Following George Engel's and Lisa Lewis' messages re how RK wrote about a
Jew being in Bury St Edmunds in 1215; I have checked the several articles
on Bury in the Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, and
none suggest that any Jews returned to that town after their expulsion
therefrom in 1190.
This agrees with the Museum Curator and the history books; Hyamson
(1908) p67 "on the morrow of the murderous outbreak at Bury St Edmunds in
1190, the Jews were excluded from that town." and Roth (1949) p25 :"the day
after the tragedy at York on Palm Sunday,1190, a massacre took place [in
Bury], 57 Jews being killed. Shortly afterwards the Abbot procured a writ
from the sovereign, authorising the few survivors to be expelled from the
town since all its inhabitants ought to be vassals of St Edmund ." It seems
to me that Kipling's idea that a few Jews, whose status was that of
chattel's of the King, might have returned is most unlikely, and I doubt he
talked to any Jewish scholar. I have found no mention of any Elias of Bury.
As regards the role of Jews re Magna Carta: Roth says "In 1210 the
King extorted a heavy payment from the Jews, and in the following years;
when Magna Carta was extorted from the king, the role of the Jews as passive
instruments of these exactions and their consequent unpopularity were
indicated by Clauses 10 & 11 of the Charter (re debts),
Tim Connell thought that the Jews were expelled by John - and before Magna
Carta. The expulsion of all Jews from England was by Edward in 1290.
The massacre at York was in 1190 ; from Leicester Simon de Montfort
expelled the Jews in 1231.
Bryan Diamond
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