Wild stories floated about of children carried off to be circumcised or crucified, and a Lincoln boy who was found slain in a Jewish house was canonized by popular reverence as "St.Hugh." The first work of the Friars was to settle in the Jewish quarters and attempt their conversion, but the popular fury rose too fast for these gentler means of reconciliation.

When the Franciscans saved seventy Jews from hanging by their prayer to Henry the Third the populace angrily refused the brethren alms.
[Sidenote: The Jewish Defiance] But all this growing hate was met with a bold defiance.

The picture which is commonly drawn of the Jew as timid, silent, crouching under oppression, however truly it may represent the general position of his race throughout mediaeval Europe, is far from being borne out by historical fact on this side the Channel.

In England the attitude of the Jew, almost to the very end, was an attitude of proud and even insolent defiance.

He knew that the royal policy exempted him from the common taxation, the common justice, the common obligations of Englishmen.