religious orders and jews excluded

A late thirteenth-century gift of land in the parish of Waldegrave, Northamptonshire from Henry de Waldegrave to his brother Walter. Henry gives his occupation as 'pellyarius', a furrier who dealt in untreated animal and bird skins, fur, wool, hair, and feathers. The family came to prominence in the fourteenth century with Sir Richard Waldegrave (d.1410), a soldier and politician who was elected speaker of the House of Commons in 1381, and later served at the court of Richard II.

The deed includes an interesting clause designed to prevent the future alienation of the land to religious orders and Jews ('contra omnes homines [et] feminas cristianos [et] judeos', lines 8-9). This was likely inserted to comply with a law which had been drawn-up by the Lord Chancellor, Walter of Merton, in January 1269 to the effect that all 'existing bonds by which land might pass into the hands of Jews were declared cancelled; the attempt to evade the law by selling them to Christians was made punishable with death and forfeiture; and none to such effect was to be executed in future' (Abrahams, p.98).

However, its inclusion also speaks of the climate of growing fear and uncertainty which led ultimately to the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290. Anti-Semitism had been on the rise since the Massacre of York in 1190, which left 150 Jewish men, women and children dead, and in 1218 England had become the first European nation to require Jews to be distinguished from ordinary subjects by a special badge. This discrimination was particularly strong in the Midlands. As early as 1231 Simon de Montfort had ordered the Jews to be expelled from Leicester, and Derby followed suit in 1261, a full three decades before the general edict.

Manuscript on vellum, in Latin; single leaf (16.5 x 25.5 cm); single column, 15 lines of text in an elegant court hand (Anglicana), ruled in plummet, lower edge folded and tied with contemporary vellum tag (without seal), some soiling to margins and verso, ex libris annotations to verso in a later secretary hand, small pinholes to corners.

Abrahams (The Jewish Quarterly Review), 1894, VIII, i, p.98.

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Collections

13th Century

[Deed in Latin]. Gift of Henry de Waldegrave, a furrier of London to his brother Walter of land in the parish of Waldegrave, Northamptonshire,

Robert Grosseteste and the Jews.

Fragment from The Book of Psalms.

The Mabinogion.