The Shetar's Effect on English Law
A Law of the Jews Becomes the Law of the Land
I was sent this paper, it will stop many hearts, so to speak. Because of the format of the paper, it would be impossible to scan and save it in a usable document, however with Adobe Acrobat Reader you can read just as a hard copy, with the format unchanged. Also, to avoid any possible copyright problem, this format cannot be easily copied. I was not able to thread the document back together, after converting it to Acrobat, so you will have to view it in 5 seperate parts.
I wanted to make this an addendum to A Country Defeated In Victory, but done simply as a historical piece, by The Georgetown Law Journal, Vol. 71:1179, pages 1179-1200, written by Judith A. Shapiro (1983), not me of course. It is a link between A C D I V, and the British Colony paper I did, completely independent, by Georgetown Law University.
Transcript
Machine transcription — may contain errors. Click a timestamp to jump the audio there.
this is rejected knowledge and this is boy what is this it's called the shutters effect on English law now what this is well it comes from James Montgomery's website and I I've not read this I know nothing about it I've read I think as far as I know I've read all the other writings of James Montgomery on here so this is the only thing I've not written I've not read and the reason I have not read it is it's not written by James Montgomery it's written by someone named Judith A Shapiro back in 1983 but James Montgomery has put this thing right in the middle of all his other writings.
The Shattar's Effect on English Law. It comes from the Georgetown, ooh, Georgetown, there you go. There's a warning flag. The Georgetown Law Journal by Judith A. Shapiro, 1983. So, well, I figure since Montgomery thought it important enough to put this right alongside his other writings, right in the middle of all his writings, then I'm thinking this is probably pretty important. That's all I know about it. So, with no further ado, man, I hear some ado.
I miss reading James Montgomery himself. I wish he'd write some more stuff. What he does have is amazing. There's a lot of it. It's just he hasn't posted anything in a while, as far as I know. There's nothing on this website that Visigoth has up. Visigoth having reposted Montgomery's writings. Well, okay folks, here it goes. The Shittar's effect on English law. A law of the Jews becomes the law of the land. It starts out with a quote.
The rational study of law is still to a large extent the study of history, Holmes, the path of the law. All right, this is again by Judith A. Shapiro. One. Introduction. English law, like the English language, is an amalgam of diverse cultural influences. the legal system may fairly be seen as a composite of discrete elements from disparate sources.
After the conquest of 1066, the Normans imposed on the English an efficiently organized social system that crowded out many Anglo-Saxon traditions. That's one of those what-if moments in history. And like Hannibal, what if the Carthaginians, the Semitic people, had conquered the Romans? Here's a what if. That battle of Hastings? That was really close. King Harold of the Saxons, had he not had to fight just a few days prior, had he not had to fight a Viking invasion from another pretender to the throne, Harold Hardrada, a Viking, he fought King Harold of the Saxons beat him but then he had to march to southern England as fast as he could with his army and fend off the Normans and I'm sure they were exhausted and even with that there was a really close battle and it was only decided when King Harold took an arrow to the eye Ouch.
But the Saxons had rights. The Saxons had rights. We'll see if they get into that here. I know that King Harold of the Saxons, the king of the Saxons, you were the king of the people, but you were not a king of the land. The people owned land. Of course the Normans put a stop to all that. The Normans who were an ancillary to, of course, the Vatican system. The Norman king, William, he wasn't just the king of the Normans, he was also the king of the land the Normans would claim, and so you can't own land in the Norman system. Okay, let's get back to this. Enough of me.
The Jews, whom the Normans brought to England, in their turn contributed to the changing English society. The Jews brought a refined system of commercial law, their own form of commerce, and a system of rules to facilitate and govern it. These rules made their way into the developing structure of English law. Several elements of historical Jewish legal practice have been integrated into the English legal system.
Notable among these is the written credit agreement or Shetar or Star with two R's as it appears in English documents. The basis of the Shetar or Jewish gauge was a lien on all property including realty that has been traced as a source of the, you guessed it, modern mortgage. Under Jewish law, the sheitar permitted a creditor to proceed against all the goods and lands of the defaulting debtor.
Both, quote, movable and immovable, unquote, property were subject to disdraint. In contrast, the obligation of knight service under Anglo-Norman law barred a land transfer that would have imposed a new tenant, and therefore a different knight owing service, upon the Lord. The dominance of personal feudal loyalties equally forbade the attachment of land in satisfaction of a debt. Only the debtor's chattels could be seized.
These rules kept feudal obligations intact, assuring that the Lord would continue to be served by his own knights. When incorporated into English practice, the notion from Jewish law that debts could be recovered against a loan secured by quote all property movable and immovable unquote was a weapon of socio-economic change that tore the fabric of feudal society and established the power of liquid wealth in place of land holding.
The Crusades of the 12th century opened an era of change in feudal England. To obtain funds from Jews, nobles offered their land as collateral. Although the Jews, as aliens, could not hold land in fee simple, they could take security interests of substantial money value. that Jews were permitted to hold security interests in land they did not occupy, expanded interests in land beyond the traditional tenancies.
The separation of possessory interest from interest in fee contributed to the decline of the rigid feudal land tenure structure. At the same time, the strength of the feudal systems inherent resistance to this widespread innovation abated by 1250, Scootage had completely replaced feudal services. Scootage. That's S-C-U-T-A-G-E. I hope I'm saying that right. Scootage had completely replaced feudal services.
tenant obligations had been reduced to money payments. And, as the identity of the principles in the landlord-tenant relationship became less critical, a change in the feudal rules restricting alienability of interests in land became possible. One catalyst for this change may have been the litigation surrounding debt obligations to Jews secured by debtors' property. The Jews in Norman England had a specified legal status.
They alone could lend money at interest. They were owned by the king, And their property was his property. The king suffered their presence only so long as they served his interests. I hope you guys are listening to that because you people who are going to blame the Zionists, the Jews for everything, you just heard your refutation because the same thing's going on today, folks. They were owned by the king and their property was his property. The king suffered their presence only so long as they served his interests. That's exactly it.
That's why Jewish people today, rich, doesn't matter how rich they are, they're not going to be allowed into the private eastern seaboard clubs of the Rockefellers and the Melons and the DuPonts. Forget about it. Only the rich Gentiles can go in there, the ones who are really in charge. Well, closer to the top, continuing. They served his interests primarily as a source of liquid capital. Because money lending by Christians was infrequent, English law had not established its own forms of security.
The Jews operated within the framework of their own legal practice, which was based on, you guessed it, Talmudic law, developed over centuries of study, but the peculiar status of the Jews as the crown's de facto investment bankers encouraged the King to direct his courts to enforce the credit agreements made by Jews under their alien practice. This nourished the growth of Jewish law in a way that blurred the absolutes of feudal land tenure.
Previously, inalienable rights in land gave way to economic necessities, and the English ultimately adopted the Jewish practices. This note examines a moment of contact between two peoples when necessity proximity and social upheaval prompted a cultural exchange between the Jewish merchants and moneylenders and those they served.
The note describes the effect on English law brought about by the King's Jews as they executed and registered debt instruments assigned and enforced the underlying obligations, and generally survived by money lending, the only profitable occupation open to them. It first reviews the Jewish credit agreement and its function in Anglo-Norman feudal society.
it then suggests a rational explanation for a development in medieval English law, heretofore perceived only as an anomaly, that the early writs of debt, which were for recovery of money, use terminology more appropriate to an action for recovery of land, this confusion now appears to be merely the linguistic expression of an innovation in the law due to the development of an action to recover alternative relief that is repayment of money lent or award of collateralized land.
Finally, the note focuses on the incorporation of Jewish law into English practice through a series of 13th century cases involving the same Jewish litigant. Jewish debt procedure had by then become part of everyday business in England. Even as the Jews began to be excluded from money lending, Their procedures were adopted into the general English law governing debt registration and collection.
In 1275, the statute De Judeismo forbade the Jews usurious practices. In 1285, the statute of merchants formalized creditor remedies that paralleled the provisions of the Jewish Shetar. In 1290 the Jews were expelled but their credit practices remained. Two. Jewish credit agreements in feudal England. A. The Shetar in Jewish law.
The law of the Shetar developed and elaborated by 500 A.D. in the, you guessed it, Babylonian Talmud, and to dates the Norman conquest by six centuries. Historically, the Shetar Hav, or generally just Shetar, was an instrument that established formal obligation either in contract or in debt.
At the moment that a debtor acknowledged his indebtedness through a sheitar, a general lien was established, encumbering all the debtor's property as security for ultimate repayment. In case of default, the creditor could proceed not only against movable and immovable property held by the debtor, but also against encumbered land that the debtor had transferred to a third party.
The debt attached to the land and the creditor's lien had priority over subsequent alienations. Because of the severe obligations imposed by the she-tar, the contents of the instrument followed a standard form designed to ensure authenticity and precision. Each she-tar recited standard clauses of obligation. The creditors write to customary modes of execution, and a final phrase stating that the document was not merely a form, but a statement of an express contract.
Inserted into the form language were the names of the parties, the sum and the currency of the debt, and the date of the obligation, thereby indicating the creation of the lien. To prevent fraud, The document was signed by two witnesses who knew the parties. A nation of wanderers, in adapting to a variety of cultures, determined that the language in which the Sheytar was written should be irrelevant to its legal validity. Thus, in dealings with a surrounding gentile populace, Jews were content that loan agreements be formalized in Latin or in the Norman French of early England.
Generally, the Jewish parties and witnesses would attest in Hebrew and the Christians in French or Latin. Although neither party may have understood the other's language, The document had the full force of law in both communities. The crucial limitation on debt collection under Jewish law was that a creditor had a lien against the debtor's land and not against the debtor's person. Personal freedom was not to be diminished by a debt obligation.
and a creditor could not enslave one who was unable to repay him. The origin of this practice was the biblical protection of the dignity of debtors, as embodied in the injunction not to enter the debtor's home to receive a pledge, but rather to wait outside for the debtor to bring it out. This was the structure of the law of obligation that the Jews brought with them to England. B. Normans in England, a centralizing monarchy.
Unique among its feudal neighbors, the Norman duchy was governed as a centralized unit with no baron strong enough to challenge the duke's authority. Although the Norman Duke owed fealty to the King of France, that King lacked effective power over his vassals, who independently governed their own territories. In Normandy, however, feudalism was strictly territorial.
A pyramid of land tenure embodied a system of military obligations ascending from knight through baron to duke, from whom all land and authority derived. On the continent, and later in England, William the Conqueror set out to maintain and strengthen this Norman system of centralized governance. With the conquest, the Normans introduced to England a well-organized central authority. The early governance of conquered England concentrated power in the king.
As William the Conqueror imposed the rigorous order of the feudal system, He avoided the system's tendency toward decentralization and disintegration that had sapped the power of the French kings. He limited the power of his tenants-in-chief by granting each of them land holdings scattered over the realm instead of large contiguous tracts. He governed the counties through sheriffs who depended on him for their power.
He maintained a national militia, thereby shunning total reliance on the loyalty of his tenants-in-chief. And he had all significant landholders swear an oath of primary allegiance to him. This concentration of power in the monarch grew during the successive reigns of a series of strong kings who increasingly assumed more power, military, legislative, and judicial, over the nation. C. The Jews under the Norman Kings.
Outsiders in feudal society, both Anglo-Norman and Continental, The Jews were not part of the network of land-based obligations. They could not own land. On the continent, they were owned as chattels by the local lords who protected the Jews' possessions on the understanding that what a Jew owned, he held for the ultimate use of his lord. The Jews in Norman England, however, were within the exclusive domain of the King's personal control, living at his sufferance and according to his wishes.
The first settlement of Jews in England came in the wake of William the Conqueror. William determined that he should be the sole owner of Jews in England. Others could own Jews only with the King's permission as expressed by Royal Grant. The Laegis Edwardi Confessoris, a 12th century compilation and translation into Latin of laws attributed to Edward the Confessor, contains a statute that, if not that ancient, adequately describes the Norman period.
Be it known that all Jews, wheresoever they may be in this realm, are of right under the tutelage and protection of the King, nor is it lawful for any of them to subject himself to any person of wealth without the King's Jews and all their chattels are the king's property. There it is, folks. I'll let you rewind that, but you want to know the situation we're in? You go back and listen to that last sentence.
And if anyone withhold their money from them, let the king recover it as his own. There it is. As chattels of the king, the Jews retained their own property at his pleasure. In the 13th century, Henry de Bracton wrote, quote, a Jew cannot have anything of his own, because whatever he acquires, he acquires not for himself, but for the King, because they do not live for themselves but for others, and so they acquire for others and not for themselves."
That sounds like circular reasoning there. They lived where the King permitted, and when they died their property vested in the King. Because the ecclesiastical courts could proceed only against Christians, the Jews operated free of the church's usury prohibitions. The civil authorities openly permitted the Jews to lend money at interest and enforced their credit contracts both for principle and interest. Sure, why wouldn't they? Ultimately, it goes back to the king. What a deal! What a racket!
As the Jews prospered, the king did too. extracting from them the fruits of their monopoly on usury. Because it was worthwhile to protect Jewish subjects for their potential money value, successive sovereigns clarified the status of Jews. Charters of Henry I and Henry II granted individual Jews rights to reside in England, to buy and sell goods, and to possess all lands, feats, purchases, and pledges, coming into their hands.
Subject to estate taxes, Jews were permitted to inherit property and loans. Richard I's charter, granted in 1190, confirmed these rights. John affirmed the early charters in 1201. That's the Pope that gave England to the Vatican in 1213. John affirmed the early charters in 1201. extending their coverage to all Jews and adding the right to hold quote unquote mortgages.
Under John's charter a Jew was free quote quietly to sell his gauge where it be certain that he has held it for a full year and a day unquote. The charter further clarified that in suits between Jews and Christians litigation rights were explicit and, in some cases, advantageous to the Jews. Again, that's ultimately because the king gets their stuff. What a racket!
The quote-unquote bare oath on the Torah of a Jewish defendant sufficed to rebut a charge against him by a Christian plaintiff unaccompanied by witnesses. A Christian defendant similarly situated might be required to, quote, wage his law, unquote, with compurgators. A suit against a Jewish defendant was tried by a jury of his, quote, unquote, peers. And although a Jewish plaintiff could use a writ to substitute for a required witness, A Christian plaintiff could not.
Man, that just sounds so much like today, huh? Where people dealing with the corporations, for example. The corporations have all these advantages in court that the people don't. That sounds a lot like it. The corporations are persons. The corporations today, they have all the benefits of personhood, but none of the accountability. the real people, the little people, the little American slaves, the individuals. You have none of the rights but all of the accountability. That's where we're at. Okay, continuing.
Trials involving Jews and Christians could be held only in the king's courts while jurisdiction of disputes between Jews remained with the Jewish courts. but the Jews had fewer rights in themselves and in their possessions than did the least vassal to the king. The underlying reality was that the Jews were no more than the embodiment of the king's accounts receivable. Jews were subject to periodic tallage and tithing when the king required them to turn over money that was held ultimately on his behalf.
The king preserved the Jews and their investments as representing his own financial future. The royal charters in effect permitted the Jews use of money much as their Christian neighbors were permitted use of the land. At the king's pleasure, they could derive a livelihood by lending money at interest. Because Jews could lend money at interest, they were available to finance excursions to continental Europe and on crusade.
In addition to the extraordinary fiscal demands of the crusades, the nobles still owed night service. Taxpaying began to replace personal service in the practice of scootage, that is, money assessed from landowners in lieu of night fees. For this, too, the Jews' assets were liquid and available for a fee. It was convenient to the realm to have a source of credit. It was further convenient that the profits from the loan arrangements forbidden to Christians be available to the King via his Jews.
And it was to the King's advantage to enforce the contracts of credit made by the Jews. 3. The Jewish presence in the developing law of commerce. A. In the King's Court. The most striking development in English law during the 12th century was the expansion of the royal courts. Under Henry II, the King's Court assumed an increasing share of litigation that previously had been heard only by local courts. This was done through the issuance of royal writs, Originally, executory commands to the sheriff, but, with time, increasingly representing a formal summons initiating action in the royal courts.
Glanville's treatise, written at the close of the reign of Henry II, is in part a form book of writs instructing the proper method of litigation and procedure. The categories of writs reflect the precise boundaries of the then recognized forms of action. Among the writs developed during this formative period was the writ of debt. Initially, litigants most commonly used the writ to collect loans of money.
Because the Jews were the predominant money lenders, they would have been the predominant users of the early writ. But the Jews were not merely the unintended beneficiaries of a fortuitous royal innovation. Taken together, the coincident circumstances of the Jews' relation to the king, the then unique form of relief afforded them by their sheytars, and certain peculiarities in the wording of the early writs all suggest that the Jews contributed in heretofore unexplained ways to the development of the early writ of debt.
in accord with their traditional practice. When the Jews lent money, they did so under written credit agreements documented in the traditional form of the Shetars. Because of his relation to the Jews, the King had manifold interests in enforcing these Shetars. And because, quote, what the Jews held, they held for the King, unquote, What the Jews lost through litigation or to an evasive debtor was lost to the king. Nor were these losses small.
The Jews accumulated immense wealth through their money lending and the king's exchequer relied heavily on the Jews as an important source of tax revenues. and the king had an even more immediate stake in the revenues from court costs. When the debtor refused to pay, the king enforced the Jewish contracts through his royal court at a cost of one-tenth to one-sixth of the sum at issue. Yet, despite the royal interest, The questions posed by litigation of the Shetar were not questions that English practice was designed to solve.
When a Jew sought to enforce a Shetar, he asked alternative forms of relief. Payment of the money owed or award of the land and chattels securing the debt. But this request apparently was an aberration from English practice of the early 12th century. A Jew's request tracked the terms of his unique contract. Only a Jewish creditor of a defaulting debtor would be forced to seek either money or security.
because only his alien procedure left the debtor in possession of the land pledged to secure the debt. It appears likely that, at that time, a Christian litigate asked for only a single remedy, either a thing or money. A Christian creditor took and kept possession of the land until the debt was satisfied. In case of default, therefore, his suit would be for money only.
If the debtor wrongfully put him out of possession of the land securing the debt, English practice barred the Christian creditor from bringing an assize of novel to recover the land, i.e. the English system relegated him to a suit only for the underlying debt. Conversely, the debtor regained the possessory rights to his property once the underlying debt was satisfied.
If the creditor refused to return the security, the debtor's suit would be limited to return of the pledged property. A Jewish creditor was apparently the only person in the realm who would seek execution on a significant personal obligation by either transfer of a thing or payment of a sum. a Jewish creditor's ability to ask two forms of relief gave him more than the obvious advantage over a Christian creditor.
Important procedural privileges in here in the option of getting real relief for a personal obligation. The conventional litigant suing on a personal obligation and seeking only money, could not get judgment if the defendant did not appear in court. In contrast, any litigant seeking an award of land would be awarded judgment if the defendant had been absent without excuse after three successive summons.
After the defendant's third unexcused absence, the land was, quote, seized into the king's hand, unquote, for fifteen days, and then adjudged to the plaintiff. Consequently, only a litigant demanding land was assured complete relief, regardless of a defendant's attempts to evade the court's power. Other litigants could gain access to defendant's property only through successful attempts to secure defendant's presence through disdraint of chattel and lands.
This disparate justice dissatisfied Bracton, who proposed that the courts grant relief to claimants of personal obligations who were faced with a defaulting defendant by the disdraint and award of the defendant's property. But because this solution was not generally adopted until 1832, a Jewish creditor's avenues of enforcement remained unique in medieval England, enabling him to pursue his claim to judgment even though the defendant did not appear to answer the writ.
The Jews asked for a remedy that the English system was unaccustomed to offering. This challenge was met by the king, who himself commanded enforcement of the terms of the Sheytar. The king first manifested his interest in a command to pay in the form of a writ presipe. which, if disregarded, conferred jurisdiction on the king's court. By the sheytar's terms, the debtor had the choice of paying the debt or relinquishing the property which secured the obligation.
To enforce this choice, the king's command would have had to reflect the divergent remedies, money or property. Eventually this form of writ presipe evolved into the writ of debt. The king's intervention on behalf of his Jewish moneylenders may explain and in turn have produced some anomalous terminology in the early development of the writ of debt. The wording of the writ evidences the intrusion of land interests into personal litigation.
In the writ, as exemplified in Glanville, the king ordered the sheriff to, quote, order N to give back justly, and without delay to R, a hundred marks which he owes, and of which he divorces him unjustly, unquote. Professor Van Canegum observes that this wording closely resembles that of the classic presipe for land.
Specifically, the writ of debt adopted the words quote-unquote unjustly deforses from the presipe. To quote-unquote de-force is to wrongfully withhold possession of land from one who is lawfully entitled to it. The impropriety of the transplanted terminology, therefore, lies in the sense of the wrong conveyed by the words, quote, unjustly divorces, unquote, which calls for an immediate remedy for an egregious interference with land tenure.
but the underlying complaint was default on a debt. Thus the terms of the writ appear to ask for inappropriate relief. Noting the apparent confusion, Van Canegum indicates that Jews were the principal beneficiaries of the early writ. The quote-unquote misuse of the words quote-unquote unjustly deforses in the early writs conveys more than just the verbal conservatism of the early common law.
Use of the term implies an underlying land obligation securing a certain sum which strongly suggests the existence of an arrangement like the Jewish she-tar. Here, however, the king himself compaid payment in money, or in land, to be made by the debtor found in breach of a private agreement. The term, quote-unquote, de-force, then, communicates the Jews' ability to circumvent the procedural limitations of personal actions.
R. L. Henry has suggested, alternatively, that the writ used, quote-unquote, de-force, to connote a breach of the king's peace, that is, as an empty incantation, with the single purpose of lending substance to a claim of the king's jurisdiction. The king did not customarily intervene in private disputes. The purported fiction was that withholding payment on a debt breached the king's peace.
Henry argues that the formalism was dropped once the action was well established and the fiction no longer necessary. But the invocation of the king's peace has another explanation, derived from the unique relationship between the king and his Jews. Because the early actions at debt were principally on behalf of Jews, and because Jews claimed their rights in the king's name, all obligations owed to them were ultimately owed to him.
Withholding a debt owed, even indirectly, to the king is a breach of the king's peace that requires no legal fiction. If the price of the writ was paid, The king's courts were ready to stand behind a Jewish creditor's complaint in debt. To enforce the debt was to restore peace to a small part of the realm. Use of the term de-force symbolizes the court's interference with rights in land.
Used to imply breach of the peace It invokes the image of the King's wrath. The otherwise puzzling formalism signaled an institutional conflict. In the courts of feudal England, land tenure had been distinct from personal rights in law. Jews were asking the courts to award land. to compel transfer of property to satisfy a personal obligation before final judgment.
Because the king was, in effect, the real party in interest, the interference with land tenure was done with his consent and support. Lacking the king's hand the action would have been impossible. Only the king's interest in enforcing Jewish creditors' remedies could make possible this invasion of land beyond the limits of relief in personal actions.
The traditional Jewish procedure governing lean accompanied debt was an innovation in feudal society. The embryonic legal system lacked the terminology to describe a private judicial proceeding for money that jeopardized possession of land. From this came the hybrid use of the term de-force. De-force disappeared from the King's court shortly after the time of Glanville approximately the time when Jewish litigation had been removed to the newly established Exchequer of the Jews.
In the seniorial courts, the term fell into disuse by 1290, one year after the expulsion of the Jews from England. Though this may be adventitious, The decline of the phrase and its underlying royal obligation coincides with the decline of the Jews in England. When the King's Jew was no longer the creditor, default on a debt no longer implicated the interest of the royal treasury.
the Exchequer of the Jews. At no time during their two-century presence in England were the Jews perceived as more than a necessary evil, that is, a source of capital. The Jews, welcomed as moneylenders, were despised as creditors. So long as the king enforced the Jews' debt instruments, the best way to avoid obligation was to attack the Jewish community, destroying people and records.
Sporadic incidents culminated in riots against the Jews during the coronation of Richard I in 1189. and in the massacre at York in 1190. Besieged by the mob, hundreds of the York Jews chose death over baptism. Pay attention folks because this is what happened in 19th century Russia, 20th century Russia. This is what happened in the Third Reich in Germany and this is what's Lamentably, horribly.
It looks like it's going to happen here in America soon. History repeating itself. Besieged by the mob, hundreds of York Jews chose death over baptism. It's going to be, I sure hope not, but it soon might be New York Jews. Please, Lord, no, don't let that happen. The warriors, joining religious hatred to their economic motivation, were quick to destroy the deposits of sheytars held within the Jewish community. At York, the riot was instigated by Richard Malibice, a nobleman deeply indebted to the Jews.
After 500 Jews died in the citadel, Malibice led the mob to the cathedral, where they destroyed the debt records, which had been held for safety in the chapter house. When the smoke cleared, both creditor and debt had been eradicated. Following his return from the crusades and release from captivity, Richard I was displeased by the attacks on his Jewish moneylenders.
Because duplicates did not exist for many of the documents destroyed, the king was unable to collect debts that would otherwise have escheted to him. He was concerned with preserving a record of debts owed to ensure their payment. By 1200, this concern prompted the establishment of Arce, i.e. Registry of Bonds, and of the Exchequer of the Jews. Archae were established in all towns with sizable Jewish populations.
The registries consisted of chirograph chests and four chirographers, two Christians and two Jews, and their clerks. the chirograph procedures were strongly reminiscent of traditional Jewish practice. All bonds were to be formalized in the presence of the official witnesses and immediately duplicated. The original and duplicate were usually written on the same skin and were divided by an irregular cut producing corresponding tallies.
The archay retained the duplicate, which was called the pes or foot of the bond, while the creditor retained the original with the debtor's seal affixed. When the debtor satisfied the debt, the creditor gave the debtor a deed of acquittance. The debtor could then prove satisfaction of the debt only by delivering the acquittance to the Arche, for which he obtained the Pes, which cancelled the debt.
No debt, acquittance, or assignment of debt was valid unless filed in the Chirograph Chest, which could be opened only by order of the Exchequer, or in the presence of a majority of the chirographers. The king's exchequer oversaw the king's accounts. A contemporary treatise described its organization and duties. The dialogue of the exchequer.
Litigation of Jewish debt instruments comprised a substantial portion of the Exchequer's business, so much so that a separate branch was created to try Jewish causes. Beginning in 1198, Custodes Judaeorum, or Wardens of the Jews, were appointed, subordinate to the Exchequer. The Custodes Judaeorum were the first justices of the Jews.
They exercised exclusive jurisdiction over all matters involving Jews and Christians, except those in which the Jew was criminally accused. During the 13th century, they were charged with enforcing the Shetars of the Jews. This special branch of the Exchequer could effectively ascertain the amounts due the King's treasury via the King's Jews.
The Chirograph chests preserved the bonds of debt and the deeds of acquittance, and the Arche preserved the Chirograph chests. Many of the pleas brought before the exchequer of the Jews still survive, and a substantial body of legal paper memorializes the interaction of the 13th century British legal system with the Jewish law of the Sheytar.
Surviving records indicate that the exchequer of the Jews presided over matters arising from the full range of interactions between Christians and Jews. The primary document offered to prove the transfer of interest in land and the establishment transfer or satisfaction of a debt was the Sheytar, C, in the matters of Koch-Hagen, C-O-K-H-A-G-I-N.
The records of the Exchequer reveal the tensions between several elements. The king's thinly disguised economic interest the court's struggle between formalism and alien law, inter-religious suspicions, and everyday venality. Within the pleas of the Exchequer of the Jews, the appearances of one recurrent litigate, Koch Hagen, sometime chief rabbi, serve as an exemplar of the cultural contact between Jew and Christian.
Koch's changing fortunes illustrate not only the limits of the Jews' personal freedom in English society, but also the extensive reliance on Jewish legal practice in the King's court. Cock's first appearance was in 1272, when the Queen, through her clerk, claimed from him £100 in ready money.
Instead of paying immediately, Cock acknowledged debts to the Crown, amounting to £100, but not in ready money, and asked that the King's Council render judgment. To support the Queen's claim, the Queen's agent appealed to the King's Council, the Queen's Council, and the eyewitnesses to the making of the agreement. Koch agreed to pay the debt in two installments and named four Jews as sureties.
If he defaulted, they equally with him would be subject to disdraint of their lands, debts owing, chattels, and their bodies. In 1273, Cock appeared with several others to pay a partial sum to delay the tallage assessed in the Easter term of the first year of Edward I's reign. they asked respite for the greater part owed, and agreed on a penalty that each would owe in default.
Later that year, the court noted that the appointed date had passed without payment of talage or penalty. The penalty was assessed and paid. One year later, Koch Hagen appeared as co-surity to receive custody of Jos Bundy, a Jew who was charged with lending, quote, money to Christians by blank tallies, unquote. That is, leaving blank the amount due until after the debtor had signed.
Additionally, Bundy was charged with having lived for some time in Rayleigh, without the king's license. For this offense, all Bundy's goods and chattels were forfeit to the crown. When Bundy failed to appear for his appointed court date, the court found Cock Hagen and his co-surity, quote-unquote, in mercy. In 1275, the king notified his justices that he had granted all of Koch Hagen's possessions as gifts to his, quote, dearest consort, Eleanor, Queen of England, unquote.
She was to receive all of the Jews' debts owing and all his goods and chattels. These were forfeit because Koch Hagen was excommunicate for refusing to submit to trial, quote, according to the law and custom of the jury, unquote. Edward conditioned this gift to Eleanor upon her making good to the king before Christmas, quote, the arrears of the last tallage assessed upon him the Jew, unquote. By 1282, in the tenth year of Edward's reign, Koch was again doing business.
In that term, Koch summoned Roger de Ling to answer for the principal and interest owed on a debt represented by one chirograph sworn to be duplicated in the London chirograph chest. In the same year, Koch's real estate deals apparently proliferated. In return for a fee interest in a plot of land and a house in London, he exchanged a nine-year term on a farm in Essex in which he had a liveried interest.
The farm had been obtained, quote, on account of diverse debts, unquote, of the former owner, a knight. The prior agreement transferring the farm, was duly enrolled at the Exchequer. For his new property, Cock Hagen agreed to pay yearly, at Easter, quote-unquote, one gilly-flower to the former tenant, and also to render, quote, to the capital lords of the fee the services do, and wanted therefore, in discharge of all secular services, customs, and all things exacted and demanded."
The two charters, granting respectively the properties to their new owners, contained the warranties, witness attestations, seals and signatures required by the law of the Sheytar. The court received these elements as proof of the agreement's validity. The court also recorded that the Queen's attorney was present to give her consent and acknowledgement to Koch Hagen's document.
Koch Hagen's last appearance is as one of a group of the descendants of Master Elias, joining together to acknowledge, by their she-tar, the acquittance of an ancient debt to their father. As his heir, they released the debtor, quote, from the creation to the end of the world, unquote. quote, by spontaneous and unanimous consent, unquote, they discharge the debt as fully paid. The surviving records of the Exchequer of the Jews cover a limited period, 1220 to 1284.
Koch Hagen's experience is representative in so far as it illustrates personal and religious disputes sheytars of property transfer, debt registration and acquittance, and a royal conveyance whereby his goods and arguably he himself were granted to the Queen. The Exchequer enforced the law, quote, according to the customs of the jury, unquote, for nearly a century until the expulsion in 1290.
Over time, the alien ways of the Jews had become the subject of everyday litigation in the King's courts. 4. Conclusion. The Exodus and What the Jews Left Behind. Ruling during an era of socio-economic change, 1272 to 1307, Edward was wont to legislate accordingly, and Edward was weary of the Jews.
Thus he issued laws forbidding the Jews from holding real property, denying them usurious practice, and ordering them to wear distinctive dress and identifying badges. Does that sound familiar? Even as he restricted Jewish money lenders, Edward expanded the universe of non-Jewish money lending.