Brumafriend
1 min readApr 7, 2020

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What you’re saying is 100% correct and was an important background factor in facilitating the expulsion of 1290. What I’d say, however, is that my aim was to look at why the Jews were expelled in 1290 rather than, say, during the mid-12th century following the alleged murder of William of Norwich or later that year following the massacres committed against them.

Although the English crown and nobility would have had religious disagreements (and hatred) towards the Jewish community, it’s likely that these were superseded by their class interests (i.e. the economic value Jews held for much of the medieval period) while religious resentment was a consistent background factor. Once their economic value had gone (or the crown had — probably incorrectly — thought it had gone), all that was left were the religious factors and so it was felt that the 1290 edict could be implemented. Diane Wolfthal of Rice University elaborates on this idea more in her article ‘Complicating Medieval Anti-Semitism: The Role of Class in Two Tales of Christian Violence against Jews’. It’s really worth a read in my opinion.

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Brumafriend

Interested in History. Specifically, Tudor History and the Middle Ages in England.