checking out the library book / Love - massively OT, mostly

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> wrote:
> Thanks for the recommendation.  Perhaps you might like to read
> "England's  Jewish Solution", Robin R. Mundill, Cambridge University 
> Press,2002.  While Mundill agrees with your source about the 
> traditional xenophobia of the islanders,  the fact remains that below 
> the court level Norman-French speakers who were Catholic were
> assimilated, while Norman-French speakers who were Jewish were 
> not. 
> 

Johnson has quite a lot to say about Jewry in medieval England, from
their first significant influx (with the Conquerer), through the Crown
'farming' system (they were supposedly under the Crown's direct protection
which not only saved them from local petty injustices but also allowed the
Crown to tax them to the hilt for the priveledge), through their expulsion
and on to their return under Cromwell. 

They attracted extra animosity because one of the few occupations allowed
to them was money-lending. With interest rates of 66% and up, it didn't
exactly endear them to the lenders. Once they'd been expelled the
Italians took that over and attracted as much opprobrium as the Jews had.

If I can get the book through the local library I will.


> It is a bit sad to have to use religious persecution as evidence of
> of religious belief, but we do the same to establish 
> belief in witchcraft, do we not? 
> 
 
I have a slightly different take on it.
You don't have to have a religion of your own to hate the adherents of one.
All you need is a conviction that they are a danger to you or your way of life.
Best leave folk to their own devices, says I - though if they're cursing the 
sheep and putting hexes on the milking stool, it'd be enough to wind
anybody up - where's the ducking stool?