The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England

He marked the beginning of his reign with a series of tournaments, mainly held around London and the south-east. Here he presented himself at once as a knightly king, his court a centre of revelry and fun, romance and martial competition. ‘This king led a gay life in jousts and tournaments and entertaining ladies,’ wrote Sir Thomas Gray.

Walter of Guisborough recounted their exchange:
‘“With you will I gladly go, O King, in front of you in the first line of battle as belongs to me by hereditary right,” he said.
‘“You will go without me too, with the others,” Edward replied.
‘“I am not bound, neither is it my will, O King, to march without you,” said the earl. Enraged, the king burst out, so it is said, with these words: “By God, O Earl, either you will go or you will hang!”
‘“By the same oath,” replied Norfolk, “I will neither go nor hang.”’

The head of every Jewish household in England was at some point imprisoned in the late 1270s on suspicion of coin-clipping, and in a climate of legal terror there were frequent cases of extortion against Jewish families, as their unscrupulous neighbours threatened to report them for coin offences. Further mass arrests and forced tallages continued during the 1280s. In 1283 Jews were excluded from the protection afforded to ordinary merchants, and in 1284 Archbishop Pecham issued a decree ordering that London synagogues should be destroyed except for one. Two years later Pope Honorius IV demanded that the archbishops of Canterbury and York stamp out intercourse between Christians and the ‘accursed and perfidious’ Jews.

The boat passed out of London, and through the countryside that surrounded the capital. They were leaving behind a city in which it had been increasingly difficult to live; in which ever more strict and onerous laws had been passed against their people, preventing them from trading or earning, or even from engaging with their Christian neighbours, as their ancestors had done quite freely. Their synagogues had been burned, their friends beaten or hanged, and hot-headed preachers had called for their conversion to Christianity. London was a city that no longer welcomed or wanted them. They had no choice but to leave.

On Tuesday 10 October 1290, a group of poor Jews from London boarded a boat down the Thames. In their hands they carried royal warrants of safe passage. On their coats they wore the yellow, book-shaped badges that the law declared they must wear to distinguish themselves from Christians.