' by which the Jews were to 

 be allowed to remain where they were, and to have the same ' communa ' 

 among the Christians which they had had aforetime ; the officers to whom 

 the order was addressed were to watch over their interests, and to proclaim 

 that the king had granted the Jews his ' firm peace,' notwithstanding any 

 action that might be taken to the contrary by the bishop of the diocese, to 

 whom the affairs of ' the king's Jews ' were to be of no concern ; ' and if the 

 Jews did anything for which they could be bound over to appear the said 

 officers were to see that they appeared before the king's justices appointed for 

 the custody of the Jews,^" and that the jury was composed of Jews and 

 Christians of good repute ; they were not to allow Jews to be summoned for 

 debt before the 'court Christian'; and they were to see that all was managed 

 as in the time of John." 



As regards episcopal hostility to the Jews, much, of course, depended 

 on the character of individual bishops. In the diocese which included 

 Northampton the Jews on the whole suffered more at the hands of civil 



' Will of Newburgh in Chron. of Step. Hen. II and Rk. I (Rolls Ser.), i, 3 1 o-i i . 



- Magna Vita S. Hugonis (Rolls Ser.), 167, 348. 



' Serjeantson, Hist, of All Saints', Northamft. 15. ' Will, of Newburgh, loc. cit. 



^ Cunningham, Groivth of Engl. Industij and Commerce, i, 188. 



' The justices of the Jews were ordered in I 283-4 '° receive all Jews staying in any place wherein there 

 was no chest of chirographers of the Jews, on the ground that their residence in such places was contrary to 

 the custom of the king's Jewry. Close, 1 2 Edw. I, m. 8. 



' Pat. I Edw. I, m. 18 ; 4 Edw. I, m. 36. 



* Ibid. 2 Hen. Ill, m. 3. It had also been ordered that the Jews of Northampton and elsewhere should 

 wear two white strips of linen or parchment on the breast of their clothing, that none injuring them might 

 pretend that he did not know they were Jews (Tovey, op. cit. 79-80). 



' For the relation of the mediaeval church and king toward the Jews, see Jacobs, The Jews of Angevin 

 England, pp. ix-xxii. 



'" Tovey, Atigl. Judaica, 31, 43, 48. 



" John had granted a charter of privileges to the Jews of England and Normandy. The Jews had also 

 figured in the Great Charter. Ibid. 61, 73. 



12 



