It was early on Sunday when the baronial warriors reached the walls of London, and Aldgate stood open to admit them. At the time, the inhabitants were for the most part at morning mass, and the nobles and their fighting men entered the city, and took possession of the gates, at each of which they posted parties of guards, almost ere their presence was suspected by the royalists, and long before their arrival was announced at the Tower. No sooner did they find themselves in undisputed possession of the capital, and assured of the support of the chief citizens, than they gratified the prejudices of the populace by falling upon a race who from their position always suffered early in civil commotions.
At that time the Jews were odious to Christendom, and doubtless did much to deserve hatred. But to no people in Europe was the Jew, with his sensual lip, his hook nose, his peculiar features, his high square yellow cap, and his russet gabardine, an object of so much dislike and distrust as to the English. For all this antipathy there were various reasons.
Almost every Jew was understood openly or secretly to revile and insult Christianity, and scarcely a year passed without some terrible charge being made against the race in this respect. One year it was said that a Jew had stabbed the Host; in the next that a Jew had defaced an image of the Virgin; in the third that a Jew had crucified a boy, in mockery of the Saviour. At the time of the Crusades such charges became more frequent than ever; for the Jews were believed to sympathise strongly with the Saracens, and to show their sympathy by furnishing arms to carry on the war, poisoning the wells and fountains at which the armed pilgrims were likely to quench their thirst, and sneering at the zeal which prompted Christians to “take the staff and sandal in superstitious penance, and walk afoot to visit the graves of dead men.”
No doubt these circumstances would of themselves have rendered the Jew an object of hatred wherever he appeared; but there were other and very strong reasons for the detestation with which men of the Hebrew race were regarded by the multitude. Almost every Jew was rich, and a money-lender, and a usurer, and was in the habit of using his advantages in such a way as to grind the faces of men of all ranks who were under the necessity of coming to him for aid. Abbots and barons were his debtors; but it was not merely the inmate of the monastery and the castle who experienced his rapacity and atrocities. While the abbot pledged his plate, and the baron his armour and horses, the craftsman pledged his tools, the trader his wares, and the husbandman his ploughshare. Of course, all these men were frequently at the Jew’s mercy, and most of them found, to their severe experience, that the mercy of a Jew was worse than the cruelty of a Christian.