[Blogger's note: I have never had anything I submitted for online publication rejected. However, I submitted part one of this essay to multiple sites and nobody would post it. So I no longer have length limits and have decided to break part two up into sections for convenience.]
In part 1, I presented a critique of Geraldine Heng's race-making theory. One of the chapters in her book, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, examines the English expulsion of its entire Jewish community in 1290, which she sees a result of race-making. I hope to demonstrate that the expulsion doesn't validate Heng's thesis, but rather undermines it and exposes it as right-wing ideology; racism masquerading as antiracism. Critical race theory is Fascism Lite. Those racial canards that rallied enough support to defeat the workers' movement in the 20th century can't go goose-stepping down the strasse anymore--not yet anyway--but rather are softened, re-normalized and reproduced in more innocuous, palatable form--as is seen broadly in post-modern thought and most conspicuously in critical race theory. And there can be no better example than Geraldine Heng whose book is riven with racist ideas, some quite explicit. As was argued in part one and will be below, race theory is inherently atavistic, regardless of whether its theorists understand it as such. It has an aporia at its heart which cannot be exorcised by the mere addition of the word "critical," nor can the effects of its racist genealogy be neutralized by sanctimonious disavowals. The vestiges of this legacy, its unacknowledged assumptions, its heuristics, its "racial logic," are still common in contemporary critical race theory discourse. One cannot rehabilitate a racist idea by disclaimer. By Heng's own definition, she is guilty of racism.
Race theory has a conundrum: If, as science insists, there are no such things as races, then where does racism come from? There are three answers with which I am familiar. The first is the fascist theory. It holds that races do exist; that races are essentially different and irreconcilably mutually antagonistic as they are locked into competition for the planet's finite resources. The second is the socialist/materialist theory which suggests that racism is a product of economic exploitation; racial inequality derives from, and depends upon, economic inequality. The third which we might call the CRT camp, which dismisses the fascist camp's view, but also the materialist one as CRT (generalizing) find that economic factors alone are insufficient to explain the genesis and perseverance of racism. Heng situates racism in a miscellany of contingent elements straddling a spectrum of categories not usually thought to constitute race: religion, geography, cartography etc. "Race-making... operates as specific historical occasions in which strategic essentialisms are posited and assigned through a variety of practices and pressures." For Heng, racism does not arise from fixed, mechanistic causes, rather the ascription of essentialisms to a particular group depends upon a concomitance of factors, possibly but not necessarily related, which by their combined force can coalesce into racism, or which can be employed by outsiders for that purpose: a group of people "enter into race" when a constellation of discrete variables, under conditions conducive to such stigmatizing "practices and pressures," create racism cumulatively. Thus, CRT, or Heng at least, extricates racism from the exigencies and temporality of political economy and anchors it in ambiguity and happenstance; in the random, sterile mutability of culture and identity.
In order to determine where one lands on this race theory axis one needs to know what is meant by "essentialisms," and it is a bit more complex than it may seem. For example: when I was young it was commonly held that Blacks were lazy, and that this vice was in large part responsible for their poverty. "The problem with this country," my father instinctively grasped, "is all these [Blacks] on welfare! They could work, but they are just too lazy." Dear ol' Dad may be forgiven for believing something so robustly ridiculous, as in the US race dominates political discourse--24/7/365. American history is presented as a series of racial "missteps," of here succeeding and there failing to overcome our national "birth defect," while class dynamics and analysis are taboo. My father was a hegemonic construct.
I certainly do not believe Blacks are or ever were lazy, but let's use this as an example. If Blacks were lazy, there could be two explanations. One would be genetic--it's just how they are, they by their nature are just that way--the condition is inborn and ineradicable. Or it could be cultural. In the American context, the vast majority of Blacks came here as slaves. After emancipation in 1865, there was discrimination against them in many forms. Under such circumstances, why would Blacks be energetic when their exertions directly benefit their oppressors. Why be industrious when nothing can be gained from it! It could be argued that lethargy, apathy, indolence, entered Black culture as a result of all the limitations placed on their activities. If one concludes that Blacks are constitutionally lazy, that would be an essentialism. If one believed that Blacks became lazy as a result of historical conditions arising from class structures, that would not be an essentialism. So it is not the attribute itself, but rather its source which determines its type. Teasing these phenomena out from their many encumbrances can be quite daunting for as Antonio Gramsci wrote "consciousness of what one really is...in knowing oneself as a product of historical processes to date which have deposited an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory. Identity marks the conjuncture of our past with the social, cultural and economic relations we live within.” Identifying, classifying, and understanding such traces is a Promethean challenge, and the subject of much dispute.
With this as mooring, this essay will explore whether the expulsion of the Jews in 1290 was the result of a clutch of "practices and pressures," or is directly attributable to class antagonism. In order to fully appreciate just how moribundly inadequate critical race theory's class-rejectionist approach is to interpreting social phenomena, how disjunctive and fragmentary it is, how inimical its methods and precepts are to its stated aims, this subject must be discussed in detail. With regard to the expulsion of the Anglo-Jewry, Heng's race-making theory not only fails, but does so in a way which reveals its bankruptcy.
Heng's race-reification theory is race reification; it rejects everyday, common, undeniably real economic concerns as cause for social conflict. It overlooks that basic items necessary for the maintenance of life must be purchased. It disregards that money is unjustly allocated along class lines, and much harder to acquire for those at the bottom. It tolerates the massive and violent expropriation of wealth by a tiny fraction of the worldwide population from the rest and the daily suppression it requires. As Karl Marx observed: "Capitalism comes to us dripping with blood," and we are still bleeding. According to the World Bank, globally half live below the international poverty lines for middle-to-high-income countries of $6.85 a day, and $3.65 for low-to-middle. And it admits that "70 percent of the global population lived in middle-income economies, where the international poverty line might be too low to define someone as poor — which could easily lead to underestimating the share of the population living in poverty." Might be? If we accept the Pew Research Center's assessment that half the global population living above the poverty lines are two paychecks from ruin, it's fair to estimate that 75% live at or below subsistence level. And given that the poverty lines are absurdly low, the percentage goes up considerably from there. Capitalism is an ongoing global holocaust, and those who disagree are holocaust deniers. So, how is such an abomination maintained when the exploited are so many and the exploiters so few? In the American context, racism, which was carefully introduced and sustained by state institutions, and augmented and reproduced in culture, has been the greatest barrier to progress. I believe even Heng would agree, so where does it come from? Were the growing regulations placed upon the Anglo-Jewry the result of a confluence of unfortunate, stigmatizing "practices and pressures"? Or class factors? Were the changes in the legal status of the unfree in Britain's American colonies occasioned by the English Civil War born of a growing antipathy toward Africans and unrelated to the upheaval going on in the metropole? Or were they their consequence? Did these changes create racism? Or did racism beget the changes?
Worse still is Heng's belief that, in the case of the Anglo-Jewry, racialization lead to class antagonism. The materialist view is that racial exploitation comes from class exploitation. Most race theorists see them as independent, but Heng goes a step farther. Of English sentiment toward the Jews she writes: "But when economic rationality collides with ideological constrictions that define the minority population managing capital as inferior, morally suspect, and theologically condemned, identification with capital renders the association with wealth…monstrous and troubling.” Hengonomics 101: Racism is the birthplace of class resentment. As discussed in part one, this is a theory near and dear to the hearts of fascists as they, like critical race theorists, need an ontology for class conflict. And, in the very case Heng cites, her position can be incontrovertibly shown to be wrong. (The proof can be found below.) It is in the details where theories are tested and questions find answers, so I hope you will excuse the length of this essay as the importance of this issue cannot be overstated.
According to the BBC, England was one of the wealthiest kingdoms in Europe before the Conquest, which is what made it an inviting target. This Anglo-Saxon prosperity was due to the quality of its wool, and to a lesser extent iron and glassware. They traded directly with the Scandinavians and the Franks of present-day France and Germany.
After a succession dispute in England, William of Normandy, with some justification, laid claim to the throne of England. In 1066, funded at least in part by Jewish moneylenders from Rouen, Normandy, William assembled a force and invaded England. In a medieval "shock and awe" campaign, William waged total war. "History," lamented Henry Ford (of all people), "is one damn thing after another." The Norman destruction of Anglo-Saxon England is one of the damnest. In what nowadays might be called ethnic cleansing, he continued the slaughter kingdomwide after England had surrendered and proclaimed him king.
Robert C. Stacey:
"The English leaders...met William...about twenty-five miles west of London to offer their personal submissions and to surrender the city. But William did not stop. [He] continued to plunder all the way...to London...William's armies devastated the north, waging systematic war against the civilian population."
A. L. Morton:
"[William] carried out a brilliant outflanking march...devastating the countryside as he advanced...London surrendered, a hastily summoned meeting of the Witan proclaimed William king... All the land of those who had [resisted] was confiscated and divided among William’s Norman followers...By 1069 William was ready for the next stage in the conquest, Mercia and Northumbria were goaded into revolt...this combination was defeated. The conqueror set to work, with a cold ferocity far more terrible than...the [Vikings]...The greater part of Yorkshire and Durham was laid waste and remained almost unpeopled for a generation...Above the burnt villages of the North rose the great castle of Durham to assure the permanency of the new order. The completion of the conquest was followed by a fresh confiscation of lands and a new division among the Normans...Within a few years the whole of the land of the country passed out of the hands of its old owners and into the hand of the Conqueror. As the [Anglo-Saxon] Chronicle says: 'The King gave his land as dearly for rent as he possibly could; then came some other and bade more than the other had before given, and the King let it to the man who had bidden him more And he recked not how very sinfully the reeve got it from the poor men, nor how many iniquities they did; but the more that was said about right law, the more illegalities were done.'"
In 1070, the Harrying of the North, as it was called, was complete. William then summoned his troops to Old Sarum, rewarded them generously, and sent them on to their newly seized estates. Those who had complained about excesses during the Harrying were ordered detained for 40 days before they were allowed to leave.
John Gillingham, "The Problem of Integration within the Lands Ruled by the Norman and Angevin Kings of England.":
The Norman Conquest of England resulted in the virtually total dispossession of the
old elite – an event unparalleled in European history. The massive castles and churches
built by English labour, paid for by English taxes and dues, lived in by Frenchmen, were
the monuments of a deeply divided society, one that was dramatically less integrated than
it had been at the start of the year 1066...The destruction of the old English aristocracy
and its virtually total replacement by a new francophone elite meant that, in Henry of Huntingdon’s
interpretation, 'God had chosen the Normans to wipe out the English nation.
Thus because all the English had been reduced to servitude and lamentation,
it became shameful even to be called English.'"
It wasn't only elites who suffered. The king sent his agents to every shire in England to survey his new holdings. Completed in 1086, the reports became known as the Domesday Survey.
A. L. Morton:
"Like the slaves, the freemen of Domesday [survey] were a declining class. Even in 1086 many who were free before the Conquest had come to be reckoned unfree as a result of the changes in ownership of the land, and the whole tendency of the time was to consider any peasant as a serf unless he could prove himself otherwise...After the Domesday period the free disappeared rapidly...The Normans introduced into England a body of written and rigid feudal law which was the expression of an intensified exploitation that tended to force all cultivators into the one mould, that of serfs, 'possessing nothing but their own bellies' as the saying went, and with no legal rights against the lord of the manor except that they might not be killed or mutilated without a proper trial. This meant an improvement of the status of the slave, but for the rest of the population it was a step backwards..Every trick of the lawyer was used to add to these burdens...the lord of the manor claimed exclusive rights over the village waste[lands]. When these rights were strictly enforced they meant no more turf or wood cutting by the villein and no pasture for his swine...we can apply to England the generalisation [by Pope Innocent III]: 'The serf serves; he is terrified with threats, wearied by corves [forced services], afflicted with blows, despoiled of his possessions; for, if he possesses nought he is compelled to earn; and if he possesses anything he is compelled to have it not; the lord’s fault is the serf's punishment; the serf’s fault is the lord’s excuse for preying on him. . .O extreme condition of bondage! Nature brought freemen to birth but fortune hath made bondmen. The serf must needs suffer, and no man is suffered to feel for him, he is compelled to mourn, and no man is permitted to mourn with him. He is not his own man, but no man is his!'"
As a result of the Conquest and William's legal reforms, the percentage of unfree rose from 10 to 20. It would grow to 40, and remain at that level until the year 1300.
In 1086, William once again summoned his barons to Old Sarum:
"THE OATH OF SARUM [aka OATH OF SALISBURY]
"So, on 1 August 1086, William hosted a great gathering at Old Sarum. According to the royal chronicler: 'his council came to him there, and all the landholding men of any account throughout England, whosesoever men they were. And they all bowed to him and became his men, and swore oaths of fealty to him, that they would remain faithful to him against all other men.' All the landholders ‘of any account’ would have included not only the king’s 170 tenants-in-chief, but at least some of their subtenants. Not only was this an act of homage on a scale unseen before either in William’s native Normandy or in England, but it also established a direct – and strikingly novel – bond between the king and these subtenants...if one of the powerful men of the realm were to rebel against the Crown, the primary loyalty of his subtenants would be to the king rather than to their immediate master.
"There is another reason why William may have chosen this ancient site for his ceremony. It seems unlikely to be pure coincidence that Old Sarum was where the returns from the Domesday survey were collated...By the summer of 1086 this process would have been completed and its results available to the king. This may have been deliberately timed to coincide with the ceremony on 1 August, to emphasise the fact that all land tenure depended ultimately on the king. A dramatic demonstration of William’s right to the loyalty of his subjects, the oath set a seal on the Norman Conquest of England."
One of the most disturbing aspects of the Invention is Heng's utter lack of sympathy for the colonized English. Inexplicably, she focuses on what she insists are the benefits that came to the dispossessed as a result of the Conquest and Jewish "economic superiority." It is called the Norman Invasion because that's what it was. Its leader is remembered as William the Conqueror because that's what he did: war, agony, terror, blood, carnage, death, dismemberment, animals devouring the dead and near dead, the newly widowed forced into dangerous and degrading work in order to support their now fatherless children. This is the misery which the Normans brought to England, and no doubt the natives regarded their invaders and the latter's Jewish allies with the same contempt that the indigenous of the New World felt when, centuries later, similar forces reached their shores. The Conquest was good for England in the same way slavery was good for the United States.
While Heng's concern for the Jews is laudable, her callous indifference to the suffering of the occupied Brits is troubling. Heng fashions herself postcolonial, so then why has she now defected to the imperialist camp? Absent from the pages of Invention is even so much as a pretense to scholarly objectivity. Her remonstrations on the abuse done to Jews, while appropriate, hiss and throb in holy indignation. Yet no amount of suffering by the vanquished Brits at the hands of their Norman/Jewish enemies seems to move Geraldine Heng. What emerges is a double standard in which investigatory neutrality is sidelined in pursuance of her academic agenda. Heng's sympathies alight where needed: here she loudly denounces a perceived injustice and there ignores the same or worse offense if it can't be reconciled with her project. The Conquest was a catastrophe for the English people. As we shall see, the subsequent concentration of power in the new foreign monarchy and the latter's grant of extraordinary license to the Jews will result in a level of economic exploitation rarely if ever seen theretofore, and unique in the history of that island. In order to validate her non-economic, non-essentialist theory of racism Heng has to sanction imperialism, demonize the anti-colonial struggle of the oppressed, and align not with the racially marginalized but with the racially privileged! That England insisted Jews wear a standardized marker in public which identified them, according to Heng, is an outrage--and it is! That racially privileged Jews with a near monopoly on moneylending can charge Christians in excess of 200% interest and take their homes and farms if they can't repay the loan is apparently acceptable to Heng; it comports, she maintains, with the "logic of capital accumulation" in a commercializing economy. As a result of this "logic" the percentage of unfree rose from ten in 1066 to forty by 1300, evidently this is of no concern to Heng as she doesn't mention this sickening proliferation of bondage.
Heng's cognitive dissonance is inconsonant with the goals and best practices of historiography. Moreover, the viability of her race-making, race-reification thesis hinges on its demonstrating superiority to those which assign the expulsion to other factors. To what extent anti-Norman sentiment had come off the boil by the 13th century is open for discussion, but discussed it should have been. Given that the Jews profited from these horrors and enter England on the coattails of their conquering royal protectors, how were the natives to view the them?
W. Johnson, "Textual Sources for the Study of Jewish Currency Crimes in Thirteenth-Century England.":
"The following condemnation of the Normans is from the Chronicle of Bury St. Edmunds, sub anno 1300:
'King William acquired England by force of arms; he reduced the earls to obedience; he
divided the land into counties; he disinherited the native inhabitants; he enfeoffed foreigners...
and, to be brief, he who acquired the whole country allotted its parts where, how and to whom he wished.
It seemed that under this new king and foreigner...another era had begun in England.' The
chronicler's bitterness about events more than two hundred years in his past is quite
extraordinary, and indicative of the structure of class resentment throughout the thirteenth
century."
According to Stacey, William conducted state affairs in much the same way as the Conquest.
"An unidentified monk who had lived at the royal court described William's reign:
"This King William...was a very wise man, and very powerful and stronger than any king before him. He was gentle to those...who loved God, but stern beyond all measure to those who resisted [his own] will...And he was such a stern and violent man that no one dared go against him. Earls who resisted him he placed in chains, bishops he deprived of their sees, abbots of their abbacies, and thegns he imprisoned...Among other things we must not forget the good order he kept in the land, so that an honest man could traverse his kingdom unharmed with a bosom fell [sic] of gold. No one dared kill another, however much he had wronged him, and if any man raped a woman he immediately had his genitals chopped off. He ruled over England and by his cunning it was so investigated that there was not one hide of land in England that he did not know who owned it, and what it was worth, and then set it down in his record...Certainly in his time people had much oppression and very many injuries."
Norman rule had been secured when William II, aka William Rufus, succeeded his father in 1087. With the crown he also inherited his father's Jews. The Conqueror had summoned them from the Norman capital of Rouen, perhaps as a reward for their contribution to financing the invasion. By the time of Rufus' coronation, these relatively few Jews, all then residing in London, were merchants and small-scale moneylenders. The relationship between crown and the Jews would begin well, and end in expulsion.
The Jews entered England as Servants of the Royal Chamber (Servi Camerae Regis) which placed them outside the feudal hierarchy of lords and vassals and made them answerable directly, but only, to the king. With this status they were not state officials, but the king's own private servants. They were his property (sicut res propriæ nostræ). As such, they were afforded "the king's peace" (royal protection), and enjoyed many liberties. According to Stacey, William I saw to the prosperity and welfare of his Jewish "servants," but as we shall see, this should not be mistaken for philosemitism. The Jews achieved great wealth by the crown's favor, but large portions of these profits--such as befit a king--found their way to the royal chamber.
Rufus was universally hated. He had none of his father's administrative skills and all of his cruelty. Eventually, he would run afoul of both church and court as he was seen as arrogant, corrupt, hopelessly irresponsible, impious to the point of blasphemy, and much too ostentatiously gay. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles states: “In his day all justice was in abeyance.” On a hunting trip with his younger brother and successor, Henry, an accident occurred. A stray arrow struck King Abeyance in the chest killing him instantly. (Infer as you will, but there's no evidence...)
All went well for the Jews under William I and Rufus. However, with the ascent of Henry I in 1100, things were about to get a lot better.
Once upon the throne, Henry issues a statement which would come to be known as the Charter of Liberties. In it he denounces his brother's iniquities, and insists that a new day had dawned in the kingdom. He assured his court that he loved god, would be attentive to public affairs, and would observe proper, stately decorum. Henry immediately asks Matilda of Scotland for her hand in order to reassure one and all that he was as straight as the arrow that killed his brother. They wed within months of his coronation.
Henry had three achievements which were to have impact beyond his reign: extensive judicial reform, creation of the Exchequer, and the extraordinary privileging of the Jews.
Eyres, or traveling courts, had long been in existence. These were a source of income for kings due to fees, and the seizure for the crown of the property of those who were convicted of serious crimes. The shire reeve (from which derives "sheriff") was responsible for the enforcement of the eyres' writs. One of Henry's top officials, Roger of Salisbury, who was responsible for royal finances "was probably he...who forged the...instrument of...accounting known as the 'exchequer." which initially was a semi-annual audit of royal income from the shires. The sheriffs were summoned to Westminster to account. If displeased by any, the king would replace them, often with people from the lower end of the land-holding class who would thus be loyal to him. Many low-born, or lower-born administrators, "new men," were appointed.
As more and more shrievalties were filled with these new men, a bureaucracy emerged whose members owed everything to Henry.
"Networks of Power in Anglo-Norman England," Stephanie Mooers:
"A prosopographical analysis of...the 1086 land survey, Domesday Book...and Anglo-Norman royal and baronial charters substantiate {that] Well over five hundred individuals were allied to one another by marriage and tenurial obligations and were dependent on their king for advancement. Together they formed an aristocracy of service tangibly rewarded with fiscal patronage...Henry I' s surviving Pipe Roll reveals that he incorporated all manner of useful subjects into his government and in 1130 rewarded 635 individuals handsomely. Of these, the number of [relatives, courtiers,] and barons was matched by a nearly equal number of apparently less important people...This social diversity should not obscure the fact that most of those favored by the king had acted in an administrative capacity, however small. And, Henry I' s patronage network...was surprisingly unified...and most of the remaining recipients of monetary favors formed, with tacit royal approval, a variety of ties with one another...Henry I both accepted the formation of subordinate networks of power and utilized them in the governance of his realm."
"Henry I, Lion of Justice," Tal Donahue
"The positive effect of these itinerant justices has not gone unnoticed. Kaeper
has argued that the 'legal precocity of the English monarchy' was consolidated
under Henry I, and that by introducing these...at the local level
England became one of the earliest royal institutions which provided a mechanism for
the organized preservation of the law. These justices had the authority to...inflict
punishments and convictions such as fines and collect any previously
outstanding fines. These proceedings were collated and accounted for at meetings of
the Exchequer, then recorded in the pipe rolls.”
"A Reevaluation of Royal Justice under Henry I of England," Stephanie L. Mooers:
"...The Pipe Roll of 1130 reveals that Henry I kept traditional pleas of the crown and absorbed other pleas as well. He checked corruption and inefficiency by fining his own officials, he punished diverse acts of obstructing justice, and he was closely involved in exchanges of land and legal titles to land...Early in his reign, Henry I stipulated that property disputes among his tenants-in-chief be decided in the royal court: 'henceforth, if a plea arises concerning the division or occupation of lands, and if it is between my own barons, let it be tried in my court.' By 1130, undertenants and small landholders brought him their conflicts as well, signifying expansion of royal jurisdiction and the creation of a broader base for justice."
And:
"An analysis of scattered pieces of chronicle and charter evidence, and of certain retrospective entries in the Pipe Roll of 1130, makes clear that by the middle years of his reign Henry I had brought local courts more directly under the royal umbrella by appointing itinerant royal justices to supervise many of their proceedings. He had earlier undertaken to regulate the membership and frequency of these courts...Misdeeds emendable by fine would naturally have found their way to the Exchequer court and into its formal proceedings.
"Henry I did more than has generally been thought to implement regular judicial procedures, particularly with respect to property law."
And it was property law which was to have the greatest effect. As a result of the Conquest,
England was plugged into the wider world market. Whether the reforms above were a consequence of the growing economy or its seedbed is not our task to divine, what matters is that Henry I administered a rechtsstaat, or a medieval facsimile, and one which was conducive to commerce.
Apart from the king, the greatest beneficiaries of these developments were the Jews. Upon accession, Henry issued a charter which was incomprehensibly generous. His two Norman predecessors had an informal agreement with their "servants," but Henry enhanced the privileges afforded Jews and homologated them. The Jews now had a contract, and what a deal it was.
As for restrictions, Jews could not own land (although they could be alotted a portion of the king's own land), proselytize, or trade in sacral Christian objects or anything stained with blood (as it may be ill-gotten). Also Jews could not bequeath their wealth without royal permission, which was not always granted as the estate would otherwise default to the king.
As for privileges: Jews were allowed to engage in usury (moneylending at interest) which was denied to Christians by church law. "King Henry I (r. 1100 – 1135) permitted all English Jews to travel freely without the burden of tolls or customs, the right to be tried by their peers in a court of law, and the right to swear on the Torah, among other liberties. Henry also declared a Jew’s oath to be worth that of 12 Christians, which showed the favour with which he treated England’s Jewry." Additionally, Jews were allowed to sell their pledges (lands held as collateral) after a year and a day if the debt had not been collected in full.
These benefits are hard to overstate. Moneylending was lucrative enough, but that Jews had a near monopoly enabled them to control the flow of credit--pick winners and losers, as it were--which gave them an enormous competitive advantage over Christians. Also, tolls and customs were the bane of feudal life. Exemption from these was in itself a blessing, but it also meant Jews could move merchandise cheaper than their Christian counterparts. And as Jews could not own land, the ability to liquidate their collateral made moneylending possible and profitable for them, but it also forced these lots out of their hands. This regular turnover capitalized real estate and created a lucrative credit aftermarket, which will come to play a major role in Anglo-Jewish relations. The value of one's oath being legally recognized as equal to 12 of those one lives among is difficult to conceive let alone measure. As Jews they were shielded from prosecution (although such did occur), that their oath carried so much weight certainly opened the door to royal manipulation in Henry's newly expanded judicial ambit. As their prosperity was entirely dependent on the goodwill of the crown, it's not hard to imagine that Jewish perjury could be suborned in cases of royal interest. The charter was great for the Jews, but it was even better for Henry.
It's good to be king.
Why would Henry bulletproof Jews in this way? Astride these privileges looms the king as the Jews belong to him. What a Jew possesses, the king owns. Additionally, as his servants, Jews could be taxed without resort to parliament, which was always dicey. Thus Jewish prosperity ensured quicker and more reliable access to funds. These forfeited parcels of land would also cause a redistribution of wealth from which the royal family profited handsomely. Thus the Jews were a medieval cash cow to be milked at the king's pleasure. The Jews would become phenomenally wealthy, but their situation was precarious as they were utterly dependent on the king, and as such subject to the variability of royal will and the ever-shifting axes of political power which impose upon it. Indeed, it was such dynamics that lead to the expulsion.
But for now, Henry had created a stable polity based on law and its effective and equitable enforcement, and placed his Jews under its protection and beyond its reach. Here, as ever, we find the all-too-familiar, incestuous embrace of state and capital. This sweetheart deal of a charter certainly did nothing to constrain the heedless pursuit of riches, or chasten its pursuers. Advantage would be availed, and by the end of Henry's reign the Jews would be the richest people in all of Europe.
True to his word, Henry produced an heir, William Adelin, and a daughter, Matilda. In 1120, William was to cross the Channel to England aboard a newly refitted vessel called the White Ship. He and his companions had been eating and drinking heavily that day and just before undocking, Steven of Blois, maternal grandson of the Conqueror, disembarked complaining of severe gastro-intestinal distress. The ship did not sail far before it wrecked. William died.
The widower Henry hastily remarried in order to produce another legitimate male heir but was unable. Eventually, he chose his daughter as his successor, and made his Anglo-Norman barons swear allegiance to her and any heir she might produce.
At age 12, Matilda had been married off to the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry V, and was empress at the time of her brother's death and actively engaged in imperial affairs. Five years later she was widowed and returned to Normandy and reluctantly married Geoffrey of Anjou, who had been selected by her father. Henry died in 1135, and a rival claimant made for London while Empress Matilda was entangled in France.
"Relations [had become] increasingly strained between Matilda and Henry. Matilda and Geoffrey suspected that they lacked genuine support in England...and proposed in 1135 that the King should hand over the royal castles in Normandy...and should insist that the Norman nobility immediately swear allegiance to her. This would have given the couple a much more powerful position after Henry's death, but the King angrily refused, probably out of a concern that Geoffrey would try to seize power in Normandy while he was still alive. A fresh rebellion broke out in southern Normandy, and Geoffrey and Matilda intervened militarily on behalf of the rebels.
"In the middle of this confrontation, Henry...died...It is uncertain what, if anything, Henry said about the succession before his death. Contemporary chronicler accounts were coloured by subsequent events. Sources favourable to Matilda suggested that Henry had reaffirmed his intent to grant all his lands to his daughter, while hostile chroniclers argued that Henry had renounced his former plans and had apologised for having forced the barons to swear an oath of allegiance to her."
How like a serpent's tooth! Whichever the case may be, the rival, none other than old friend Stephen of Blois, managed to convince enough of the Anglo-Norman barons, with some of whom he had conducted business, to support him. It also helps if your brother is the bishop of London. King Diarrhea was crowned in late 1135. Empress Matilda; brilliant, fearless, stubborn but adaptive, and experienced in administrative and military matters, asserted her claim and civil war ensued.
The Anarchy, as it is known, saw horrendous, widespread violence from which the Jews paradoxically benefited. Previously, Jews had been mostly involved in trade, much of it with their fellows on the continent which was disrupted by the war. As "alliances shifted back and forth chaotically between Matilda and her cousin in a debilitating stalemate of 19 long years. Stephen was unable to provide consistent protection for anyone, never mind the Jews, and communities were at the mercy of whichever side momentarily had control over them. The breakdown of law and order made travel extremely dangerous and it is believed that during this period Jews abandoned trade almost entirely in favour of money-lending." This also lead to Jews spreading out across England despite the hazards as the rival forces moved about leaving destruction and its attendant need for capital in their wake. This broadened the base of Jewish finance and a number of their new encampments became permanent.
As Norman England at this point was a failed state, some Brits took to building fortified castles; some for defense, some as staging for aggression.
Destruction and construction aplenty--business was booming, but the Anarchy was not without its crises for the Jews. When the empress held Oxford, she requested its Jews give--not lend--her a substantial sum, which they did. King Stephen then captured the city and demanded three times what had been given Matilda as punishment for disloyalty. Arguably, as Stephen was king, giving money to Matilda was treason. Many historians believe that Stephen had interacted with London Jews before the death of Henry I, and that the Jews had aided him in securing the crown. Further, it is surmised that the migration of the Jews throughout the realm had his blessing, and perhaps was undertaken at his injunction. No doubt the Jewish "gift" to the empress would have irked Stephen, although the Jews had little choice under the circumstances. The Jews balked and offered a lesser amount. Stephen threatened to burn the Jewish quarter down if he didn't get what he wanted. Whether they favored Matilda, were affronted, or just didn't want to part with that much cash, this incident speaks to how much wealth and power the Jews had amassed as they were willing to engage in a stare down with the man who was, nominally at least, still the king. Larcenous as the demand was, the Jews were in violation of the charter as they were Stephen's personal property--hideous though that be. A prominent Jew's house did burn, and they agreed to pay the full sum.
After a decades-long stalemate, weary, aging, and broke, the rivals struck a deal: Stephen would remain king for life, but would be succeeded by Empress Matilda's son, Henry. So ended the Anarchy. Stephen soon died--of gastro-intestinal disease. (Justice perhaps?)
The Jews must have been apprehensive about Henry II, but they need not have worried. The new king was going to be even better for Jews than his eponym. Henry had many challenges before him. The war had redrawn the estate map of England, and the king had to determine whether a return to status quo ante bellum was desirable or even possible as these well-armed, battle-proven Barons would not easily be persuaded to relinquish their hard-won loot. Some historians believe that much of the baronial support Matilda enjoyed was in reaction to the centralizing policies of Henry I, which Stephen did nothing to curb in the short period he ruled a united kingdom before the war. On the other hand the empress was willful and unyielding, it is hard to imagine that anyone could believe that once upon the throne she would have ceded any power. Whichever the case may be, who owned what had to be settled, and then enforced. This too would work to the advantage of the Jews.
The Anarchy was a blessing in disguise for the Jews in that they profited from it and were rarely if ever touched by the violence. But due to the great demand for capital, foreign Christian moneylenders, Cahorsins from France and Lombards from Italy, had docked in England, and the Jews now had competition.
Dave Fryett is an anarchist in the Pacific North-West. He can be reached at metrobusman@yahoo.com
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