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1. Crucifixion and Conversion: King Henry III and the Jews in 1255: Part 1

In the first part of this Fine of the Month, David Carpenter examines the literary and historical context of one of the most shocking events of the reign of Henry III, the purported ritualistic crucifixion of a Christian boy by the Jews of Lincoln. In the second part, to follow in February, he explores what the Fine Rolls tell us about this most puzzling ‘crime’.

⁋1The supposed crucifixion in 1255 of a little Christian boy by the Jews of Lincoln, in macabre parody of the crucifixion of Christ, was for Jews and Christians alike, although for very different reasons, one of the most shocking events in the reign of King Henry III. ¹ For the Jews it had appalling consequences. One named Copin, who confessed to the crime, was hung, having first been tied to the tail of a horse and dragged for a long time through the streets of Lincoln, his body becoming broken and lacerated with stones. A little later, eighteen more Jews suffered the same fate in London. Meanwhile, the body of the ‘victim’ had been laid to rest by the dean and canons of Lincoln in the cathedral, where it performed miracles and became known as ‘Little Saint Hugh’. The episode inspired a contemporary ballad in 367 lines of French verse ² and took up no less than eight pages in the Burton annals, far more than were given to any other event in the reign of Henry III. ³ Matthew Paris’s account took up three pages and appeared as a continuous narrative from June through till November, instead of being broken up, in his normal fashion, into a series of chronological bulletins interspersed with other information, a good indication of the story’s riveting effect. ⁴

⁋2The affair has excited less interest amongst some later historians. It was not mentioned at all by Sir Maurice Powicke in either his Henry III and the Lord Edward or The Thirteenth Century, his volume in the Oxford History of England, books published respectively in 1947 and 1953. ⁵ It is mentioned in the more recent histories by Michael Prestwich and David Carpenter but there too could have been given more weight. ⁶ In works about Jewish history and anti-semitism, on the other hand, the Lincoln crucifixion features at large, and, of course, is the subject of a fine article by Gavin Langmuir, published in Speculum in 1972. ⁷ Langmuir (perhaps a little over critical) pointed to factual inaccuracies in the account of Matthew Paris, inaccuracies that is over and beyond his belief in, and detailed description of, the actual crucifixion. Paris was clearly wrong, for example, about the actual date of the boy’s disappearance. ⁸ This, however, was a secondary theme. Langmuir’s main point was that Henry III’s trial and conviction of the Jews represented the first occasion on which any European ruler had affirmed the truth of such allegations. And even today, it gives one a start, to read in Henry III’s letters of this ‘horrible crime’ and of an ‘infant lately crucified’. ⁹ All this added to the toxic mix of prejudice and profit which was to lead to the eventual expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290. In securing Henry III’s damning verdict, Langmuir highlighted the devastating role played by the king’s steward, the knight John of Lexington, who examined Copin and extracted his confession. A central purpose of his article was thus to understand John’s role by considering his career and family background, hence the title of the article, ‘The Knight’s Tale of Young Hugh of Lincoln’.

⁋3The aim of this paper, split between two ‘Fines of the Month’, is to explore further the circumstances and causes of the king’s intervention through placing it within the context of the more general events of 1255. By looking at the pressures on Henry, as well as his pre-occupations and priorities in this year, we may get a little closer to understanding how and why events developed as they did with such terrible consequences for the Jews.

⁋4A brief outline first of what seems to have happened. On 31 July 1255 a little Christian boy, named Hugh, disappeared in Lincoln. His mother, a widow called Beatrice, searched for him and was told he was last seen playing with some Jewish boys. She raised the alarm and accused the Jews of capturing her son for the purpose of ritualistic crucifixion. ¹⁰ The fact that large numbers of Jews had gathered in Lincoln (in fact for a wedding) gave some credence to the charge. Suspicion hardened to certainty when Hugh’s body was discovered on 29 August down a well. ¹¹ His injuries seemed consistent with crucifixion, and a blind woman who wiped her eyes with the bloodstained fluids from the body immediately recovered her sight. The dean and chapter of the cathedral claimed the corpse and carried it off for burial beside the recently deceased bishop, Robert Grosseteste, who was himself already revered as a saint. No action, however, had yet been taken against the Jews. This awaited the king who arrived in Lincoln on 3 October whereupon his steward, John of Lexington, secured the confession from Copin with the fatal consequences we have seen.

⁋5That the belief in Jewish kidnap and crucifixion spread so rapidly was due, of course, to the widespread conviction that such things did indeed happen. The first known accusation was levelled against the Jews of Norwich in 1144, and led to the creation of ‘Saint William of Norwich’, whereafter many other supposed killings followed in England and abroad. Between 1144 and the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290, Robert Stacey has found at least a dozen allegations that Jews murdered Christian children recorded by English chroniclers, hagiographers and royal justices. ¹² That, however, the Lincoln murder was investigated by the king, and its truth affirmed, owed a good deal to the special circumstances of 1255, as we will now see.

⁋6At the start of 1255 Henry III had reasons for satisfaction. He had just returned to England after a delightful meeting with the king of France, Louis IX, in Paris. He had set Gascony in order, and had accepted a papal offer of the throne of Sicily for his second son, Edmund. The only problem was money, for Henry needed lots of it to make the papal offer a reality. To that end a parliament, where Henry might appeal for funds, was summoned for Westminster in April. Before it met, we get a first glimpse of the king’s religiosity which was to be such a key feature in the events of the year. For in March, Henry left Westminster for the monastery of St Albans. ¹³ He was not simply staying there en route to somewhere else. Rather, St. Albans was his destination for having remained there for six days, he returned to the capital. Clearly he was on a pilgrimage to Saint Alban. Matthew Paris gives a vivid picture of his conduct.

⁋7‘Each day and night, with much light [from candles] and with great devotion, he prayed for himself and his son Edward and his other friends to the blessed Alban as the proto-martyr of his kingdom.’

⁋8Paris went on to mention the king’s gift of two precious palls (called baldekins) and a choral cope decorated with gold. As so often, record evidence supports his testimony, for on 9 March, the king wrote to his treasurer, Philip Lovel, telling him to bring to St. Albans an embroidered cope worth £10 (perhaps £100,000 in modern money) so he could offer it at the shrine for himself and his children. ¹⁴ Paris concluded his account of the visit by saying that no king, not even Offa, had given as many palls to the church as had King Henry III. ¹⁵

⁋9If Henry was hoping that Saint Alban’s intercession would bring him success at the parliament he was disappointed, for no money was forthcoming, and the Sicilian business was adjourned to another parliament scheduled to meet at Michaelmas. ¹⁶ In the meantime, Henry embarked on a tour of some of his favourite residences; in May he was at Marlborough and Clarendon and in June at Woodstock. He then moved on to his Northamptonshire houses at Silverstone, Geddington and King’s Cliffe, where there is some rare evidence of him (and Queen Eleanor) actually hunting. ¹⁷ It was now mid-July, and according to his normal pattern, Henry would have returned to his southern palaces or perhaps gone on pilgrimage to the East Anglian holy sites. Instead, Henry began a slow journey to the north, a journey which was to end at Wark in Northumberland, near the Anglo-Scottish border. The reason for this expedition was that Henry was hearing some very alarming news about his daughter, Margaret, who was married to King Alexander II of Scotland. Margaret, like Alexander, was in her mid-teens, and she now complained that she was being badly treated by her governors, being kept in the gloomy castle of Edinburgh and denied marital access to her husband. Both Henry and his queen were doting parents, and nothing was more calculated to stir their passions than news like this. They had to go north to sort matters out. ¹⁸

⁋10It was this northern journey which provided the context for Henry’s intervention in the Lincoln case. On 31 July, the day of little Hugh’s disappearance, he was at Nottingham; on 29 August, the day the body was discovered, he was at Newcastle. Between these two dates we get another remarkable insight into Henry’s pre-occupations and religious outlook. On 4 August, at Warsop in Nottinghamshire, he announced in a letter his firm intention of going north to see the king and queen of Scotland whom ‘he had not seen for a long time and wished to see with the greatest desire of his heart’. ¹⁹ On the same day, he wrote to the Cistercian monks, who were holding their general chapter, expressing his need for God’s support, and his duty to rule in his name.

⁋11‘Since’, the letter ran, ‘the government of kingdoms cannot prosper well nor be happily administered without him in whose disposition are all kingdoms and by whom all things are governed, we beg you most urgently that, for our state and the state of our queen and our children, you offer beseechingly the devout intercession of prayers to the All Highest that he might deign to direct our acts so mercifully to the praise of his name and the exaltation of the Catholic faith, so that having consummated the curriculum of this present life, we may obtain the rewards of eternal happiness’. ²⁰

⁋12Since the king’s host at Warsop, from where this letter was issued, was none other than John of Lexington (he was lord of the manor), and since John’s brother, Stephen of Lexington, was the abbot of Clairvaux and thus at the very top of the Cistercian order, it seems highly probably that John inspired this letter, although the king doubtless absolutely believed in what it said. ²¹ Henry’s duty was to rule ‘for the exaltation of the catholic faith’, and what more atrocious assault could there be on that faith than the crucifixion by Jews of a Christian boy in mocking parody of the crucifixion of Christ? Once Henry heard that such allegations were being made at Lincoln, he was bound to very concerned. And it was not long before he did indeed hear about them. In the narrative of both the ballad and the Burton annals, Hugh’s mother, having set Lincoln alight with her accusations against the Jews, had then left the city to put her complaint to the king. Doubtless, in the absence as yet of any body, the civic authorities had been reluctant to take action. Langmuir dismisses the story of the mother’s expedition as ‘very implausible’, ²² but it is difficult to see why, especially when the account in the Burton annals shows knowledge of the Scottish journey: Hugh’s mother, the chronicler declared, ‘set off for the king in Scotland and flinging herself at his feet, crying and lamenting, made her complaint’. ²³

⁋13The mother’s complaint also fits perfectly with Henry’s decision, made by 18 August, to return south via Lincoln, once he had finished his Scottish business. On that day, he ordered wine to be stocked both at Lincoln against his arrival, and also at the places he would stay on from there to Westminster. ²⁴ Henry had returned from the north via Lincoln in 1237, but had neglected to do so both in 1244 and 1252, taking the route (by which he had come in 1255) via Nottingham and Northamptonshire. It is possible that Henry was drawn to Lincoln on this occasion by the miracles supposedly being worked at the grave of Bishop Grosseteste, who had died in 1253, miracles which drew his brother Richard of Cornwall there in 1255. ²⁵ But Henry never seems to have shown any interest in this cult, and the desire to investigate Hugh’s disappearance was surely at least an additional reason for the visit. Certainly that would fit perfectly with the dates. Hugh disappeared on 31 July, which leaves plenty of time for Beatrice’s search in the town and northern journey before Henry issued the order on 18 August, this when he was at Newburgh priory, having spent the previous week at York, some seventy odd miles from Lincoln.

⁋14The ballad gives some fascinating detail about Beatrice’s meeting with the king, detail which given the strictly contemporary nature of the poem (Henry is wished a long life) and knowledge of Lincoln topography, should not be lightly dismissed. ²⁶

⁋15‘Quant ele vint devant le rei Henrie (Qui Deu gard et tenge sa vie!) A ces piez mult tost chéie Et pitosement le cria mercie:

⁋16‘Sire, si vus pleast oïr: mon fiz fu emblé Des Jus de Nichole en un vespré En pernez garde, si vous plest par charité.’

⁋17Verai son serment, fist issi: ‘Par la pité Deu! C’il est issi Cum conté as ore ici, Les Jus murrunt sanz merci.’

⁋18‘Et si tu mentu as Sur les Juz de tel trespaz, Par seint Edward, ne dutez pas, Je [Recte Le?] même le jugement tu averas.’’ ²⁷

⁋19What is striking about this testimony is that King Henry does not accept the allegation in any unquestioning way. If the Jews have taken the boy they deserve to die without mercy, but if the mother is accusing them falsely, then by Saint Edward, she deserves the like judgement. If this is true, then Henry, at this stage, was acting in the vein of previous monarchs, across Europe, who had never endorsed belief in Jewish crucifixion stories. The same was true of the pope, who had gone further when it came to stories that the Jews used human blood in their rituals, and had actually condemned them. ²⁸

⁋20There may well have been people close to Henry who themselves doubted the existence of such rituals. Henry’s confessor was quite probably the Dominican friar, John of Darlington, and the Dominicans were later to intercede for the Jews imprisoned in the Tower of London. Indeed, John himself was responsible for the release of one of them, probably after converting him to Christianity. ²⁹ There was also the king’s brother, Richard earl of Cornwall. Early in 1255, in return for a loan, Henry had actually handed custody of the Jews in England to Richard. This meant he received the financial proceeds previously due to the king, and thus had every reason to maintain the Jews as a going concern. ³⁰ Richard was not with the king on his northern journey, but was in touch with him. He was certainly well informed about events in Lincoln, and perhaps sympathetic towards its Jewry, because two of his agents were actually Lincoln Jews. ³¹ What is more, Richard actually visited Lincoln during the crisis. We know this from the Burton annals which in the middle of its account suddenly says that ‘at that time’ Richard came to the city ‘for the sake of a pilgrimage to Saint Robert, in whose presence the divine clemency had deigned to work diverse miracles’. ³² The annalist says absolutely nothing about Richard’s attitude to the Jewish accusations, then shaking the town, from which one can probably infer that he gave them no support. His scepticism may well have been a factor in shaping Henry’s measured response to Beatrice, Hugh’s mother, when she came before him. The king’s concern to establish the truth may also help to explain another remarkable fact, namely that by 27 August, he had summoned to join him at Lincoln, on his return from the north, none of other than master Rostand, a senior papal diplomat who had come to England in connection with the Sicilian affair. Presumably Henry wanted him to help with the investigation. ³³ It was typical of Henry, in perplexity, to turn to the papacy for support.

⁋21According to the ballad, Beatrice reacted to the king’s threat ‘mult dulcement’, and appealed to Christ to be the judge. ³⁴ It is worth reflecting for a moment on her role, for if ever there was an empowered woman, it was she. In a better cause her conduct would seem wholly admirable. For many at the time, it was wholly admirable. Fired by love for her son, and making, as the ballad put it, ‘si grant cri’, ³⁵ it was she who began the rumour of capture and crucifixion, and it was she, through her dramatic and courageous northern journey, who fixed the king’s eye on events, and persuaded him to visit Lincoln. Later, Matthew Paris says that with her ‘constantly prosecuting her appeal before the king’ (now back in the south), God revenged himself on the Jews and eighteen were executed in London. ³⁶ Later a Jew was released only after ‘the mother of the boy’, acknowledged that he was not guilty of the murder. ³⁷

⁋22For Beatrice, and the whole course of subsequent events, the key moment was the discovery of the body with the marks of crucifixion upon it, for this vindicated everything which she had been saying. Ironically, according to the ballad, she was not there to witness her tragic triumph, because she had yet to get back from the king. It was only after Hugh’s burial in the cathedral that

⁋23‘Tost apres vint la mere De la curt, od doleruse chere, Pur quei le cors ne poeit vere, De son cher fiz que ele ont chere’. ³⁸

⁋24That the body, on being found, was thought to bear the marks of crucifixion, performed miracles, and was born at once by the dean and canons, in ululating procession, to the cathedral, shows that the ferment Beatrice had stirred had in no whit abated in her absence. It is equally a measure of that ferment, and of the king’s concern for what was happening, that he was informed of the discovery absolutely straight away. The body appeared on 29 August. On, or soon after, 1 September, Henry re-affirmed his intention of going to Lincoln, and said he would be there on 23 September. Langmuir thought Henry could not have known about the body by the time of this announcement, but surely the reverse is the case. ³⁹ Lincoln is only some 150 miles from Newcastle upon Tyne where Henry was on 1 September, and a messenger could easily have covered that distance in three days. What makes it almost certain that the king was acting in the light of the extraordinary news, is that the letter in which he announces his intention of being in Lincoln on 23 September is actually a summons to join him there sent to the abbot of Westminster, the senior judge, Roger of Thirkleby, and the household stewards Ralph fitzNicholas and Bertram de Criel. Clearly they were wanted to help with the investigations. ⁴⁰

⁋25In actual fact, Henry was not in Lincoln on 23 September for the Scottish business took much longer to settle than he anticipated, and this raised a terrible prospect, namely that he would not reach Westminster in time for the feast of the translation of his patron saint, Edward the Confessor, on 13 October, a feast he always celebrated at the abbey. Henry faced up to this possibility on 13 September when he sent orders from Wark, explaining that ‘urgent affairs in parts of Scotland’ might make him miss the feast, and giving detailed instructions for its celebration in his absence. ⁴¹ The bishops of Salisbury, Norwich, Bath and Chichester were all to attend with neighbouring abbots and priors; the customary offering of the king, queen and his children, namely 36 gold coins of Murcia, was to be attached to the silver cross on the High Altar; one plate of gold, weighing one ounce, was to be offered during mass ‘as if the king was present’; food, as customary, was to be given to paupers filling the two royal halls; and all the processions of London with candles and other adornments were to come from the city to Westminster.

⁋26In the event, Henry finally left Wark on 21 September, having made a crucial decision. There was time for both. He would both get to Westminster by 13 October and visit Lincoln along the way. ⁴² His time in Lincoln, however, would be short, because, now he saw he could get there, Henry was absolutely determined not to miss the feast. That shortness had a major influence on what happened. Nonetheless, that Henry, under pressure of time, still decided to go to Lincoln, although it was not on the direct route to Westminster, shows the importance he attached to events there, which brings us to a closer examination of his pre-occupation with the Jews in 1255, and the remarkable evidence about that on the fine rolls.