"JEWS IN CORNWALL"; AND " MARAZION." 327 



Thus far then we have good historical data to go upon, — 

 enough, with the extant Charter of King John '"^ and other docu- 

 ments given in the above quoted works of Sir H. de la Beche and 

 Mr. Vice- Warden Smirke, to confirm in a general way the state- 

 ments made by Dr. Borlase, Carew, and others, as to the inter- 

 course of the Jews with the county in the Middle Ages. Dr. 

 Borlase says : t "In the time of King John, I find the product of 

 " tin in this county very inconsiderable, the right of working for 

 " tin being as yet wholly in the King, the property of tinners 

 " precarious and unsettled, and what tin was raised was engrossed 

 " and managed by the Jews, to the great regret of the barons and 

 " their vassals." 



Professor Max Mtiller summarizes Carew' s evidence thus : — 

 "Carew tells us how the Cornish gentlemen borrowed money 

 "from the merchants of London, giving them tin as security 

 " (p. 14) j and though he does not call the merchants Jews, yet 

 "he speaks of them as usurers, and of their 'cut throate and 

 " ' abominable dealing.' He continues afterwards, speaking of the 

 "same usurers" p], " 'After such time as the Jewes by their ex- 

 " ' treme dealing had worne themselves, first out of the love of the 

 " ' English inhabitants, and afterwards out of the land itselfe, and 

 " ' so left the mines unwrought, it hapned, that certaine gentlemen, 

 " ' being lords of seven tithings in Blackmoore, whose grounds 

 " ' were best stored with this minerall, grewe desirous to renew 

 "'this benefit,' &c.," — "and" (Carew adds) "so obtained various 

 " Charters, with sundrie privileges." 



The circumstance alluded to in the beginning of the extract 

 from Carew, is the banishment of the Jews for ever from England 

 by Edward I, A.D. 1290,:}: for their extreme usury; 40 per cent., 



* A fac simile of this, ttie earliest extant Charter to the Tinners of 

 Cornwall, 3 John, is given in the Appendix to Sir H. de la Beche's Keport. 

 The earliest notice of the tin mines of Cornwall in the Public Eeeords is, 

 according to Mr. Smirke, 22 iHeury II. Those of Devon are named 2 Henry 

 II. In John's Charter it is, among other things, granted that the tinners 

 (stannatores) shall be " liberi et quieti de placitis nativorum." 



f Natural History, p. 190. 



+ I have the authority of Mr. Smirke to correct a statement which he is 

 said to have made at the Truro meeting of the Cambrian Archcsological 

 Society in 1862. In the Keport (p. 52) he is wrongly made to say: "The 

 " earliest record we have of the Jews dealing in tin was in the reign of Ed- 



