‘Yet still it will remain a question why the Jews were banished at this particular time.’ Thus wrote De Bloissiers Tovey in the early eighteenth century when concluding his history of the medieval Anglo-Jew. However, Tovey did not supply an answer to that fundamental question and passed on to discuss the readmission of the Jews to England, ‘leaving this mystery of state to more skilful decypherers’. To provide such an answer is still a serious challenge; and ultimately it will always be open to debate. Some of the preconditions which most historians suggest always surround the expulsions of minority groups were certainly present in England in 1290. Many of these were, for instance, similar in nature to those visible at the expulsion and outlawing of the KnightsTemplar in 1307 and even at the Dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth century. They ranged from a deep suspicion and fear of heresy and even magic, to a distinct predilection for listening to rumour about the minority concerned. The background to such events obviously included economic envy, jealousy of the outsider's position within society, and the marshalling of public and theological opinion against the minority.

Clearly there were many factors which had led to the ostracism of the Jewish community of late thirteenth-century England. Dr Gerd Mentgen has recently redrawn attention to the fact that over a century ago B. L. Abrahams discussed the many motives behind the Expulsion. Abrahams pointed out that many of the contemporary chroniclers gave varying explanations for the Expulsion. The latter could be seen as a concession to papal pressure; as the result of the efforts of Queen Eleanor;