Halting and then walking firmly on his feet, showing his hands clenched as if with palsy and then flinging open his fingers, the Jew claimed gifts and oblations from the crowd that flocked to St.Frideswide's shrine on the ground that such recoveries of life and limb were quite as real as any that Frideswide ever wrought.
Sickness and death in the prior's story avenge the saint on her blasphemer, but no earthly power, ecclesiastical or civil, seems to have ventured to deal with him.

A more daring act of fanaticism showed the temper of the Jews even at the close of Henry the Third's reign.

As the usual procession of scholars and citizens returned from St.Frideswide's on the Ascension Day of 1268 a Jew suddenly burst from a group of his comrades in front of the synagogue, and wrenching the crucifix from its bearer trod it under foot.

But even in presence of such an outrage as this the terror of the Crown sheltered the Oxford Jews from any burst of popular vengeance.

The sentence of the king condemned them to set up a cross of marble on the spot where the crime was committed, but even this sentence was in part remitted, and a less offensive place was found for the cross in an open plot by Merton College.
[Sidenote: Expulsion of the Jews] Up to Edward's day indeed the royal protection had never wavered.