Any attempt to analyse the nature of medieval Anglo-Jewry during the last years of its existence must naturally involve a consideration of the Jewish community before the start of Edward I's reign. Jews had always been a small minority within the Christian population of the realm. Yet it is important to consider how widespread the Jewish community had been throughout the country, how influential, and how closely related to various strata of English society. Such factors will throw light on the Jewish community's internal structure and contacts. They will also reveal how the Jewish community made its living and what kind of business the Jews conducted prior to Edward's reign, and will expose some of the social and commercial consequences of that business.

As is well known, the medieval Anglo-Jewish community was a Norman importation. There can be little doubt that it was the Conqueror himself who first encouraged Jewish immigration from Rouen to England in the late eleventh century. By the twelfth century the Jewish pioneers had begun to inhabit the major trading towns of the country. At the end of that century it appears that the separate Jewish communities in each provincial town had started to conduct business in more rural districts. It is even possible that their moneylending activities and their search for clients made them at least partly itinerant. After the dislocation of Stephen's reign, the chronicler William Fitz Stephen observed that ‘Peace was everywhere and there emerged in safety from the towns and castles both merchants seeking fairs and Jews seeking creditors.’