11 - THE GATHERING STORM

Summary

The king's coffers were now well supplied. Yet throughout his life, Henry III exhibited a remarkable talent for spending more than he possessed. Besides taxation and the income from escheats, in March 1233 he turned to the Jews to provide even further money. The Jews had been used the previous year to finance loans from Italian merchants. The intention in 1233, as on that earlier occasion, appears to have been to use Jewish money to fund subsidies to the king's allies in France. On 2 March, a Jewish tallage of 10,000 marks was announced, £1,000 of it to be paid by Easter 1234, the rest at £2,000 a year thereafter: a scheme witnessed by des Roches. Not only was this the heaviest single tax as yet demanded from the Jews, but it fell upon those least able to pay, the great Jewish money-lenders of Norwich and Hereford being exempt by virtue of the heavy fines they had already made with the crown. The tallage appears to have been part of a wider attack. In April 1233, whilst the king was spending Easter at Canterbury, he issued legislation restricting the rate of interest on Jewish loans to twopence in the pound per week, insisting that loans be made by cyrograph not tally, prohibiting the use of church goods as security and ordering that Jews unable to find pledges for good conduct by Michaelmas be banished from the realm.