Instances occur of fifty per cent.

paid for money.[*] There is an edict of Philip Augustus, near this period, limiting the Jews in France to forty-eight per cent.[**] Such profits tempted the Jews to remain in the kingdom, notwithstanding the grievous oppressions to which, from the prevalent bigotry and rapine of the age, they were continually exposed.

It is easy to imagine how precarious their state must have been under an indigent prince, somewhat restrained in his tyranny over his native subjects, but who possessed an unlimited authority over the Jews, the sole proprietors of money in the kingdom, and hated on account of their riches, their religion, and their usury; yet will our ideas scarcely come up to the extortions which in fact we find to have been practised upon them.

In the year 1241, twenty thousand marks were exacted from them;[***] two years after money was again extorted; and one Jew alone, Aaron of York, was obliged to pay above four thousand marks;[****] in 1250, Henry renewed his oppressions; and the same Aaron was condemned to pay him thirty thousand marks upon an accusation of forgery;[*****] the high penalty imposed upon him, and which, it seems, he was thought able to pay, is rather a presumption of his innocence than of his guilt.
* M.Paris, p.

586.
** Brussel, Traite des Fiefs, vol.i, p.