In the year 1290, when King Edward proposed to his Parliament that a fifteenth of all movables should be granted him by clergy and laity alike, and at the same time demanded a tenth of all spiritual revenue, his request was only complied with on the express condition that he would banish the Jews out of the country. The great expulsion, which followed in the autumn of the same year, has always seemed to me an event of a very curious and interesting character, and one deserving a more elaborate explanation than usually falls to its lot. It is quite clear that Parliament dearly wished to be rid of these aliens in race and religion, and, at the same time, the King could not have been altogether unwilling to fall in with the desires of his people, for, considerable as the tax might be, it was quite insufficient to compensate him for the great and permanent source of revenue upon which his forefathers had been wont to rely. The matter is popularly explained on the score of religious bigotry: the people, it is said, are ignorant fanatics, led on by a less ignorant but more fanatical clergy, and the King shares in the fanaticism of his people. This explanation is not untrue, but it is not the whole truth. I am quite sure that the deep-rooted hatred of the Jews in mediaeval England was not due to bigotry alone, any more than the feeling against them in Europe to-day is solely due to such a cause.