35© A. D. 1189. 



that the king had given orders to kill the Jews, and being eager to imi- 

 tate the zeal of their fovereign, and to ferve God by deflroying that de- 

 voted race, whom, as well as the Saracens, they called God's enemies, a 

 dreadful carnage enfued, which was continued through the whole day 

 in defiance of the king's command for the mob to difperfe, fent by fome 

 of his principal courtiers, and was followed by a conflagration of the 

 houfes, and pillage of the property, of all the Jews in London. 



1 1 90— The king's wrath for the difgrace brought upon the folemni- 

 ty of his coronation feftival, and the contempt of his authority, together 

 with his protedtion publicly granted to the furviving Jews, reftrained 

 the malice of the people againfl them, while he remained in England. 

 But, as foon as he left the kingdom, the fury broke out anew after his 

 departure ; and the maflacres and enormities of London were repeated 

 upon the Jews of Lynne, Norwich, Stanford, Lincoln, S'. Edmundfbury, 

 and York. 



At the later city the tragedy was begun by burning the houfe, which 

 contained the widow and children of one of the principal martyrs to the 

 fury of the London mob. Thereupon about five hundred Jews fhut them- 

 felves up in the caftle, by'the permiflionof the governor, with their families 

 and their moft valuable and portable effedls*, and there fuftained a fiege, 

 till their provifions were expended, and they were driven to the fhocking 

 extremity of murdering with their own hands their wives and children, 

 and then themfelves, after fetting fire to the buildings in order to de- 

 flroy their property as much as poflible, and to involve fome timid 

 apoftates in the general deftrudion f . After this dreadful cataflrophe, 

 the befiegers, in order to deprive the unhappy heirs of the vidims, if 

 any remained, of their property, went to the cathedral, where the bonds 

 for their debts were preferved, which they forced from the keepers, and 

 folemnly committed to the flames in the middle of the church : and 

 then many of them, who had engaged themfelves to go to the holy war, 

 deliberately fet out upon their expedition. Such was the event of the 

 perfecution which the Jews fuffered, not for their religion, but for their 

 wealth, to which the mob were fpurred on, as confefled by William of 

 Newburgh, a contemporary writer, by the debtors of the Jews, and alfo 

 by fome of the clergy, and a hot-headed hermit. [lA^. Neivbrig. L. iv, 

 cc. I, 7-1 1 M. Paris, p. 157.] But thefe horrid deeds afford a me- 



* The governor thought it his duty to protcft determined, when they found they could hold out 



the Jews, or at leall their [jroperty, ' taiujuani no longer, to put their wives, their children, and 



' gazas regias.' — ' Fifeo enini competit, quietiuid themfelves, to death, and to fet fire to the fort, 



' Judiei, quos focneratores conftat tffe regies, in which they actually executed : and only two wo- 



' bonis habere vidtntur.' \_IV. Ncwbii^. L. iv, men and a few children, who had Ihrunk from the 



cf. 9, II.] general carnage and hid themfelves, were left to 



f After the deflruftion of Jcrufaleni, Eleazar jjife the Romans an account of the lacrifice of the 



and his aflotiatcs, who had defended the calllc of lelf devoted garrifon. \_'J'>ffpl'i' Bell, Juil. L, vii, 



MalTada againlt the Romans, iu the like manner c, 28.] 



