''JEWS IN CORNWALL"; AND '^MARAZION." 329 



we confess we have no positive contemporary eAddence for it. The 

 probability is that Hals was guided by vulgar tradition ; and yet, 

 when we know, as Professor Max Miiller says, "the Jews were 

 " certainly ill-treated, tortured, plundered, and exiled during the 

 "reign of the Plantagenet Kings," is it at all improbable that 

 when their persecutors had got all they had from them, they 

 should endeavour to get what they could out of those who might 

 not be able to escape into exile 1 And thus there may be some- 

 thing more in Matthew Paris' s statement "that when Henry III 

 " had fleeced (excoriaverat) the Jews, he handed them over to his 

 "brother that he might embowel (evisceraret) them," than the 

 Professor would draw from the document, referred to by him, in 

 Rymers Feeder a : " Concerning the Jews assigned to the Earl of 

 " Cornwall in payment of a debt owing to him by the King," 

 And, though we are told that he spared (jyejMrcit) them, might 

 not this be similar to Joseph's brethren sparing him — "bj^ com- 

 " mitting their bodies as his slaves to work in the tin mines 1 " 

 Miners and others here, when they hear sounds they cannot ac- 

 count for, especially underground, attribute them to the " knock- 

 ers," — the spirits of Jews who in former ages worked here as 

 slaves ; some referring this, however, to a still more ancient 

 period — to those sent here by the Flavian princes.* 



Of this, of course, we have no direct contemporary historical 

 evidence. It would be strange if we had, even if it were abso- 

 lutely unquestioned. But S. Chrysostom, as quoted by Maynard,t 

 tells us that Constantine the Great, exasperated at the conduct of 

 the Jews, " dispersed them unto all the territories of his empire 

 " as fugitive slaves " ; and what more probable than that he should 

 send some of them to Britain, where he was born, and where he 

 was first saluted as emperor 1 Jerome tells us that when Titus 

 took Jerusalem, " an incredible number of Jews were sold like 

 "horses, and dispersed over the face of the whole earth." The 

 account given by Josephus is, that of those spared after indis- 

 criminate slaughter, some were dispersed through the provinces 

 for the use of the theatres, as gladiators ; others were sent to the 



* Careiv, fol. 8. 



f Continuation of the History of the Jews ; fol. ed., p. 564. 



