Second Barons' War Against the Jews

In February 1264, after the Mise of Amiens, the fighting between the forces of Simon de Montfort and King Henry III began in earnest. One of the biggest moves made by the rebels was the attacks on the Jews.

Part of the Provisions of Oxford created by the barons was demanding the cancellation of Jewish debts. Attacks on Jewish communities were devastating. Henry de Montfort and Robert Earl Ferrers led an attack that killed most of the Jews in Worcester. Robert had borrowed heavily from the Jews of Worcester. He plundered homes and religious houses and stole the records of loans.

Another of the rebels, John fitz John, was part of the attack on Jews in London where 500 were killed.  John fitz John was said to have killed two of the leading Jewish figures, Isaac son of Aaron and Cok son of Abraham, with his bare hands. There was no offering to the Jews the choice of converting to Christianity as was sometimes offered in the past (such as the story of Clifford's Tower, although that was a cruel lie). The records of the Domus Conversorum ("House of Converts") established by Henry for converted Jews show no Jews were admitted in that year. A few were sent to the Tower of London for incarceration.

Simon the Younger extended his anti-Jewish pogroms to Winchester, Lincoln, and Cambridge. Gilbert de Clare, the 7th Earl of Gloucester whose father had been a royalist but who decided to join the rebels once he gained the title, led the attacks on Jews in Canterbury (where a few Jewish women were forced to convert) and Northampton.

The chief goal was less religious than financial. Since the incident at Clifford's Tower, the Crown had established a method for keeping track of Jewish debt. It was easier for the king to tax the Jews whenever he needed money than to get it from the barons. The Crown therefore desired to have accurate records of who owed what to whom. Cities and towns with large Jewish populations maintained archa, chests in which records were kept that the king could check on any time. The attacks not only killed Jews, they destroyed the archa to erase any records of debt.

The tide for the Barons was starting to turn, however. See you tomorrow.

The Provisions Overturned

The Provisions of Oxford, a result of the barons demanding reforms from King Henry III during the Mad Parliament in exchange for raising money for him, were overturned a few years later.

Henry's need for money came from trying to finance a war against the Hohenstaufens for the Kingdom of Sicily. Henry wanted it for his younger son Edmund. Pope Innocent IV wanted Henry to "buy" it to avoid giving the Hohenstaufens a foothold in Italy (the Kingdom of Sicily included the Regno, that held much of southern Italy, right on the papacy's threshold).

Although Henry had sworn on the Gospel to accept the Provisions, a papal bull in 1261 absolved Henry of the need to follow them. The barons called their own parliament to re-assert control over government, but Henry was not about to back down, and he still had several powerful earls and barons on his side. Simon de Montfort, one of the chief instigators of rebellion (even though he was married to Henry's sister), saw they were outmatched and fled to France.

The First Barons' War that ended with Magna Carta also set up a method by which the King of France would mediate disputes between King John and the barons (illustration). This was tried with King Louis and Henry versus the barons, but there was little agreement on each side.

Henry's need for financial support disappeared when he gave up trying to gain Sicily for Edmund, and therefore his reason for agreeing to the barons' demands disappeared. Then, in 1262, one of his strongest supporters, Richard de Clare, 6th Earl of Gloucester, died. Richard's son and successor, Gilbert de Clare, brought the resources of Gloucester to the side of the rebels.

Henry's re-assertion of his ultimate authority continued to anger the barons and earls, and in April 1263 several of them invited Simon de M Montfort back to England to join them in opposition. Simon gathered all the barons opposed to the king at Oxford. Before the end of 1263 both sides had raised large armies. Simon de Montfort's army marched on London where they found local support. Henry and his queen were trapped in the Tower of London, but before long were taken prisoner and de Montfort took control of England.

Not everyone approved of this usurpation, or of de Montfort himself. We'll look at what happened next tomorrow.

Financing a War

When Simon de Montfort wanted to kick off the Second Barons War, he needed funding. One of the easiest ways for most medieval Europeans to free up money was to force a cancellation of debts to the Jews. Since many of these debts were owed by Montfort's baronial friends, their gratitude would extend to supporting him against King Henry III.

One of the barons' demands of Henry was that he write off the Jewish debts. This he would not do: Henry used occasional tallages (taxes) on the Jews to fund his own endeavors. His healthy balance sheet needed Jews to be able to collect what was owed them so that he could access take it.

In April of 1264, Montfort encouraged his followers and others to begin widespread persecution and even execution of the Jews, destroying their records of debt. One of the main centers of the Jewish population in England was in Canterbury, where about 20 Jewish households accounted for about 100 or so Jews. There had been, in fact, a widespread persecution of the Jews a couple years earlier, when lay and clerical citizens attacked and burned some of their houses, although no one was killed that time.

A member of Montfort's rebellion, the brutal Gilbert de Clare, occupied Canterbury and instigated "The Massacre of the Jews." An unknown number of Jews were killed and their property looted, and several Jewish women were forcibly baptized. Any remaining Jews fled Canterbury. The most prominent member of the Canterbury Jewry was Solomon, son of Josce. When he returned in 1265 (he fled abroad during the troubles), Henry III returned his property to him.

Montfort's son Henry and the 6th Earl of Derby, Robert Ferrers, led a pogrom that killed all the Jews in Worcester. Montfort's son Simon led the attacks in Winchester. In London, a chief Montfort supporter, John Fitz John, led the attacks and is said to have killed two of the leading Jewish figures with his bare hands; a total of 500 Jews in London were killed. In 1264 and 1265, attacks were made in Lincoln and Cambridge, and financial records were destroyed.

Anti-Jewish sentiment was always bubbling just under the surface, looking for a reason to burst forth and lead to atrocities. There were often single incidents that were blamed on the Jews. Even if that blame was proven false, the ill feeling left its mark and was ready to be invoked to justify later attacks. One such that stayed in the public consciousness and could not be expunged was the story of little Saint Hugh of Lincoln, which I will share with you tomorrow.

An Expensive Bride

de lacy Coat of Arms

de Clare Coat of Arms

Maud de Lacy was an "independent-minded" woman of the 13th century. (To be fair, there were two independent-minded women named "Maud de Lacy" in the 13th century. Today we will discuss the English one.) The Maud de Lacy I have in mind lived from 1223 to 1289 and was the daughter of John de Lacy, the 2nd Earl of Lincoln, a Surety Baron of the Magna Carta.*

The Lincoln title belonged to her mother, Margaret de Quincy, not her father. Maud might have someday inherited the title, but her mother named a different heir: Henry de Lacy, Maud's nephew by her deceased brother. Maud's feelings about her mother were not improved when her mother remarried in 1242 to Walter Marshal, the 5th Earl of Pembroke, inheriting the majority of his property  after Walter died in 1245. We are told by one historian that the two women argued about finances regarding the wealth that Margaret held in the Marshal property.

Maud married Richard de Clare, 6th Earl of Gloucester, in 1238 when she was 15 and he was not much older (Richard was born 4 August 1222). Richard had actually been married once already! He had been married to Margaret, the daughter of Hugh de Burgh. Hubert got in some trouble for this, since the marriage did not have the approval of King Henry III, and Richard was Henry's ward! Hubert gave the king money to let the matter slide (Henry, like his father John, always needed money).

That wasn't the only money involved in Richard's wedding(s), however. Maud's father would have liked his eldest daughter joined to the powerful and wealthy de Clare family. Sensing problems in the marriage between Richard and Margaret de Burgh, the Earl of Lincoln offered King Henry 5000 marks (about £3300) to approve a marriage between Richard and Maud. Margaret died (very conveniently) in late 1237, leaving Richard free to marry Maud, which he did on 2 February 1238.

Among there children was Gilbert de Clare, who would join Simon de  Montfort in rebelling against Henry II, but later recant and support the throne and Henry's son Prince Edward.

*Not all barons signed the Magna Carta. The "Surety Barons" were 25 who were elected to sign the document and whose job was to see that it was adhered to.

Gilbert de Clare

Gilbert de Clare, Tewksbury Abbey
Unknown if this is "our" Gilbert,
his son, or his grandfather

Gilbert de Clare, 7th Earl of Gloucester (1243 - 1295), was mentioned in the post on the Battle of Evesham, switching support from the treasonous Simon de Montfort to King Henry III. Though very young, he had already managed some significant accomplishments.

His father died in 1262, when Gilbert was still in his teens, and so Gilbert was made a ward of Humphrey de Bohun, the 2nd Earl of Hereford (whose son would also have experience with a traitor), but came into his own a year later. So it was that, in spring of 1264 (as part of the uprising against King Henry), he captured Canterbury and attacked the Jews.

He went on to sack the Jewry perhaps with the main intention of destroying all the evidence of debts [...]. The result was that the Jewry was dispersed. It is unclear if there were fatalities. What is known is that two years later, in 1266, the community had returned to Oxford and 18 leading local Jews signed a treaty of self-defence, in which they sought to protect themselves against, 'liars, improper persons, or slanders'. [link]

He may have been emulating Simon de Montfort, who had expelled Jews from Leicester in 1231 (one year before Henry established the Domus Conversorum to give English Jews an option for co-existence). The older Montfort's parents had been extremely hostile to Jews in the past. Clare might have been operating simply because he could, and wanted to impress Montfort, who was the focal point of the barons' uprising against Henry and looked like he would be the next king.

Eventually, however, Clare's sympathies shifted back to Prince Edward in 1265, after Edward escaped his guardians and began to rally supporters against the rebellious barons. Years later, when Henry died, Clare swiftly and openly declared loyalty to the new King Edward I. Clare was named Guardian of England whenever Edward was out of the country.

He died on 7 December 1295 and was buried in Tewksbury Abbey. A stained glass window in the abbey represents him...or his son Gilbert, the 8th Earl...or his grandfather Gilbert, the 5th Earl.

The Battle of Evesham

Evesham Abbey had existed for about five and a half centuries by the time Henry III was captured by Simon de Montfort at the Battle of Lewes in 1264. Montfort was at the head of a group of barons who felt Henry was too irresponsible as a monarch, but as Montfort introduced reforms that gave Parliamentary representation to the lower classes, the nobles started to turn on him. Evesham would be the setting for Montfort's defeat and Henry's return to power.

In 1265, Henry's son Edward was released from captivity "on parole." Those loyal to Henry began to focus on helping Edward as Montfort's popularity continued to wane after the powerful Earl of Gloucester, Gilbert de Clare, stopped supporting him. Also, de Montfort made an alliance of convenience with Llywelyn ap Gruffyd, Prince of Wales—mentioned here as "Llewelyn the Last"—which proved an unpopular move with his remaining English supporters.

Clare joined forces with Prince Edward, and together they moved to occupy Worcester. Montfort gathered his army and marched to Wales to add Llewelyn's troops. Unfortunately, while Montfort was in Wales, Edward and Clare expanded the territory over which they had control. In early August, the two armies met near Evesham Abbey, with Edward's larger force trapping Montfort's in a loop of the River Avon and blocking his only chance of escape.

Montfort was, in fact, keeping Henry with him for security. Henry came close to being killed in the cross-fighting, but the battle ended quickly once Simon de Montfort was killed and mutilated by Edward's forces. His troops were chased and cut down without mercy. Henry was restored to the throne and held a Parliament the following month in which those who turned on him were disinherited. Ultimately, after some more military engagements between the two sides, Henry's Dictum of Kenilworth  offered the nobles a chance to regain their former estates via payments to the Crown. Years later, Edward would become King Edward I.