The death of Henry released the Jews from this Egyptian bondage; but they changed their master, not their fortune.  The first act of Edward’s reign, after his return from the Holy Land, regulated the affairs of the Jews exactly in the same spirit; a new tallage was demanded, which was to extend to the women and children; the penalty of nonpayment, even of arrears, was exile, not imprisonment.  The defaulter was to proceed immediately to Dover, with his wife and children, leaving his house and property to the use of the King.  The execution of this edict was committed, not to the ordinary civil authorities, but to an Irish bishop (elect) and to two friars.

This edict was followed up by the celebrated Act of Parliament Concerning Judaism,[85] the object of which seems to have been the same with the policy of Louis IX of France, to force the Jews to abandon usury, and betake themselves to traffic, manufactures, or the cultivation of land.  It positively prohibited all usury and cancelled all debts on payment of the principal.  No Jew might distress beyond the moiety of a Christian’s land and goods; they were to wear their badge, a badge now of yellow, not white, and pay an Easter offering of threepence, men and women, to the King.  They were permitted to practise merchandise or labor with their hands, and—­some of them, it seems, were still addicted to husbandry—­to hire farms for cultivation for fifteen years.  On these terms they were assured of the royal protection.  But manual labor and traffic were not sources sufficiently expeditious for the enterprising avarice of the Jews.  Many of them, thus reduced, took again to a more unlawful and dangerous occupation, clipping and adulterating the coin.  In one day, November 17, 1279, all the Jews in the kingdom were arrested.  In London alone two hundred and eighty were executed after a full trial; many more in other parts of the kingdom.  A vast quantity of clipped coin was found and confiscated to the King’s use.  The King granted their estates and forfeitures with lavish hand.

But law, though merciless and probably not overscrupulous in the investigation of crime, did not satisfy the popular passions, which had been let loose by these wide and general accusations.  The populace took the law into their own hands.

Everywhere there was full license for plunder and worse than plunder.  The King was obliged to interpose.  A writ was issued, addressed to the justiciaries who had presided at the trials for the adulteration of the coin, Peter of Pentecester, Walter of Heylynn, John of Cobham, appointed justiciaries for the occasion.  It recited that many Jews had been indicted and legally condemned to death and to the forfeiture of their goods and chattels; but that certain Christians, solely on account of religious differences, were raising up false and frivolous charges against men who had not been legally arraigned, in order to extort money from them by fear.  No Jew against whom a legal indictment had not been issued before May 1, 1280, was to be molested or subject to accusation.  Those only arrested on grave suspicion before that time were to be put upon their trial.  Jewish tradition attributes the final expulsion of the Jews to these charges, which the King, it avers, did not believe, yet was compelled to yield to popular clamor.