376 CRUELTY TO JEWS. 



CHAP. XIV- 



they could not be executed. It appears by a 

 law passed in the 20th of Edward III. (1292), 

 that no man could bring money or land in any 

 part of England except at Dover, Sandwich, 

 London, Boston, or Southampton, where officers 

 were appointed by the king to examine all 

 the money of the passengers who landed from 

 foreign countries, and were empowered to seize 

 all that was adulterated or deficient in weight. 

 There were other severe conditions enacted in 

 the statutes of the same reign, entitled Statutum 

 de Monetd, Statutum de Monetd parvum, and 

 Articuli de Monetd. 



A rigour much " beyond the laws" was however 

 practised in those early ages. It fell sometimes 

 on the Lombards, sometimes on the goldsmiths, 

 but with the greatest weight on the unfortunate 

 Jews. Knighton says, that the king convened 

 a parliament, in which the Jews were convicted 

 of clipping and corrupting the coin, and they 

 were banished never to return, principally on 

 account of their unbelief and the falsifying 

 which the Christians harshly imputed to them ; 

 and that the Commons gave to the king the fifth 

 penny of all their moveables that the measure 

 might be carried into execution without delay 1 . 



Another historian of the same age states, 

 that this banishment of the Jews was the con- 



1 Knighton, column 2466. 



