August 28, 2023 • 41 mins
Licoricia of Winchester was a Jewish woman who was a major financier in medieval England. There were Jewish settlements in England for only a brief window during the Middle Ages, marked with anti-Semitic violence and hostility.
Research:
- Abrams, Rebecca. “Licoricia of Winchester.” Jewish Heritage in Southern England. Jewish Renaissance. Via YouTube. 6/8/2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC6hitEgiEc
- Abrams, Rebecca. “Licoricia of Winchester: Power and Prejudice in Medieval England.” 2022.
- Brown, Reva Berman and Sean McCartney. “David of Oxford and Licoricia of Winchester: glimpses into a Jewish family in thirteenth-century England.” Jewish Historical Studies , 2004, Vol. 39 (2004). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29780068
- Butler, Sara M. “Who killed Licoricia of Winchester? A Medieval Murder Mystery.” Legal History Miscellany. 2/10/2023. https://legalhistorymiscellany.com/2023/02/10/who-killed-licoricia-of-winchester-a-medieval-murder-mystery/
- Carver, William. “A 13thC Jewish woman: Licoricia of Winchester.” One Big History Department. 9/14/2022. https://onebighistorydepartment.com/2022/09/14/a-13thc-jewish-woman-licoricia-of-winchester/
- Cohen, Sarah. “The Oxford Jewry in the Thirteenth Century.” Transactions (Jewish Historical Society of England) , 1932-1935, Vol. 13. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29777813
- Goldy, Charlotte Newman. “Prosopography and Proximity.” Medieval Prosopography , 2018, Vol. 33. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26630013
- Licoricia of Winchester Appeal. https://licoricia.org/
- Lipman, Vivian D. “Jews and castles in medieval England.” Transactions & Miscellanies (Jewish Historical Society of England) , 1981-1982. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29778916
- Lubrich, Naomi. “The Wandering Hat: Iterations of the Medieval Jewish Pointed Cap.” Jewish History , December 2015, Vol. 29, No. 3/4 (December 2015). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24709777
- Meyer, Hannah. "Licoricia of Winchester (d. 1277), financier." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. July 08, 2021. Oxford University Press. Date of access 16 Aug. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.369088
- Meyer, Hannah. “Licoricia of Winchester.” Delivered at Winchester Open Days. 9/15/2018. https://licoricia.org/2018/09/18/hannah-meyers-talk-a-great-success/
- Rokéaḥ, Zefira Entin. “Crime and Jews in Late Thirteenth-Century England: Some Cases and Comments.” Hebrew Union College Annual , 1984, Vol. 55 (1984). https://www.jstor.org/stable/23507612
- Roth, Pinchas. “Jewish Courts in Medieval England.” Jewish History, December 2017, Vol. 31, No. 1/2. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/48698359
- Snappy Dragon Studios. “This Jewish medieval woman just got a statue : Analyzing the Licoricia of Winchester statue’s clothes.” https://www.snappydragonstudios.com/blog/licoricia-statue
- Stacey, Robert C. “Royal Taxation and the Social Structure of Medieval Anglo-Jewry: The Tallages of 1239-1242.” Hebrew Union College Annual, 1985, Vol. 56 (1985). https://www.jstor.org/stable/23507653
- Stokes, Canon H.P. “A Jewish Family in Oxford in the 13th Century.” Transactions (Jewish Historical Society of England), Vol. 10 (1921-1923). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29777709
- Tallan, Cheryl and Suzanne Bartlet. “Licoricia of Winchester.” The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/licoricia-of-winchester
- Tallan, Cheryl. “Structures of Power Available to Two Jewish Women in Thirteenth-Century England.” Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies, 1997. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23535849
- Uscinski, Kristin. “Who Murdered Licoricia of Winchester?” Footnoting History Podcast. 10/8/2022. https://www.footnotinghistory.com/home/who-murdered-licoricia-of-winchester
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. Today we're going to talk about
Lucritia of Winchester, and we got a lot of requests
to talk about her back in early twenty two after
an article about her went viral and at the time, like,
I'll do a basic gut check to see is there
(00:33):
gonna be enough information, And at the time it seemed
like that answer might be no. But in hindsight, what
was really happening was that because of this one viral article,
there was a bunch of newly published stuff that was
all repeating the same basic points, and it just kind
of overwhelmed everything that was more substantive. Lcritia of Winchester
(00:56):
was one of a number of Jewish women who was
a major financier in medieval England, and her life also
spanned just a big part of Jewish history in England
during the Middle Ages. And if you're like, wait, Tracy,
the Middle Ages lasted for like a thousand years, how
can one person's life span most of it, there were
(01:17):
only Jewish settlements in England for a pretty brief window
during that period, and that very brief window was marked
with just increasing antisemitic violence and hostility, and that went
on until England expelled its Jewish population in twelve ninety.
So we're going to talk about her. We're also kind
of talking about the arc of Jewish history in medieval England.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
And we don't know exactly when the first Jewish person
arrived in England, but established Jewish communities followed the Norman
conquest in the eleventh century. William, Duke of Normandy, also
known as William the Conqueror, defeated English King Harold the
Second at the Battle of Hastings in ten sixty six.
We have covered that back on the show before, and
(02:01):
we ran it as a classic back in twenty nineteen.
William was crowned as King William the First at Westminster
Abbey on Christmas Day of that year. In addition to
conquering England, William essentially replaced the English aristocracy with Normans,
and he also moved Normans into high ranking church and
(02:21):
administrative positions. A lot of England's existing merchants and other
business people were really opposed to these changes, and that
left William in need of both money and new trading partners,
so he encouraged Jewish merchants, traders, and lenders from Ruon
and Normandy to settle in London to fill some of
(02:42):
those needs. Once Jewish people started arriving in England about
ten seventy, they were essentially seen as the King's property.
In theory, they were serving the king in exchange for
royal protection, but in reality that protection only existed when
it suited the king.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
They were going to be talking a lot more about that. Initially,
Jews were allowed to live only in London, but by
the middle of the twelfth century Jewish communities were established
all over other parts of England as well. Although Jewish
people had to have permission to live or travel outside
of London. These communities were generally self governing, especially in
(03:24):
terms of anything that had to do with religion or
religious law, and they existed at the King's prerogative. This
was outside of the bounds of the rest of the
social hierarchy.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
One of the many things that the Normans did after
arriving in England was built castles, and most Jewish communities
were in a city that had a royal castle. Or
if not a castle, at least a headquarters for the
sheriff who represented the king. This proximity to the castle
was because of the Jewish community's relationship with the King,
(03:55):
and the castle had a number of roles. It could
be a refuge during an outbreak of violence or some
other threat against the Jewish community, but it could also
be a prison. For example, at some points, whole communities
were imprisoned in the castle until they paid off an
enormous tax, so they were basically being held hostage.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
As tax was known as talage, and for most people
in England, the talage was something that lords imposed on
their tenants, but for Jewish communities, the talllentge was imposed
directly by the king and the amount was totally up
to the king's whims. Sometimes it was truly exorbitant, and
this was especially true if there was something that the
King really wanted money for, like to fund a war,
(04:39):
especially if maybe he wanted to fund a war without
having to talk to Parliament about anything, or if he
was trying to punish or coerce the Jewish community in
some way. In terms of language and culture, Jewish people
in England tended to have a lot in common with
the Norman Aristocracy. Because reading from the Torah and other
tech was a central part of Jewish religious practice, Jews
(05:03):
were more likely to be literate than Christian commoners were,
regardless of how affluent their family was. As was true
of the Norman Aristocracy, most Jewish people's first language was
Norman French, and most Jewish people went by French versions
of Hebrew names. Most also spoke and read Hebrew in
religious contexts, and knew at least some Middle English, which
(05:26):
is what Christian commoners spoke in their day to day lives.
Some may have known a bit of Latin as well.
At this point, Yiddish existed as a language, but it
was mainly being spoken in central and Eastern Europe, not
as far west as England. In France, we have evidence
to suggest that Jewish people in England observed Jewish dietary laws,
(05:47):
and there were Kosher butchers and bakers working in a
lot of Jewish communities. These communities also typically had a
synagogue and a mikvah or a ritual bath for the
community's use. Sometimes the synagogue was its own free standing building,
usually located somewhere unobtrusive and out of the way for
both safety and privacy. Sometimes in smaller communities it was
(06:09):
more like a room in someone's home. Either way, though
the synagogue was at the center of religious and community life.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
As far as we know, Jews and Christians in medieval
England wore similar clothing, although eventually there was one key difference.
Starting in twelve seventeen, Jews were required to wear a
badge called a tabula, in the shape of two stone tablets,
symbolic of the stone tablets bearing the ten commandments described
(06:36):
in the Torah and the Christian Bible. This followed a
decree from the Fourth lateran council which Pope Innocent the
Third had convened two years before, and this decree ordered
that Jews living in Christian nations had to be visually
distinguished in some way. Some other countries also did this
with a badge, and others required Jewish people to wear
(06:58):
a pointed or conical hat for a time, though, wealthy
Jews in England could pay a fine to be exempted
from this requirement, sometimes paying for their whole community to
be exempt.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
By the end of the twelfth century, there were more
than twenty Jewish communities in England, they had a combined
total of about five thousand people, so for comparison, England's
total population was roughly five million people. There were limits
on which professions Jewish people were allowed to pursue, but
there were Jewish butchers, bakers, teachers, doctors, midwives, and scribes.
(07:36):
Since Jewish people were more likely to be literate than
Christians of the same status, Jewish scribes tended to be
in really high demand. But the job that was most
associated with Jewish people in England was lending. There were
ten or fifteen very affluent Jewish families that were basically
banking families, working as financiers, investors, and business people, and
(08:00):
sometimes essentially serving as the King's personal lender. England's wealthiest
Jewish lenders could arrange the funds to pay for things
like fully outfitted ships and newly constructed buildings. But outside
of these few families, most lenders were working on a
much smaller scale, making small loans to ordinary people. Many
(08:21):
were going to roll that was more comparable to kind
of being a pawnbroker today. One reason why Jewish people
were associated with lending in England and in a lot
of the rest of Europe has to do with religious law.
The Books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Ezekiel are part of
both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible. If you're
not familiar, those contain the same books in the Hebrew
(08:45):
Bible and the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, but
in a different order, and the interpretations vary a little bit.
These include scriptures that prohibit the charging of interest to
people in need, as well as charging interest to one's brother.
They're varying opinions on how to translate and interpret the
word brother, but during the medieval period, Jewish leaders generally
(09:08):
interpreted this as a prohibition on Jewish people charging interest
to other Jews, but Christian leaders in the medieval period
viewed charging interest to anyone as usury because charging interest
was seen as avarice and that was a sin. I
really don't feel qualified to get into all the theological
(09:29):
nuances here, but many Muslims also viewed and still view
all forms of interest as usury. So in a lot
of places during the medieval period, Jewish lenders filled part
of the gap between religious prohibitions on usury and the
realities of living in a society that used money. To
be really clear, though Jewish lenders were not filling all
(09:51):
of that gap. There were Christians who loaned money and
charged interest in spite of the religious prohibitions against it,
and there were Christian military orders, including the Knights Templar
and those essentially worked as banks. When Lucretia of Winchester
was living, Italian lenders were also becoming well established all
over Western Europe, generally known as Lombards, even though they
(10:14):
were not necessarily from Lombardy. In other words, even in England,
where the king's policies were really pushing them toward working
as lenders, most Jewish people were not lending money, and
most people lending money weren't Jewish. The idea of the
quote Jewish money lenders was really rooted in prejudicial stereotypes,
(10:37):
like just the word money lenders is loaded with connotations
that doesn't apply to a word like financier or banker,
which was basically the same thing. This association between Jewish
people and lending also led to a lot of backlash
because of the connection to something that other religions saw
(10:59):
as sinful, and because as a whole, working as lenders
meant that a lot of Jewish communities were relatively wealthy.
This didn't necessarily extend to the wealth of any individual person, though,
like an individual Jewish person might be about as wealthy
as their Christian neighbor, but like as a group, they
tended to be affluent. This also circles back to the
(11:22):
community's relationship with the king, like if the king was
facing opposition from the nobility over some issue, he might
cancel all their outstanding loans from Jewish lenders it was
completely within his power to do that, or the king
might help pay for a war by canceling the debts
of nobles who agreed to serve, rather than directly paying
(11:43):
them for their service. Although a series of English kings
basically used Jewish lenders as their own personal bank, whether
they repaid those loans that could be totally arbitrary. And
that brings us to the life of Lucritia of Winchester, who,
among other things, the personal financier to King Henry the Third.
(12:03):
We'll talk more about her after a sponsor break. We
don't know exactly when Lcriicia of Winchester was born, but
it was probably in the very early twelve hundreds. At
(12:23):
one point she's referred to as Lcarica of Canterbury, so
she might have been born there. I also found a
source that her father may have been Lombard of Winchester,
suggesting maybe she really was born in Winchester. Other sources
that her father's name was Isaac was all very unclear.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Regardless of where she was born, Lucrisia eventually wound up
living in Winchester, which was home to one of England's
largest and most affluent Jewish communities. A Jewish visitor from
France described the city as quote the Jerusalem of Jews.
In those parts. Most Jewish pele in Winchester lived around
what was then known as Shoemaker Street, sharing the same
(13:04):
neighborhood with Christian merchants, goldsmith's and other business people. Shoemaker
Street later became known as Jewbree Street, which is what
it is still named today.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
When Lucretia was born, John known as John Lackland, was
King of England. In twelve ten, he ordered the arrest
of England's entire Jewish population and commanded them to turn
over all of their wealth to him. So this was
something that she lived through when she was still a child.
She also would have lived through the First Baron's War,
(13:36):
which started in twelve fifteen. This is a civil war
that started out as an uprising of landowners against the king.
The barons sought help from France, and Louis, son of
French King Philip the Second, captured Winchester and a lot
of the surrounding area, temporarily taking control of roughly half
of England. This is something else she would have lived through.
(13:58):
This war ended in twelve seventeen, when Lucretia was probably
in her mid teens. So in twelve sixteen, as this
war was ongoing, King John died of dysentery and his
nine year old son, Henry the Third succeeded him. Henry
the Third reigned until twelve seventy two, and Henry's overall
attitude toward the Jewish population is encapsulated in his Statute
(14:22):
of Jewry in twelve fifty three. Quote All Jews, wheresoever
they may be, in the realm, are of right under
the tutelage and protection of the King. Nor is it
lawful for any of them to subject himself to any
wealthy person without the King's license. Jews and all their
effects are the King's property and if anyone withhold their
(14:43):
money from them, let the king recover it as his own.
Henry often referred to the Anglo Jewish population as my Jews,
and one of his most important sources of royal funds
was the talages paid by the Jewish community. At some point,
probably sometime between twelve fifteen and twelve twenty, Lcartia married
(15:05):
a businessman and financier named Abraham. They had three sons,
Isaac known as Cockrell, Lombard, and Baruch known as Benedict.
They may have also had a daughter called Bilia. Some sources, though,
conclude that Bilia was a daughter in law. A lot
of stuff is not totally clearly documented. In twelve twenty five,
(15:27):
Abraham and five other Jewish men in Winchester were accused
of murdering a Christian child. This was part of a
pattern of ritual murder allegations, also known as the blood libel,
so false accusations of Jewish people murdering Christian children as
part of a ritual or to use their blood for
ritual purposes. Although there were.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Earlier precursors, the first such accusation is generally noted as
happening in Norwich, England, in eleven forty four, after a
boy named William was found stabbed to death. The Jewish
population of Norwich took refuge in the castle as their
entire community was threatened in retaliation for a crime they
did not commit.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Lcaricia's husband, Abraham, and two other men were found guilty
of these allegations, and normally the punishment would have been hanging,
but there's no actual record of Abraham being hanged. There's
actually no further record of him at all. But in
twelve thirty four, which is the first written record we
have of Lcaricia, she's described in a way that makes
(16:32):
it clear that she was a widow. We don't really know.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
How Lcarsia supported herself and her children after Abraham's death.
All of his assets were confiscated after his conviction, but
it is possible that their original marriage contract had set
aside money for her in the event of Abraham's death.
This was a common provision in Jewish marriage contracts. It's
also possible that she was supported by Abraham's colleagues or
(16:57):
others in the Jewish community. While we don't.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Know what her original source of funds was, we do
know that Lucretia made wise use of those funds. By
the end of the twelve thirties, she had become one
of the biggest financiers in Winchester, and by the twelve
forties she was independently wealthy. In twelve thirty nine, the
Royal Council demanded a talage of a third of all
the chattels or tangible property of England's Jewish community, including
(17:25):
the value of outstanding loans, ultimately calling for a total
of twenty thousand marks. This was a truly enormous sum,
especially considering that, with only a couple of exceptions, the
talage had been between two thousand and three thousand marks
per year over the previous two decades. A mark was
two thirds of a pound, which would be very approximately
(17:48):
five hundred British pounds or six hundred thirty six American
dollars in today's money. So this talage was worth millions
and millions of dollars. Yeah, that's when I put very
approximately in italics here, because like it's almost impossible to
make an actual comparison, and it's complicated by the fact
that like a mark, what wasn't really a currency that
(18:12):
people went around buying things with it was more a
figure used to calculate things like uh, so yeah, this
was an enormous amount of money, and people started trying
to collect the money to pay it in late twelve
thirty nine and early twelve forty. By September, though only
one thousand marks had been collected. Records of loans by
(18:33):
Jewish lenders were kept in both Hebrew and Latin and
locked chests that were known as arcae, and at various
points the king ordered those chests to be closed so
that the royal authorities could like tally up the value
of all the bonds that were in there, adjust the
total do if they needed to this uh. Sealing these
(18:54):
up basically froze the ability for anybody to make new
loans or to collect on existing loans, and then that
made it harder for people to try to get the
money together to pay this talent. During all of this,
the King also ordered a census of England's Jewish population.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Finally, in January of twelve forty one, the King ordered
the Sheriff of Northamptonshire to quote cause to come before
us at Worcester on the Sunday next before Ash Wednesday.
Six of the wealthier and more powerful of our Jews
of Northampton, and from each town in Shire in which
Jews dwell one or two Jews according to their numbers.
(19:33):
If the sheriff did not do this quote, we will
so aggrieve you in consequence by your body and by
your chattels, that you will forever feel our hand to
grieve you immoderately.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
So this meeting was called. It became known as the
Worcester Parliament, and more than one hundred Jewish delegates met
to figure out how to pay this talent. The results
of this meeting also illustrate how much the Jewish community's
wealth was really concentrated, with it just a few people.
Three men together paid more than half of the total amount.
(20:06):
They were Aaron of York, Leo of York, and David
of Oxford. Lecarica, interestingly, was one of the wealthiest people
in Winchester at this point, but for unclear reasons, she
is not listed in the detailed accounts of how this
talent was actually paid, aside from ten pounds that she
paid in twelve thirty nine, So it's like we don't
know if did she contribute to it or these records
(20:29):
complete unclear.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
We don't know exactly when David of Oxford and Lcarica
of Winchester met, but it may have been connected to
all the activity around trying to pay this talent. David
was probably in his fifties and was one of the
wealthiest and most influential Jewish men in all of England,
and Lcaricia was probably in her thirties and was one
of England's wealthiest and most influential Jewish women. So it
(20:55):
makes sense that they might have had some things in common,
or that they might have wanted to combine their financial
assets through a marriage. But also David was already married
to a woman named Muriel. David and Muriel didn't have
any children, and it's possible that David used this as
a justification to divorce her. When a Jewish person died,
(21:19):
a third of their estate went to the crown, but
if they had no heir, then the Crown got all
of the estate. So David may have wanted to try
to make sure that part of his wealth stayed within
the Jewish community rather than all of it being forfeited
to the king, by divorcing his wife and ideally having
(21:39):
a child with someone else. Although divorce was not particularly
common or accepted in Jewish communities at the time, there
was an established process for how it was handled through
a bait din or Jewish court. Depending on how large
a Jewish community was, the court might be made up
of rabbis and lay people, or it could be a
panel of rabbis. Only the husband was the one who
(22:03):
had to bring the matter before this panel, But the
custom at the time was that the wife had to
consent to the divorce, so David initially went to the
baate Din in England, which approved the divorce. But Muriel
either didn't consent to the divorce at all or didn't
consent to this settlement that she was given, so she
(22:23):
and some of her supporters, one of whom may have
been her brother, went to the bake Din in Paris,
kind of as an appeal. The Jewish community in England
had a lot of connections to the Jewish community in France.
We talked in the beginning about how these are mostly
folks who had come from France to settle in England,
and in general, the Jewish community in France was seen
(22:44):
as having like more experienced, more knowledge, and greater authority.
David apparently dealt with this by taking the matter to
the King, Henry the third issued a decree that rabbis,
regardless of whether they lived in England or France, could
not force David to quote, take or hold any woman
to wife accept at his own free will, and this
(23:07):
also wound up having much wider ramifications. Henry also demanded
that Muriel and her supporters explain why they had gone
to a French court to try to overrule an English one,
and he banned the convening of Jewish courts in England.
This ban, though does not appear to have been strictly enforced.
David's divorce was completed in twelve forty two, and he
(23:31):
and Lcaricia married sometime after that. They had a son together,
named a Cher, also known as Sweetmen. Some sources describe
a share in Sweetman as two different people, but that
actually seems unlikely because David died in February of twelve
forty four, so he and Lcaricia were married for less
than two years. It is possible that she could have
(23:55):
been pregnant when he died, but if she had been,
this probably have been mentioned somewhere, especially for reasons we're
going to talk about in a bit, and it just
it wasn't. We don't know much about what happened to
Muriel after the divorce was finalized. She doesn't seem to
have remarried, and the written record suggests that she struggled financially.
(24:16):
Among other things, there's documentation of an unpaid talent. The
last written references to Muriel are from twelve fifty three. First,
she was ordered to repair the house that she had
been living in, which she had gotten as part of
the divorce settlement. Then the house was turned over to
Licarica and a share. We don't really know what happened here.
(24:38):
It's possible that Muriel lost the house because she hadn't
made the required repairs, or even that she died. We'll
get to what happened to Lcaricia and the rest of
her family after David's death after another quick sponsor break.
(25:01):
After David of Oxford died in twelve forty four, Lcarta
was imprisoned in the Tower of London, and there are
several possible explanations for this. Some sources describe it as
an almost routine part of the assessment process when a
Jewish person was inheriting a really large estate. Since a
third of that estate was supposed to go to the king.
(25:23):
Others make it sound like an effort to make sure
that Lucartia couldn't interfere with that assessment process or remove
any of David's property before.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
It was assessed. It's also possible that she was basically
being held hostage to try to keep the Jewish community
in line. While all of this was going.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
On, six Jewish men were appointed by the king to
oversee Lcarica's business affairs while she was in the tower.
Her son, a Cher, would have been a baby, so
he may have been in the tower with her, but
we don't really know. Lacrisia was imprisoned for about seven months,
and there's no record of her being pregnant or given
birth in the tower, which is part of why some
(26:02):
scholars have concluded that a Share and Suiteman were the
same person. Ultimately, Licorica seems to have negotiated a deal
regarding her inheritance. She paid the crown five thousand marks
to keep control of David's whole estate, including all of
his outstanding loans, rather than just the two thirds of
(26:24):
it that was normally how things were handled. About four
thousand marks of that payment was used to build a
new shrine to Edward, the confessor at Westminster Abbey at
the time was considered the patron saint of England. This
shrine was kind of one of the King's pet projects.
She also paid an inheritance tax of twenty five hundred pounds,
(26:45):
and she was exempt from future talages as long as
she paid the crown twenty four marks a year. As
we said earlier, really hard to try to convert a
medieval currency amount to modern equivalents, but one source that
I read approximated that five thousand marks was about two
point five million pounds or roughly four million American dollars.
(27:08):
This was a ton of money, but it also does
not seem to come even close to like a whole
third of David's estate. After being released from the tower
in September of twelve forty four, Lcaricia kept expanding her business,
traveling all over England to do so. Her clients included
the King and members of the royal family, as well
(27:30):
as members of the aristocracy and the Catholic Church. She
also made loans to landowners, farmers, and other less affluent people.
She met with the King regularly, most often when he
was in Winchester. She became so prominent that her sons
were often referred to as son of Lacriicia, rather than
by their father's names. This was most striking for a Share,
(27:54):
since his father, David, had been even more prominent and
powerful than his mother.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
A lot of the records that we have of Lecaricia's
later life come from financial and court records. There are
court records in which she sued other people for unpaid debts,
and records in which she was the one who was sued.
Some of these cases sound really dramatic. For example, in
about twelve fifty Sir Thomas Charlcoate died after drowning in
(28:23):
a lake on his property, and he had alone from Lcarica.
Still outstanding. By law, Licarica was allowed to keep control
of his estate and earn income from it for a
year and a day, but in twelve fifty three his son,
who was also named Thomas, took her to court because
she had exceeded that time by at least two years.
(28:45):
Lecarica then claimed that the younger Thomas had killed his father,
or at least arranged his death. Lecarica was held in
the Tower of London while this trial was going on,
which was one of at least four times that she
was imprisoned.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
There.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
When the court we weren't found in Thomas's favor, saying
that Lucretia had to vacate this property, she went to
the King about it. The King ordered a retrial, mandated
that Lucritia could not be penalized any further, and set
her fine at half a mark. There's not a lot
of money in this context.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Also in twelve fifty three, Henry the third issued a
new statute of the Jewry, the one that we read
from earlier on in the show. This statute ordered that
no new synagogues be built, and that Jewish people could
only remain in England if they served the King in
some way. A number of its provisions were focused on
separating Jews from Christians and making Jewish people less visible
(29:42):
in English society. Like Jewish people had to be quiet
in their synagogues so that Christians would not hear them.
Relationships between Jews and Christians were forbidden, and Jews were
forbidden to have Christian wet nurses working in their homes.
In practice, this law all also seems to have ended
the custom of allowing Jewish people to pay to be
(30:04):
exempt from wearing the tabula. Around this same time, Henry
the third also started routinely demanding higher talages, in part
because the Worcester Parliament in twelve forty one had documented
just how affluent some members of the community were.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Jewish people in their communities had always faced prejudice, persecution,
and at some points violence in England, and this really
increased in the mid thirteenth century. This included Jewish people
being falsely accused of crimes. In twelve fifty eight, another
lender named Billia of Bedford gave Lecaricia a gold ring
to give to the king as a gift. This ring disappeared,
(30:44):
and Lecaricea's neighbor, Ivetta, accused her of stealing it. It
turned out that Ivetta herself was the one who had
taken it. The Second Baron's War started in twelve sixty
four and continued for three years. Like the First Baron's War,
this was a civil war that grew out of an
uprising of barons against the king in many areas. The
(31:06):
barons and their allies saw Jews as agents of the King,
and some people use this as a justification for persecution
and violence, which became even more widespread. People also stole
or destroyed the ark containing all the loan documentation, meaning
that lenders had no way to recoup their money. Shortly
(31:26):
after the Second Barons War ended, Lcaricia's son Benedict was
elected to the Merchant's Guild, making him the first and
only Jewish person in medieval England to become a guildsman.
This also made him a full citizen of England, and
Christians in Winchester rioted over it to the point that
the king had to dispatch guards to try to protect
the Jewish community. Lcritia was probably in her sixties as
(31:50):
all this was happening. One court document in twelve seventy
describes her as failing to appear when she was summoned,
saying she was too ill to leave her home. In
twelve seventy two, Henry the Third died and was succeeded
by Edward the First. While Henry's attitudes toward Jewish people
had been fickle and self serving, and increasingly stringent in
(32:12):
later years, Edward was devoutly Christian and took an immediate
anti Jewish stance. He ordered a talage of a third
of all Jewish assets, and in twelve seventy five he
authorized towns around England to start expelling their Jewish populations.
He also issued a new statute of Jewry that barred
(32:33):
Jewish financiers from charging interest. This also specified that the
amount repaid could not be more than the original amount
of the loan, so, for example, lenders couldn't use late
fees to try to deter people from missing payments. And
this statute also replaced the tabula with a yellow badge
in twelve seventy seven, So just about two years after that,
(32:56):
Lucaricia was murdered in her home along with her made
out of Bicton. Lcaricia's daughter or possibly daughter in law, Bellia,
found them stabbed to death. Authorities treated this as a
robbery gone wrong, and they focused mainly on the goods
that had been removed from the house. That part was
really not uncommon, like the fact that Jewish people's goods
(33:19):
were described as the king's goods meant that a lot
of times, if a Jewish person was the victim of
a crime, the only thing people were really focused on
was the king getting his property back. There's a lot
of speculation though about whether this was really a hate crime.
Lcarica was extremely wealthy and prominent. One of her sons
was the only Jewish guildsman in the country and had
(33:40):
been named as cheater for the Jewish community and keeper
of the Queen's Gold. Alice of Bichden was a Christian,
so it was illegal for her to have been working
in Lcarice's home. This crime also happened in broad daylight,
so it may have been meant as some kind of
threat or warning to the rest of the Jewish community.
Some ask sspects of this crime are weird and confusing.
(34:03):
Lcarice's house was supposed to be sealed up until assessors
could go through all her assets, but two of Benedict's
sons were accused of breaking in with the help of
two of the sheriff's men and stealing much of what
was inside. The sheriff himself was initially accused as well,
but he apparently proved that he was in London.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
At the time. One of Benedict's sons, Abraham, had already
been accused of other crimes. But we really don't know
what was going on here or why two of the
sheriff's men may have been involved, the fact that these
were Benedict's sons also reflected not just on him, but
on the entire Jewish community.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
A saddler named Ralph of Chisol was accused of the murder,
but he had fled from Winchester. He was outlawed, but
he was never tried for the crime. Laricia's sons, a
Share and Cockrell, thought this man was a scapegoat, and
they tried to bring charges against two other men who
they thought were more likely culprits. There's no record of
(35:03):
anybody ever being tried or punished for this, though, a
year after Lcaricia's death, Benedict was charged with coin clipping.
At the time, coins were made from pure metal, so
people could shave or clip small pieces from their edges
to melt down for profit, and it seems that both
Christians and Jews did this in roughly the same proportions,
(35:24):
but Jewish people were accused and convicted of it far
more often. Benedict's arrest was part of an enormous crackdown
on coinclipping. It is likely that coinclipping really was on
the rise. Edward the First's predecessors had really set up
a system that encouraged Jewish people to work as lenders,
(35:46):
but then Edward had made it impossible to actually earn
a living that way. But this crackdown was effectively a pogrom.
England's entire Jewish population was imprisoned. Three times more Christian
than Jews were accused of coinclipping, but ten times more
Jews than Christians were executed. At this point, the Jewish
(36:08):
population of England was only about three thousand people, and
it's estimated that three hundred or ten percent were executed
for suspicion of coinclipping. One of these was Lcarica's son Benedict,
who was executed in twelve eighty This.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Was not the last time England imprisoned its entire Jewish population.
In twelve eighty seven, the king imposed a tallage of
twelve thousand marks and imprisoned the whole community after only
five thousand pounds of it was raised. Lcoricia's son A Sher,
was imprisoned at Winchester Castle and scratched graffiti into the
(36:46):
wall there in Hebrew, which was discovered in the seventeenth century.
Only a piece of the inscription survived, which noted the
date that everyone had been imprisoned by referencing the scripture
that had been read for the Sabbath that week. Along
with I A Share inscribed this.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
In twelve ninety England expelled its entire Jewish population at
that point, numbering about two thousand people. A share in
any of Licoricea's other surviving children and grandchildren were driven
from England. At this time. People were allowed to take
their possessions with them, but their houses and anything they
couldn't carry was forfeited to the king. Although they were
(37:26):
supposed to be allowed safe passage, a lot of people
still faced violence as they tried to leave, including multiple
truly horrifying accounts of ship passengers being left to drown
as they tried to get to continental Europe. This was
the first of a series of expulsions all across Europe,
including from Spain in fourteen ninety two. We covered that
(37:49):
expulsion on the show before The prohibition on Jewish people
in England remained in place until sixteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
The Licorica of Winch Appeal is a charity that was
established in twenty seventeen to educate the public about the
medieval Jewish community in Winchester. The organization raised funds for
a life size statue of Lcaricia.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
This statue is now complete. It is a thing that
prompted these articles that went viral last year. In this statue,
she's walking along with a young a share She's holding
his hand and carrying a talig roll. In the other
he has a dradal. This statue was sculpted by Ian
Rank Broadly and it was unveiled on Jury Street in
(38:34):
Winchester on February tenth of twenty twenty two. King Charles
the Second, who at the time was still Prince Charles,
was supposed to be part of this unveiling, but he
had COVID so he had to visit about a month later.
The Lecarica of Winchester Appeal also commissioned a book which
came out in twenty twenty two as well. That's titled
(38:55):
Lecarica of Winchester, Power and Prejudice in Medieval England, and
that's by Rebecca Abrams.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Do you have listener mail today?
Speaker 2 (39:04):
I do have some listener mail. This listener mail goes
back to our Square Dancing episodes. This person signed their
message as Annex eight thousand and said hello you briefly
mentioned that in the Caribbean, there are variations on the
quadrill as well as ring dances and colin response. In fact,
in the nineteen fifty something emerged that has become a
(39:25):
present day Cuban version of square dancing that has spread
through the US and beyond. We dance it here in
Los Angeles. It's called ruete that's wheel dancing, and it
started in the pre revolutionary casinos of Havana. While this
particular dance is clearly modern, it likely has some connection
to those earlier influence you mentioned. It has a caller
(39:46):
who tells the group as a whole which passos to dance.
Usually a retta group will develop its own passos as
it develops its own identity. The music is better than
square dancing music. Two. There are then some links to
learn more about this, and then on a related note,
the Cuban mambo is a descendant of the English country
dance as well. Thank you so much for this email.
(40:08):
I did not know that. Apologies for me not being
able to say read it very well. I feel like
I have lost some rolling my ursibility from my childhood. Uh.
And also I've I don't know, I stumbled over that.
So thank you so much. I did not know any
of this and if you would like to send us
a note about this or any other podcast, We're a
(40:30):
history podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. We're all over social media.
Miss in History. That's where you'll find out Facebook and
our Pinterest and our x thing and Instagram. That's the
other one. You can subscribe to our show also on
the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you like to get your podcasts.
(40:55):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeart heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. Today we're going to talk about
Lucritia of Winchester, and we got a lot of requests
to talk about her back in early twenty two after
an article about her went viral and at the time, like,
I'll do a basic gut check to see is there
(00:33):
gonna be enough information, And at the time it seemed
like that answer might be no. But in hindsight, what
was really happening was that because of this one viral article,
there was a bunch of newly published stuff that was
all repeating the same basic points, and it just kind
of overwhelmed everything that was more substantive. Lcritia of Winchester
(00:56):
was one of a number of Jewish women who was
a major financier in medieval England, and her life also
spanned just a big part of Jewish history in England
during the Middle Ages. And if you're like, wait, Tracy,
the Middle Ages lasted for like a thousand years, how
can one person's life span most of it, there were
(01:17):
only Jewish settlements in England for a pretty brief window
during that period, and that very brief window was marked
with just increasing antisemitic violence and hostility, and that went
on until England expelled its Jewish population in twelve ninety.
So we're going to talk about her. We're also kind
of talking about the arc of Jewish history in medieval England.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
And we don't know exactly when the first Jewish person
arrived in England, but established Jewish communities followed the Norman
conquest in the eleventh century. William, Duke of Normandy, also
known as William the Conqueror, defeated English King Harold the
Second at the Battle of Hastings in ten sixty six.
We have covered that back on the show before, and
(02:01):
we ran it as a classic back in twenty nineteen.
William was crowned as King William the First at Westminster
Abbey on Christmas Day of that year. In addition to
conquering England, William essentially replaced the English aristocracy with Normans,
and he also moved Normans into high ranking church and
(02:21):
administrative positions. A lot of England's existing merchants and other
business people were really opposed to these changes, and that
left William in need of both money and new trading partners,
so he encouraged Jewish merchants, traders, and lenders from Ruon
and Normandy to settle in London to fill some of
(02:42):
those needs. Once Jewish people started arriving in England about
ten seventy, they were essentially seen as the King's property.
In theory, they were serving the king in exchange for
royal protection, but in reality that protection only existed when
it suited the king.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
They were going to be talking a lot more about that. Initially,
Jews were allowed to live only in London, but by
the middle of the twelfth century Jewish communities were established
all over other parts of England as well. Although Jewish
people had to have permission to live or travel outside
of London. These communities were generally self governing, especially in
(03:24):
terms of anything that had to do with religion or
religious law, and they existed at the King's prerogative. This
was outside of the bounds of the rest of the
social hierarchy.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
One of the many things that the Normans did after
arriving in England was built castles, and most Jewish communities
were in a city that had a royal castle. Or
if not a castle, at least a headquarters for the
sheriff who represented the king. This proximity to the castle
was because of the Jewish community's relationship with the King,
(03:55):
and the castle had a number of roles. It could
be a refuge during an outbreak of violence or some
other threat against the Jewish community, but it could also
be a prison. For example, at some points, whole communities
were imprisoned in the castle until they paid off an
enormous tax, so they were basically being held hostage.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
As tax was known as talage, and for most people
in England, the talage was something that lords imposed on
their tenants, but for Jewish communities, the talllentge was imposed
directly by the king and the amount was totally up
to the king's whims. Sometimes it was truly exorbitant, and
this was especially true if there was something that the
King really wanted money for, like to fund a war,
(04:39):
especially if maybe he wanted to fund a war without
having to talk to Parliament about anything, or if he
was trying to punish or coerce the Jewish community in
some way. In terms of language and culture, Jewish people
in England tended to have a lot in common with
the Norman Aristocracy. Because reading from the Torah and other
tech was a central part of Jewish religious practice, Jews
(05:03):
were more likely to be literate than Christian commoners were,
regardless of how affluent their family was. As was true
of the Norman Aristocracy, most Jewish people's first language was
Norman French, and most Jewish people went by French versions
of Hebrew names. Most also spoke and read Hebrew in
religious contexts, and knew at least some Middle English, which
(05:26):
is what Christian commoners spoke in their day to day lives.
Some may have known a bit of Latin as well.
At this point, Yiddish existed as a language, but it
was mainly being spoken in central and Eastern Europe, not
as far west as England. In France, we have evidence
to suggest that Jewish people in England observed Jewish dietary laws,
(05:47):
and there were Kosher butchers and bakers working in a
lot of Jewish communities. These communities also typically had a
synagogue and a mikvah or a ritual bath for the
community's use. Sometimes the synagogue was its own free standing building,
usually located somewhere unobtrusive and out of the way for
both safety and privacy. Sometimes in smaller communities it was
(06:09):
more like a room in someone's home. Either way, though
the synagogue was at the center of religious and community life.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
As far as we know, Jews and Christians in medieval
England wore similar clothing, although eventually there was one key difference.
Starting in twelve seventeen, Jews were required to wear a
badge called a tabula, in the shape of two stone tablets,
symbolic of the stone tablets bearing the ten commandments described
(06:36):
in the Torah and the Christian Bible. This followed a
decree from the Fourth lateran council which Pope Innocent the
Third had convened two years before, and this decree ordered
that Jews living in Christian nations had to be visually
distinguished in some way. Some other countries also did this
with a badge, and others required Jewish people to wear
(06:58):
a pointed or conical hat for a time, though, wealthy
Jews in England could pay a fine to be exempted
from this requirement, sometimes paying for their whole community to
be exempt.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
By the end of the twelfth century, there were more
than twenty Jewish communities in England, they had a combined
total of about five thousand people, so for comparison, England's
total population was roughly five million people. There were limits
on which professions Jewish people were allowed to pursue, but
there were Jewish butchers, bakers, teachers, doctors, midwives, and scribes.
(07:36):
Since Jewish people were more likely to be literate than
Christians of the same status, Jewish scribes tended to be
in really high demand. But the job that was most
associated with Jewish people in England was lending. There were
ten or fifteen very affluent Jewish families that were basically
banking families, working as financiers, investors, and business people, and
(08:00):
sometimes essentially serving as the King's personal lender. England's wealthiest
Jewish lenders could arrange the funds to pay for things
like fully outfitted ships and newly constructed buildings. But outside
of these few families, most lenders were working on a
much smaller scale, making small loans to ordinary people. Many
(08:21):
were going to roll that was more comparable to kind
of being a pawnbroker today. One reason why Jewish people
were associated with lending in England and in a lot
of the rest of Europe has to do with religious law.
The Books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Ezekiel are part of
both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible. If you're
not familiar, those contain the same books in the Hebrew
(08:45):
Bible and the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, but
in a different order, and the interpretations vary a little bit.
These include scriptures that prohibit the charging of interest to
people in need, as well as charging interest to one's brother.
They're varying opinions on how to translate and interpret the
word brother, but during the medieval period, Jewish leaders generally
(09:08):
interpreted this as a prohibition on Jewish people charging interest
to other Jews, but Christian leaders in the medieval period
viewed charging interest to anyone as usury because charging interest
was seen as avarice and that was a sin. I
really don't feel qualified to get into all the theological
(09:29):
nuances here, but many Muslims also viewed and still view
all forms of interest as usury. So in a lot
of places during the medieval period, Jewish lenders filled part
of the gap between religious prohibitions on usury and the
realities of living in a society that used money. To
be really clear, though Jewish lenders were not filling all
(09:51):
of that gap. There were Christians who loaned money and
charged interest in spite of the religious prohibitions against it,
and there were Christian military orders, including the Knights Templar
and those essentially worked as banks. When Lucretia of Winchester
was living, Italian lenders were also becoming well established all
over Western Europe, generally known as Lombards, even though they
(10:14):
were not necessarily from Lombardy. In other words, even in England,
where the king's policies were really pushing them toward working
as lenders, most Jewish people were not lending money, and
most people lending money weren't Jewish. The idea of the
quote Jewish money lenders was really rooted in prejudicial stereotypes,
(10:37):
like just the word money lenders is loaded with connotations
that doesn't apply to a word like financier or banker,
which was basically the same thing. This association between Jewish
people and lending also led to a lot of backlash
because of the connection to something that other religions saw
(10:59):
as sinful, and because as a whole, working as lenders
meant that a lot of Jewish communities were relatively wealthy.
This didn't necessarily extend to the wealth of any individual person, though,
like an individual Jewish person might be about as wealthy
as their Christian neighbor, but like as a group, they
tended to be affluent. This also circles back to the
(11:22):
community's relationship with the king, like if the king was
facing opposition from the nobility over some issue, he might
cancel all their outstanding loans from Jewish lenders it was
completely within his power to do that, or the king
might help pay for a war by canceling the debts
of nobles who agreed to serve, rather than directly paying
(11:43):
them for their service. Although a series of English kings
basically used Jewish lenders as their own personal bank, whether
they repaid those loans that could be totally arbitrary. And
that brings us to the life of Lucritia of Winchester, who,
among other things, the personal financier to King Henry the Third.
(12:03):
We'll talk more about her after a sponsor break. We
don't know exactly when Lcriicia of Winchester was born, but
it was probably in the very early twelve hundreds. At
(12:23):
one point she's referred to as Lcarica of Canterbury, so
she might have been born there. I also found a
source that her father may have been Lombard of Winchester,
suggesting maybe she really was born in Winchester. Other sources
that her father's name was Isaac was all very unclear.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Regardless of where she was born, Lucrisia eventually wound up
living in Winchester, which was home to one of England's
largest and most affluent Jewish communities. A Jewish visitor from
France described the city as quote the Jerusalem of Jews.
In those parts. Most Jewish pele in Winchester lived around
what was then known as Shoemaker Street, sharing the same
(13:04):
neighborhood with Christian merchants, goldsmith's and other business people. Shoemaker
Street later became known as Jewbree Street, which is what
it is still named today.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
When Lucretia was born, John known as John Lackland, was
King of England. In twelve ten, he ordered the arrest
of England's entire Jewish population and commanded them to turn
over all of their wealth to him. So this was
something that she lived through when she was still a child.
She also would have lived through the First Baron's War,
(13:36):
which started in twelve fifteen. This is a civil war
that started out as an uprising of landowners against the king.
The barons sought help from France, and Louis, son of
French King Philip the Second, captured Winchester and a lot
of the surrounding area, temporarily taking control of roughly half
of England. This is something else she would have lived through.
(13:58):
This war ended in twelve seventeen, when Lucretia was probably
in her mid teens. So in twelve sixteen, as this
war was ongoing, King John died of dysentery and his
nine year old son, Henry the Third succeeded him. Henry
the Third reigned until twelve seventy two, and Henry's overall
attitude toward the Jewish population is encapsulated in his Statute
(14:22):
of Jewry in twelve fifty three. Quote All Jews, wheresoever
they may be, in the realm, are of right under
the tutelage and protection of the King. Nor is it
lawful for any of them to subject himself to any
wealthy person without the King's license. Jews and all their
effects are the King's property and if anyone withhold their
(14:43):
money from them, let the king recover it as his own.
Henry often referred to the Anglo Jewish population as my Jews,
and one of his most important sources of royal funds
was the talages paid by the Jewish community. At some point,
probably sometime between twelve fifteen and twelve twenty, Lcartia married
(15:05):
a businessman and financier named Abraham. They had three sons,
Isaac known as Cockrell, Lombard, and Baruch known as Benedict.
They may have also had a daughter called Bilia. Some sources, though,
conclude that Bilia was a daughter in law. A lot
of stuff is not totally clearly documented. In twelve twenty five,
(15:27):
Abraham and five other Jewish men in Winchester were accused
of murdering a Christian child. This was part of a
pattern of ritual murder allegations, also known as the blood libel,
so false accusations of Jewish people murdering Christian children as
part of a ritual or to use their blood for
ritual purposes. Although there were.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Earlier precursors, the first such accusation is generally noted as
happening in Norwich, England, in eleven forty four, after a
boy named William was found stabbed to death. The Jewish
population of Norwich took refuge in the castle as their
entire community was threatened in retaliation for a crime they
did not commit.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Lcaricia's husband, Abraham, and two other men were found guilty
of these allegations, and normally the punishment would have been hanging,
but there's no actual record of Abraham being hanged. There's
actually no further record of him at all. But in
twelve thirty four, which is the first written record we
have of Lcaricia, she's described in a way that makes
(16:32):
it clear that she was a widow. We don't really know.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
How Lcarsia supported herself and her children after Abraham's death.
All of his assets were confiscated after his conviction, but
it is possible that their original marriage contract had set
aside money for her in the event of Abraham's death.
This was a common provision in Jewish marriage contracts. It's
also possible that she was supported by Abraham's colleagues or
(16:57):
others in the Jewish community. While we don't.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Know what her original source of funds was, we do
know that Lucretia made wise use of those funds. By
the end of the twelve thirties, she had become one
of the biggest financiers in Winchester, and by the twelve
forties she was independently wealthy. In twelve thirty nine, the
Royal Council demanded a talage of a third of all
the chattels or tangible property of England's Jewish community, including
(17:25):
the value of outstanding loans, ultimately calling for a total
of twenty thousand marks. This was a truly enormous sum,
especially considering that, with only a couple of exceptions, the
talage had been between two thousand and three thousand marks
per year over the previous two decades. A mark was
two thirds of a pound, which would be very approximately
(17:48):
five hundred British pounds or six hundred thirty six American
dollars in today's money. So this talage was worth millions
and millions of dollars. Yeah, that's when I put very
approximately in italics here, because like it's almost impossible to
make an actual comparison, and it's complicated by the fact
that like a mark, what wasn't really a currency that
(18:12):
people went around buying things with it was more a
figure used to calculate things like uh, so yeah, this
was an enormous amount of money, and people started trying
to collect the money to pay it in late twelve
thirty nine and early twelve forty. By September, though only
one thousand marks had been collected. Records of loans by
(18:33):
Jewish lenders were kept in both Hebrew and Latin and
locked chests that were known as arcae, and at various
points the king ordered those chests to be closed so
that the royal authorities could like tally up the value
of all the bonds that were in there, adjust the
total do if they needed to this uh. Sealing these
(18:54):
up basically froze the ability for anybody to make new
loans or to collect on existing loans, and then that
made it harder for people to try to get the
money together to pay this talent. During all of this,
the King also ordered a census of England's Jewish population.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Finally, in January of twelve forty one, the King ordered
the Sheriff of Northamptonshire to quote cause to come before
us at Worcester on the Sunday next before Ash Wednesday.
Six of the wealthier and more powerful of our Jews
of Northampton, and from each town in Shire in which
Jews dwell one or two Jews according to their numbers.
(19:33):
If the sheriff did not do this quote, we will
so aggrieve you in consequence by your body and by
your chattels, that you will forever feel our hand to
grieve you immoderately.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
So this meeting was called. It became known as the
Worcester Parliament, and more than one hundred Jewish delegates met
to figure out how to pay this talent. The results
of this meeting also illustrate how much the Jewish community's
wealth was really concentrated, with it just a few people.
Three men together paid more than half of the total amount.
(20:06):
They were Aaron of York, Leo of York, and David
of Oxford. Lecarica, interestingly, was one of the wealthiest people
in Winchester at this point, but for unclear reasons, she
is not listed in the detailed accounts of how this
talent was actually paid, aside from ten pounds that she
paid in twelve thirty nine, So it's like we don't
know if did she contribute to it or these records
(20:29):
complete unclear.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
We don't know exactly when David of Oxford and Lcarica
of Winchester met, but it may have been connected to
all the activity around trying to pay this talent. David
was probably in his fifties and was one of the
wealthiest and most influential Jewish men in all of England,
and Lcaricia was probably in her thirties and was one
of England's wealthiest and most influential Jewish women. So it
(20:55):
makes sense that they might have had some things in common,
or that they might have wanted to combine their financial
assets through a marriage. But also David was already married
to a woman named Muriel. David and Muriel didn't have
any children, and it's possible that David used this as
a justification to divorce her. When a Jewish person died,
(21:19):
a third of their estate went to the crown, but
if they had no heir, then the Crown got all
of the estate. So David may have wanted to try
to make sure that part of his wealth stayed within
the Jewish community rather than all of it being forfeited
to the king, by divorcing his wife and ideally having
(21:39):
a child with someone else. Although divorce was not particularly
common or accepted in Jewish communities at the time, there
was an established process for how it was handled through
a bait din or Jewish court. Depending on how large
a Jewish community was, the court might be made up
of rabbis and lay people, or it could be a
panel of rabbis. Only the husband was the one who
(22:03):
had to bring the matter before this panel, But the
custom at the time was that the wife had to
consent to the divorce, so David initially went to the
baate Din in England, which approved the divorce. But Muriel
either didn't consent to the divorce at all or didn't
consent to this settlement that she was given, so she
(22:23):
and some of her supporters, one of whom may have
been her brother, went to the bake Din in Paris,
kind of as an appeal. The Jewish community in England
had a lot of connections to the Jewish community in France.
We talked in the beginning about how these are mostly
folks who had come from France to settle in England,
and in general, the Jewish community in France was seen
(22:44):
as having like more experienced, more knowledge, and greater authority.
David apparently dealt with this by taking the matter to
the King, Henry the third issued a decree that rabbis,
regardless of whether they lived in England or France, could
not force David to quote, take or hold any woman
to wife accept at his own free will, and this
(23:07):
also wound up having much wider ramifications. Henry also demanded
that Muriel and her supporters explain why they had gone
to a French court to try to overrule an English one,
and he banned the convening of Jewish courts in England.
This ban, though does not appear to have been strictly enforced.
David's divorce was completed in twelve forty two, and he
(23:31):
and Lcaricia married sometime after that. They had a son together,
named a Cher, also known as Sweetmen. Some sources describe
a share in Sweetman as two different people, but that
actually seems unlikely because David died in February of twelve
forty four, so he and Lcaricia were married for less
than two years. It is possible that she could have
(23:55):
been pregnant when he died, but if she had been,
this probably have been mentioned somewhere, especially for reasons we're
going to talk about in a bit, and it just
it wasn't. We don't know much about what happened to
Muriel after the divorce was finalized. She doesn't seem to
have remarried, and the written record suggests that she struggled financially.
(24:16):
Among other things, there's documentation of an unpaid talent. The
last written references to Muriel are from twelve fifty three. First,
she was ordered to repair the house that she had
been living in, which she had gotten as part of
the divorce settlement. Then the house was turned over to
Licarica and a share. We don't really know what happened here.
(24:38):
It's possible that Muriel lost the house because she hadn't
made the required repairs, or even that she died. We'll
get to what happened to Lcaricia and the rest of
her family after David's death after another quick sponsor break.
(25:01):
After David of Oxford died in twelve forty four, Lcarta
was imprisoned in the Tower of London, and there are
several possible explanations for this. Some sources describe it as
an almost routine part of the assessment process when a
Jewish person was inheriting a really large estate. Since a
third of that estate was supposed to go to the king.
(25:23):
Others make it sound like an effort to make sure
that Lucartia couldn't interfere with that assessment process or remove
any of David's property before.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
It was assessed. It's also possible that she was basically
being held hostage to try to keep the Jewish community
in line. While all of this was going.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
On, six Jewish men were appointed by the king to
oversee Lcarica's business affairs while she was in the tower.
Her son, a Cher, would have been a baby, so
he may have been in the tower with her, but
we don't really know. Lacrisia was imprisoned for about seven months,
and there's no record of her being pregnant or given
birth in the tower, which is part of why some
(26:02):
scholars have concluded that a Share and Suiteman were the
same person. Ultimately, Licorica seems to have negotiated a deal
regarding her inheritance. She paid the crown five thousand marks
to keep control of David's whole estate, including all of
his outstanding loans, rather than just the two thirds of
(26:24):
it that was normally how things were handled. About four
thousand marks of that payment was used to build a
new shrine to Edward, the confessor at Westminster Abbey at
the time was considered the patron saint of England. This
shrine was kind of one of the King's pet projects.
She also paid an inheritance tax of twenty five hundred pounds,
(26:45):
and she was exempt from future talages as long as
she paid the crown twenty four marks a year. As
we said earlier, really hard to try to convert a
medieval currency amount to modern equivalents, but one source that
I read approximated that five thousand marks was about two
point five million pounds or roughly four million American dollars.
(27:08):
This was a ton of money, but it also does
not seem to come even close to like a whole
third of David's estate. After being released from the tower
in September of twelve forty four, Lcaricia kept expanding her business,
traveling all over England to do so. Her clients included
the King and members of the royal family, as well
(27:30):
as members of the aristocracy and the Catholic Church. She
also made loans to landowners, farmers, and other less affluent people.
She met with the King regularly, most often when he
was in Winchester. She became so prominent that her sons
were often referred to as son of Lacriicia, rather than
by their father's names. This was most striking for a Share,
(27:54):
since his father, David, had been even more prominent and
powerful than his mother.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
A lot of the records that we have of Lecaricia's
later life come from financial and court records. There are
court records in which she sued other people for unpaid debts,
and records in which she was the one who was sued.
Some of these cases sound really dramatic. For example, in
about twelve fifty Sir Thomas Charlcoate died after drowning in
(28:23):
a lake on his property, and he had alone from Lcarica.
Still outstanding. By law, Licarica was allowed to keep control
of his estate and earn income from it for a
year and a day, but in twelve fifty three his son,
who was also named Thomas, took her to court because
she had exceeded that time by at least two years.
(28:45):
Lecarica then claimed that the younger Thomas had killed his father,
or at least arranged his death. Lecarica was held in
the Tower of London while this trial was going on,
which was one of at least four times that she
was imprisoned.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
There.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
When the court we weren't found in Thomas's favor, saying
that Lucretia had to vacate this property, she went to
the King about it. The King ordered a retrial, mandated
that Lucritia could not be penalized any further, and set
her fine at half a mark. There's not a lot
of money in this context.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Also in twelve fifty three, Henry the third issued a
new statute of the Jewry, the one that we read
from earlier on in the show. This statute ordered that
no new synagogues be built, and that Jewish people could
only remain in England if they served the King in
some way. A number of its provisions were focused on
separating Jews from Christians and making Jewish people less visible
(29:42):
in English society. Like Jewish people had to be quiet
in their synagogues so that Christians would not hear them.
Relationships between Jews and Christians were forbidden, and Jews were
forbidden to have Christian wet nurses working in their homes.
In practice, this law all also seems to have ended
the custom of allowing Jewish people to pay to be
(30:04):
exempt from wearing the tabula. Around this same time, Henry
the third also started routinely demanding higher talages, in part
because the Worcester Parliament in twelve forty one had documented
just how affluent some members of the community were.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Jewish people in their communities had always faced prejudice, persecution,
and at some points violence in England, and this really
increased in the mid thirteenth century. This included Jewish people
being falsely accused of crimes. In twelve fifty eight, another
lender named Billia of Bedford gave Lecaricia a gold ring
to give to the king as a gift. This ring disappeared,
(30:44):
and Lecaricea's neighbor, Ivetta, accused her of stealing it. It
turned out that Ivetta herself was the one who had
taken it. The Second Baron's War started in twelve sixty
four and continued for three years. Like the First Baron's War,
this was a civil war that grew out of an
uprising of barons against the king in many areas. The
(31:06):
barons and their allies saw Jews as agents of the King,
and some people use this as a justification for persecution
and violence, which became even more widespread. People also stole
or destroyed the ark containing all the loan documentation, meaning
that lenders had no way to recoup their money. Shortly
(31:26):
after the Second Barons War ended, Lcaricia's son Benedict was
elected to the Merchant's Guild, making him the first and
only Jewish person in medieval England to become a guildsman.
This also made him a full citizen of England, and
Christians in Winchester rioted over it to the point that
the king had to dispatch guards to try to protect
the Jewish community. Lcritia was probably in her sixties as
(31:50):
all this was happening. One court document in twelve seventy
describes her as failing to appear when she was summoned,
saying she was too ill to leave her home. In
twelve seventy two, Henry the Third died and was succeeded
by Edward the First. While Henry's attitudes toward Jewish people
had been fickle and self serving, and increasingly stringent in
(32:12):
later years, Edward was devoutly Christian and took an immediate
anti Jewish stance. He ordered a talage of a third
of all Jewish assets, and in twelve seventy five he
authorized towns around England to start expelling their Jewish populations.
He also issued a new statute of Jewry that barred
(32:33):
Jewish financiers from charging interest. This also specified that the
amount repaid could not be more than the original amount
of the loan, so, for example, lenders couldn't use late
fees to try to deter people from missing payments. And
this statute also replaced the tabula with a yellow badge
in twelve seventy seven, So just about two years after that,
(32:56):
Lucaricia was murdered in her home along with her made
out of Bicton. Lcaricia's daughter or possibly daughter in law, Bellia,
found them stabbed to death. Authorities treated this as a
robbery gone wrong, and they focused mainly on the goods
that had been removed from the house. That part was
really not uncommon, like the fact that Jewish people's goods
(33:19):
were described as the king's goods meant that a lot
of times, if a Jewish person was the victim of
a crime, the only thing people were really focused on
was the king getting his property back. There's a lot
of speculation though about whether this was really a hate crime.
Lcarica was extremely wealthy and prominent. One of her sons
was the only Jewish guildsman in the country and had
(33:40):
been named as cheater for the Jewish community and keeper
of the Queen's Gold. Alice of Bichden was a Christian,
so it was illegal for her to have been working
in Lcarice's home. This crime also happened in broad daylight,
so it may have been meant as some kind of
threat or warning to the rest of the Jewish community.
Some ask sspects of this crime are weird and confusing.
(34:03):
Lcarice's house was supposed to be sealed up until assessors
could go through all her assets, but two of Benedict's
sons were accused of breaking in with the help of
two of the sheriff's men and stealing much of what
was inside. The sheriff himself was initially accused as well,
but he apparently proved that he was in London.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
At the time. One of Benedict's sons, Abraham, had already
been accused of other crimes. But we really don't know
what was going on here or why two of the
sheriff's men may have been involved, the fact that these
were Benedict's sons also reflected not just on him, but
on the entire Jewish community.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
A saddler named Ralph of Chisol was accused of the murder,
but he had fled from Winchester. He was outlawed, but
he was never tried for the crime. Laricia's sons, a
Share and Cockrell, thought this man was a scapegoat, and
they tried to bring charges against two other men who
they thought were more likely culprits. There's no record of
(35:03):
anybody ever being tried or punished for this, though, a
year after Lcaricia's death, Benedict was charged with coin clipping.
At the time, coins were made from pure metal, so
people could shave or clip small pieces from their edges
to melt down for profit, and it seems that both
Christians and Jews did this in roughly the same proportions,
(35:24):
but Jewish people were accused and convicted of it far
more often. Benedict's arrest was part of an enormous crackdown
on coinclipping. It is likely that coinclipping really was on
the rise. Edward the First's predecessors had really set up
a system that encouraged Jewish people to work as lenders,
(35:46):
but then Edward had made it impossible to actually earn
a living that way. But this crackdown was effectively a pogrom.
England's entire Jewish population was imprisoned. Three times more Christian
than Jews were accused of coinclipping, but ten times more
Jews than Christians were executed. At this point, the Jewish
(36:08):
population of England was only about three thousand people, and
it's estimated that three hundred or ten percent were executed
for suspicion of coinclipping. One of these was Lcarica's son Benedict,
who was executed in twelve eighty This.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Was not the last time England imprisoned its entire Jewish population.
In twelve eighty seven, the king imposed a tallage of
twelve thousand marks and imprisoned the whole community after only
five thousand pounds of it was raised. Lcoricia's son A Sher,
was imprisoned at Winchester Castle and scratched graffiti into the
(36:46):
wall there in Hebrew, which was discovered in the seventeenth century.
Only a piece of the inscription survived, which noted the
date that everyone had been imprisoned by referencing the scripture
that had been read for the Sabbath that week. Along
with I A Share inscribed this.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
In twelve ninety England expelled its entire Jewish population at
that point, numbering about two thousand people. A share in
any of Licoricea's other surviving children and grandchildren were driven
from England. At this time. People were allowed to take
their possessions with them, but their houses and anything they
couldn't carry was forfeited to the king. Although they were
(37:26):
supposed to be allowed safe passage, a lot of people
still faced violence as they tried to leave, including multiple
truly horrifying accounts of ship passengers being left to drown
as they tried to get to continental Europe. This was
the first of a series of expulsions all across Europe,
including from Spain in fourteen ninety two. We covered that
(37:49):
expulsion on the show before The prohibition on Jewish people
in England remained in place until sixteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
The Licorica of Winch Appeal is a charity that was
established in twenty seventeen to educate the public about the
medieval Jewish community in Winchester. The organization raised funds for
a life size statue of Lcaricia.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
This statue is now complete. It is a thing that
prompted these articles that went viral last year. In this statue,
she's walking along with a young a share She's holding
his hand and carrying a talig roll. In the other
he has a dradal. This statue was sculpted by Ian
Rank Broadly and it was unveiled on Jury Street in
(38:34):
Winchester on February tenth of twenty twenty two. King Charles
the Second, who at the time was still Prince Charles,
was supposed to be part of this unveiling, but he
had COVID so he had to visit about a month later.
The Lecarica of Winchester Appeal also commissioned a book which
came out in twenty twenty two as well. That's titled
(38:55):
Lecarica of Winchester, Power and Prejudice in Medieval England, and
that's by Rebecca Abrams.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Do you have listener mail today?
Speaker 2 (39:04):
I do have some listener mail. This listener mail goes
back to our Square Dancing episodes. This person signed their
message as Annex eight thousand and said hello you briefly
mentioned that in the Caribbean, there are variations on the
quadrill as well as ring dances and colin response. In fact,
in the nineteen fifty something emerged that has become a
(39:25):
present day Cuban version of square dancing that has spread
through the US and beyond. We dance it here in
Los Angeles. It's called ruete that's wheel dancing, and it
started in the pre revolutionary casinos of Havana. While this
particular dance is clearly modern, it likely has some connection
to those earlier influence you mentioned. It has a caller
(39:46):
who tells the group as a whole which passos to dance.
Usually a retta group will develop its own passos as
it develops its own identity. The music is better than
square dancing music. Two. There are then some links to
learn more about this, and then on a related note,
the Cuban mambo is a descendant of the English country
dance as well. Thank you so much for this email.
(40:08):
I did not know that. Apologies for me not being
able to say read it very well. I feel like
I have lost some rolling my ursibility from my childhood. Uh.
And also I've I don't know, I stumbled over that.
So thank you so much. I did not know any
of this and if you would like to send us
a note about this or any other podcast, We're a
(40:30):
history podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. We're all over social media.
Miss in History. That's where you'll find out Facebook and
our Pinterest and our x thing and Instagram. That's the
other one. You can subscribe to our show also on
the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you like to get your podcasts.
(40:55):
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