showed itself in a growing desire to become proprietors of land.  Tenants of the barons received under-tenants on condition of their rendering them similar services to those which they themselves rendered to their lords; and the baronage, while duly receiving the services in compensation for which they had originally granted their lands in fee, saw with jealousy the feudal profits of these new under-tenants, the profits of wardships or of reliefs and the like, in a word the whole increase in the value of the estate consequent on its subdivision and higher cultivation, passing into other hands than their own.  The purpose of the statute “Quia Emptores” was to check this process by providing that in any case of alienation the sub-tenant should henceforth hold, not of the tenant, but directly of the superior lord.  But its result was to promote instead of hindering the transfer and subdivision of land.  The tenant who was compelled before the passing of the statute to retain in any case so much of the estate as enabled him to discharge his feudal services to the overlord of whom he held it, was now enabled by a process analogous to the modern sale of “tenant-right,” to transfer both land and services to new holders.  However small the estates thus created might be, the bulk were held directly of the Crown; and this class of lesser gentry and freeholders grew steadily from this time in numbers and importance.

[Sidenote:  The Crown and the Jews]

The year which saw “Quia Emptores” saw a step which remains the great blot upon Edward’s reign.  The work abroad had exhausted the royal treasury, and he bought a grant from his Parliament by listening to their wishes in the matter of the Jews.  Jewish traders had followed William the Conqueror from Normandy, and had been enabled by his protection to establish themselves in separate quarters or “Jewries” in all larger English towns.  The Jew had no right or citizenship in the land.  The Jewry in which he lived was exempt from the common law.  He was simply the king’s chattel, and his life and goods were at the king’s mercy.  But he was too valuable a possession to be lightly thrown away.  If the Jewish merchant had no standing-ground in the local court the king enabled him to sue before a special justiciary; his bonds were deposited for safety in a chamber of the royal palace at Westminster; he was protected against the popular hatred in the free exercise of his religion and allowed to build synagogues and to manage his own ecclesiastical affairs by means of a chief rabbi.  The royal protection was dictated by no spirit of tolerance or mercy.  To the kings the Jew was a mere engine of finance.  The wealth which he accumulated was wrung from him whenever the crown had need, and torture and imprisonment were resorted to when milder means failed.  It was the gold of the Jew that filled the royal treasury at the outbreak of war or of revolt.  It was in the Hebrew coffers that the foreign kings found strength, to hold their baronage at bay.