good men, will be known, although we should endeavour to conceal them, however they may pass unrewarded; but I doubt our own bare assertions upon any of these points will be of very little avail, except in tempting the hearers to judge directly contrary to what we advanced."

It seems that lord Mansfield and Sergeant Hill were not upon the best terms. Lord Mansfield was probably annoyed by the extensive and recondite legal learning which distinguished the Sergeant.

"Sir Nicholas Bacon, when a certain nimblewitted counsellor at the bar, who was forward to speak, did interrupt him often, said unto him, There is a great difference betwixt you and me : it is a pain to me to speak, and a pain to you to hold your peace.'' (Bacon's Apothegms.)

LAWS AGAINST THE JEWS.

In that most laborious compilation, Madox's History of the Exchequer, a great body of curious information is to be found relative to the early history of the Jews in England, which has also been fully illustrated by Dr. Tovey in his Anglia Judaica. The condition of the Jews at this period was most precarious and wretched. Not only were they liable to be pillaged at the will of the King, but also to be massacred by

the populace.

At the commencement of the reign of Richard II. a dreadful transaction of this kind occurred. The King had issued an order that no Jews should be permitted to witness his coronation, which took place in Westminster Hall.

"But several of them who had come a great way off on purpose to behold the bravery of it, not caring to lose the labour and expense of their journey, and persuading themselves that being strangers in London they should pass undiscovered, ventured, notwithstanding the Proclamation, to appear at Westminster; but, being somehow or other found out by the officers of the Abbey, they were set upon with great violence, and dragged half dead out of the church.

"The rumour of which quickly spreading itself into the city, the populace believing they should do the king a pleasure, immediately broke open the Jews' houses and murdered every one they could meet with, not confining their rage to their persons, but destroying likewise their habitations with fire.

"Happy were they who could find a true friend to shelter them! All kinds of cruelty were exercised against them, insomuch that the soberest part of the citizens who had in vain endeavoured to quiet matters by themselves, sent some passengers to Westminster, desiring some assistance from the king, for fear the tumult should grow so

outrageous as to endanger the whole city." (Anglia Judaica.)

Some idea of the nature of the laws enacted at this time against the Jews may be formed from the following specimen.

"In or about the 37th year of King Henry III. it was provided that no Jew should remain in England without doing the King some service; that there should be no schools for Jews in England, except in places where such schools were wont to be in the time of King John; that all Jews in their Synagogues should celebrate with a low voice according to the rite of their religion, and that Christians were not to hear them celebrating; that every Jew should be answerable to the Rector of his parish for all parochial dues chargeable upon his house; that no Christian woman should suckle or nurse the child of a Jew, nor any Christian man or woman serve any Jew or Jewess, or eat with them, or abide in their house; that no Jew or Jewess should eat or buy flesh meat in Lent; that no Jew should detract from the Christian faith, or dispute publicly concerning it; that no Jew should have secret fami

liarity with any Christian woman, nor any Chris

tian man with a Jewess; that every Jew should wear a badge upon his breast; that no Jew should enter into any church or chapel unless haply in passing to and fro, nor should stay there to

the dishonour of Christ; that no Jew should hinder another Jew who was willing to embrace the Christian religion, and that no Jew should be suffered to abide in any town without the King's special licence, save in those towns wherein Jews were formerly wont to reside. These articles were to be observed by the Jews under pain of forfeiting their goods." (Madox's Hist. of the Excheq. i. 248.)

King John at the commencement of his reign had professed great kindness towards the Jews; but,

"In the 11th year of his reign the King began to lay aside his masque, and, finding that no new comers made it worth his while to stay any longer, he set at once upon the old covey which he had drawn into his net, and commanded all the Jews of both sexes throughout England to be imprisoned, until they should make a discovery of their wealth; which he appointed officers to receive in every county, and return to his exchequer. Many of them no doubt pleaded poverty, or pretended to have given up all; but as the tyrant was in earnest to have their last farthing, he extorted it by the most cruel torments.

"Stow says the generality of these had one eye put out; and Matthew Paris tells us that from one particular Jew in Bristol, the King demanded no less than ten thousand marks of silver,

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(a prodigious sum in those days!) which being resolutely denied him, he commanded one of his great teeth to be pulled out daily till he consented. The poor wretch, whose money was his life, had the courage to hold out seven operations, but then sinking under the violence of the pain, ransomed the remainder of his teeth at the price demanded. The whole sum extorted from them at this time amounted to threescore thousand marks of silver." (Tovey's Anglia Judaica.)

"Howell in his Londinopolis tells us, that a Jew in the reign of Henry III. having by accident fallen into a privy on his sabbath, being a Saturday, would not suffer any one to take him out, though rather a necessary work. Common humanity," observes Mr. Barrington, "should not have permitted this obstinate adherence to a religious ceremony; however, the earl of Gloucester not only suffered him to continue in this filthy condition his own sabbath, (being Saturday,) but would not permit any one to take him out on the Sunday, being the Sabbath of the Christians : the Jew, by this cruel joke, was suffocated, nor do the Chroniclers of the time reflect upon the barbarity of it." (Barrington's Ancient Statutes, p. 203.)

"The Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, was,