The Jews of Lincoln

The first record of Jews in England was after 1066 when William the Conqueror brought them over from France to collect taxes from his new subjects. He trusted them. The word of one Jew was considered to be worth that of twelve Christians.

As servants or vassals of the Crown, they had complete freedom of movement and could own property in their own names.  They were not subject to ‘Christian’ law. They could hold their own courts and trials of Jews could be held under Hebraic law, independent of the English courts.

Also, they were under the protection of the Crown and could demand safety and sanctuary in any of the King’s castles in times of trouble. An attack on a Jew was considered an attack on the King. The Jews thus had a covenant with the Crown to remain in England, similar in substance to the Biblical covenant that Joshua had made with the Gibeonites that allowed them to remain in the promised land, notwithstanding that the Gibeonites had obtained the covenant by deception (Joshua 9:3-17).

However, King Saul later broke that covenant and so brought a curse on the land until appropriate restitution was made later in the reign of King David (2 Samuel 21 verses 1-11). In Lincoln, the Jews prospered, and the city became second only to London in wealth and importance on account of the financial and monetary management skills of the Jews. One Jew of Lincoln, Aaron, set up the nation’s first banking agency and built up a personal wealth in coinage equal to the annual income of the Crown. The records of loans made by Aaron were so great that after his death, a separate exchequer had to be opened up in London which took many years to process the loans made by him.

Over the next 100 years the Jews accumulated great wealth and many took loans from them. The Church took loans for construction works some of the great cathedrals and abbeys of the land which still bless the nation and bring in a huge revenue from tourists. Even the King borrowed from the Jews. Many landowners (who often were opposed to the Crown) had debts because of the money lent to them by the Jews.

These debts indirectly belonged to the Crown. In default of repayment, the Crown could seize the land and property of those who had defaulted on repayment. This led to significant resentment and tensions aimed at the Jews. A progrom (‘violent persecution’) against the Jews in England broke out in 1190 when Jews were murdered in many cities, and records of debts were destroyed in many cities such as York. As was their right, the Jews of York demanded and were given sanctuary in the King’s castle.

However, the keeper of the castle was persuaded by a mob to renege on protecting the Jews, who perished there. The King eventually restored order but was unable to recoup his losses and few were held accountable. At the same time, the Jews of Lincoln also sought sanctuary in Lincoln Castle and were saved. Of all the cities in England where Jews were being murdered, not one perished in Lincoln. However, rumours of blood libel added to the rising antisemitism. The Jews had been accused of killing a boy at Norwich. No evidence supported the allegation, but the blood libel myth began to fuel the rising flames of Jew hatred and antisemitism in every strata of society, including the Church and the Crown.

However, it was the events that took place at Lincoln in 1255 were to be pivotal, monumental and fateful not only for the Jews of England, but also for the Jews of Europe and the world. They were to reverberate for centuries after, expressed in acts of murderous antisemitism and echoed as part justification by those committing the atrocities of the Holocaust of the 20^th Century, and now even into the 21^st Century. It was at Lincoln that the King (Henry III) broke the royal covenant with the Jews and gave official sanction to the blood libel ‘myth’ i.e. that Jews ritually murdered Christian children and used their blood in ceremonies.

The Lincoln Blood Libel

In the autumn of 1255, upon hearing a report that the Jews of Lincoln had allegedly committed a terrible act in kidnapping a Christian boy, had tortured him and had drained his blood for use in a religious ceremony and afterward, had dispatched the boy’s body into a well in the grounds of a home owned by a Jew, King Henry III rushed to Lincoln to find out for himself what had been reported.

Arrested by John Lexington, the Chief Justice for Lincoln and his brother Henry Lexington, Bishop of Lincoln, the Jews, around 100, were held until the arrival of Henry. During this time the Lexingtons introduced the allegation of blood libel and elicited a confession under duress from one of the Jews, for which the Jews were accused.

Both the Church and the King stood to gain much financially by supporting the allegation. The King could ‘lawfully’ seize all the assets and property of the Jews, a considerable sum which the King desperately needed for his various enterprises both at home and in Europe; and the Cathedral at Lincoln now had its own money-making martyr.

The Cathedral subsequently erected a monument-shrine to the boy which generated a significant income from pilgrims.  Henry III was the first European king to give official sanction to the blood libel myth which was now accepted as fact.

Up until this time, the blood libel allegations against the Jews were officially treated with a scepticism by the authorities. Also, the Jews of England, being the bankers responsible for collecting the King’s taxes in coin, were under the protection of the Crown. In times of threat to their safety, Jews could demand protection in the Castles of the King located in various cities in the realm and often did so.

When Henry arrived in Lincoln and heard the details of the allegation and without any trial taking place, he ordered the immediate execution of a Jew named Copin. He ordered Copin to be tied to the tail of a horse and dragged through the streets of the city which ran red with blood.

His body was then hung up on Canwick Hill in Lincoln. This must have been a horrific sight for all, especially the Jews of the city who now had no Crown protection. The Crown now became the Jews’ greatest persecutor. The Jews of Lincoln, and other Jews from around the country who had gathered for a wedding, around 100 people, were sent to the Tower of London for trial.

Up to this point, Jews were given dispensation to try their own people exclusively under Hebrew Law, hence the building, Jews Court, in Lincoln – which still stands.  On this basis around 20 of the Jews claimed this right, believing that the covenant was still in effect. Enraged, Henry ordered the execution, again without any trial whatsoever, of the Jews who claimed this right. Later, advocates for the surviving Jews managed to secure their release without charge, but not after, it is believed, payment of a significant ransom.

The murders of Jews, not by a criminal mob, but by the highest religious and governmental authority in the land, gave the green light to the wider population to begin an unparalleled campaign of cruelty and persecution against the Jews of England. The covenant made by William I was now well and truly cancelled by the Crown and was now of no effect. Like the Jews of 1930’s Germany, the Jews had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. The Jews of England were now no longer under the protection of the Crown.

The allegation of ‘Blood Libel’ had been given official sanction and ratification not only by the King of England, but also by the Church, like the alliance of the Church and State in Nazi Germany. The Cathedral promoted the glorification of antisemitism by the erection of a shrine to the boy who had died. This powerful official sanction made by the alliance of the Crown and the Church, rippled across Europe embedding itself in the mindset of the people for generations to come.

Hundreds of years later it was still finding expression in publications in Nazi Germany such as ‘Der Sturmer’, portraying Jews as grotesque child murderers. An account of the blood libel and ‘martyrdom’ of the boy from Lincoln, whose name was Hugh, was also embedded in English literature, graphically portrayed in Chaucer’s Prioress’ Tale and formed the national mindset of absolute hatred towards the Jews which endured for hundreds of years and is still cited by many today.

England’s ‘Final Solution’

For the Jews of England, the breaking of the covenant of protection by the Crown was catastrophic. They could no longer seek sanctuary in either the King’s castles or the Church, or be given any kind of protection or justice.

The Crown progressively stripped the Jews of their rights, money, land and property, leaving them exposed to public beatings, persecutions and murder until destitute and entirely dispossessed of everything except the clothes they were wearing, they were expelled en masse from England in 1290 by edict of King Edward I, son of Henry III. England’s ‘Final Solution’ to the Jewish ‘problem’ was centuries ahead of that sought by Nazi Germany.

Jews were not to return to England for nearly 400 years under Oliver Cromwell. Providentially, three medieval Jewish buildings in Lincoln have survived. One of them, Jews Court, now serves as a synagogue, with the first meeting taking place in 1992 since those fateful days in 1255. It took around four hundred years before the covenant of protection for the Jews was reinstalled by Oliver Cromwell, and after his death, confirmed by King Charles II who in 1664 declared,

‘They (Jews) may enjoy the same favour as before, as long as they demean themselves peaceably and obey the laws.’

The shrine to the boy Hugh which had glorified antisemitism for hundreds of years, was destroyed in the English Civil War by Cromwell’s troops who, as Bible-believing Puritans, hated such idolatry. The base of the monument, however, remains inside the Cathedral. No monument or memorial has ever been erected in memory of the Jews murdered in those terrible days when antisemitism was raging, unimpeded and with royal and church approval.

In a Biblical analogy, for King Saul’s breaking the covenant of Joshua, the Gibeonites did not want gold or property, they wanted recognition and a sign of restitution in the city of Saul, Gibeah. (2 Samuel 21 verses 3-6). The history of Jews in Lincoln now went silent. Following the return of Jews to England from the mid-1600’s, Jews avoided Lincoln. It was not until 1992 that a synagogue was opened in the ancient Jews Court building, but no memorial has ever been erected to the Jews of Lincoln and England so brutally murdered in 1255.

2020: Now is the Time for a Memorial

It was not until January 2020 when a prayer meeting was held in Lincoln for Israel that a group of Christians in the city started to pray about a suitable memorial and determined that now was the time for a memorial.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem in his triumphant procession, the leaders of the Jews told him to tell the crowds to be quiet. His reply was that if they were silent, the rocks themselves would cry out.

For hundreds of years the shrine in the Cathedral had proclaimed its vile message of antisemitism. It was agreed that the memorial to the Jews should be made of stone that would cry out its message of remembrance in memory of the Jews of the city and those who in 1255, had gathered for the wedding. So, the journey began, with no money or design, but trust in a God for whom nothing is impossible. The voice of a memorial stone had waited too long to speak.

For the dream of a memorial stone to become a reality, we needed three answers to prayers:

1. Finance to buy the stone
2. A design that speaks
3. A permanent location in Lincoln

In January 2020, we had none of these.

From January 2020 there then followed a series of events and positioning of God’s people that can only be described as the miraculous choreography of the Holy Spirit to bring the dream of a memorial stone to reality.

Account of Tim Collis

For more than twenty years I had worked for Lincolnshire County Council as Team Leader of the Planning Enforcement section of the Mineral Planning Authority.

With this role came powers to access, without warrant, any quarry or mineral site in the county to inspect or assess compliance with regulations and planning conditions and prepare any subsequent actions. Any reports of non-compliance would come first to my desk which I would then allocate to team embers to investigate. This power was to fall away on my retirement in September 2023.

In January 2020 a prayer meeting for Israel, led by ICEJUK was held in the city. The church I attended had the previous year dedicated a building as a house of prayer.

It was appropriate that the first nation to be prayed for in the building was Israel and ICEJUK was invited to lead the Day of Prayer. At the prayer meeting, a number of Christians, and the leader of the Lincoln Jewish Minyan, agreed that it was time for a memorial for the Jews of Lincoln and began praying for this, but we had no funds or design and no location for the siting of a memorial.

The Cathedral at Lincoln owned a quarry within the city which I had inspected a number of times. By 2020 the extraction of stone had ceased leaving remaining stone waiting to be worked and used in restoration of the Cathedral’s’ fabric. In the Spring of 2020, having regard for its historical role in antisemitism, a representation was sent by myself and the leader of the Lincoln Jewish Minyan to the Cathedral.

It was proposed that the Cathedral, with its own cutting equipment and stonemasons could cut a fitting memorial and place it in the newly opened Dean’s Garden. The representation included the phrase, ‘Let the last stones from the last quarry have the last words’ on the terrible events that had occurred hundreds of years before. (The events surrounding the covenant broken by Saul towards the Gibeonites demonstrate that the passage of time does not negate the validity of covenants for generations). However, the Cathedral were unable to be involved in the project. This door was clearly closed.

The same Planning Department I worked in was the authority that dealt with planning applications for Lincoln Castle. My colleague who managed such applications sat only a few desks away from me. Notwithstanding the refuge provided by the Castle in the pogroms of 1190 when Jews in Lincoln were given refuge in the Castle, I was informed that strict planning laws prevented the installation of a permanent memorial within its grounds or buildings.

This door was clearly closed as well. Other doors were ‘knocked on’, which also remained shut to the proposed memorial. However, the burden for a memorial was still on our hearts and was lifted up in prayer before Father God. One thought was maybe we could ‘crowd-fund’, as the costs for a memorial and permanent location would likely be in the tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The Design for the Memorial

The answer came during a tour to Israel I went on in 2022. As part of the tour, we visited the excavations at Magdala. Central to the excavations of a 1^st Century synagogue close to the Sea of Galilee is the Magdala Stone.

Discovered in 2009, the Magdala Stone is a solid block of stone carved with scenes on its top and four sides depicting images and articles of the second temple in Jerusalem. The original Magdala Stone was carved before the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70CE and presents rare and authentic images of the Temple, reminding Jews in the far away area of Galilee of the centrality and focus of Jewish faith, Jerusalem and the Temple itself.

The words of Psalm 137 verses 5-6 flooded in, ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget it’s cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth; if I do prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.’ Jesus himself is most likely to have preached and ministered in the same synagogue. He would have seen and probably touched the Magdala Stone. Magdala is the hometown of Mary Magdalen, from whom Luke in Chapter 8 of his gospel reports that Jesus cast out seven demons.

It was clear that this was the design that we had been waiting for and one that would cry out to both Jew and Christian alike, declaring and reminding us of Jerusalem and the coming Messianic Age. The design was presented to the quarry owner who, on seeing the complexity of the carvings of the Magdala Stone, said that his stonemasons at Ancaster would be unable to carve it.

However, Phil said that he had workmen in India who would be able to carve it by hand, just as the original would have been carved over two thousand years ago. Again, Phil said that he would meet all expenses and transportation costs including transportation from Jaipur to Lincoln. For copyright reasons we are not permitted to call it a replica of the Magdala Stone and the name ‘Lincoln Jewish Memorial Stone’ was decided. Prayer two had now been miraculously answered.

The Lincoln Jewish Memorial Stone arrived in the UK in December 2023. A private viewing took place shortly after its arrival with the leaders of the Lincoln Jewish communities at the headquarters of Goldholme Stone at Ancaster. The effect of seeing the Memorial Stone was immediate, emotional and tangible. All were overwhelmed by the Memorial Stone as it was already seemingly crying out its message of remembrance, reconciliation, hope and comfort.