Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE
JEWS.
Before Edward returned, in 1289, from his three
years' absence in France, he made a new vow of
crusade, a device which obtained him a grant of an
ecclesiastical tenth for six years. The crusade itself
was never undertaken. The expulsion of the Jews,
in the following year, took more money out of the
kingdom. Popular opinion had been so strong
aiust them that their lives were in peril. The
Franciscans were the champions of the Jews, just as
they would have been of any other down-trodden,
persecuted race, out of pure love for their divine
Lord. They usually settled in the Hebrew quarters,
and, on one occasion, saved seventy Jews from death,
by interceding for them with the king. The price
they paid for this charitable deed was the refusal of
the people to give them alms.1 The Father of all
Christians had set them an example by taking the
hated race under his protection. There were 110
Jews in England from the days of Edward till Cromwell.2
In connection with the death of Queen Eleanor,
in 1290, may be mentioned the crosses which
Edward erected to her memory at every place where
her coffin stopped on its road from Lincolnshire to
Westminster. These crosses wrere nine in number,
i'iz.t at Lincoln, Northampton, Stony Stratford,
AVoburn, Dunstable, St. Alban's, Waltham, Cheap,
and Charing. Each was made of stone, and
1 Green, Histwij of the English People, p. li»8. - Ibid., ]>
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