England under the Angevin Kings, Volumes I and II

A large share of the funding for this commercial and architectural progress came from the Jews. Jewish settlements grew rapidly in number and influence under Henry II: Pipe Rolls from his first five years list Jewries at Norwich, Cambridge, Thetford, Bungay, and an unnamed Suffolk location (almost certainly Bury St Edmund’s), in addition to the London, Oxford, and Lincoln communities recorded in the previous reign; before Henry’s death, important Hebrew colonies existed at Lynn, Stamford, York, and many other sites. Winchester’s Jewish population was so large and prosperous that a writer in Richard’s early years called it their Jerusalem. Dramatic Jewish population growth led Henry to issue a 1177 decree allowing Jews to establish burial grounds outside every English city’s walls, ending the prior practice of sending all dead to London for burial. Legally, Jews were the king’s chattels; in practice, they controlled the worldly affairs of a large share of England’s Christian population and a substantial portion of the realm’s wealth. Their loans funded countless trading ventures and the construction of many grand churches. The abbey church of S. Edmund was rebuilt largely with money borrowed at exorbitant interest from Jewish lenders. When Abbot Hugh died in 1173, he left his convent in deep fiscal bondage to two wealthy Jews: Isaac son of Rabbi Joses, and Benedict of Norwich. In 1187, the sacred vessels and jewels of Lincoln Minster were redeemed by bishop-elect Geoffrey from Aaron, a wealthy Lincoln Jew who had held them in pledge for seven years or more. That same year, Aaron died; his treasure was seized for the king, and much of it sent overseas. The ship carrying it sank between Shoreham and Dieppe, a loss so severe that treasurer Bishop Richard Fitz-Nigel recorded it as a major misfortune; Aaron’s affairs still appeared prominently in royal accounts two years later. His house, still standing at the head of Lincoln’s Steep Hill, is a prime example of the all-stone domestic architecture that Christian townsfolk had barely begun to adopt, but which was already widespread among Jewish communities.

Beyond these material developments, the same period witnessed remarkable achievements in historical writing and learning. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s romantic Historia found uncritical acceptance among 12th-century writers; Alfred of Beverley, Geoffrey Gaimar, and Wace all incorporated his mythical narratives into their works, with Wace’s Roman de Rou eventually superseding Gaimar’s earlier Estoire des Engleis as the standard verse history of the Norman dukes. These romantic histories, with their blend of fact and fantasy, shaped the way medieval Englishmen understood their own past.

Among the most distinctive literary figures of the age was Gerald de Barri, better known as Giraldus Cambrensis. A native of the Pembrokeshire marcher lordship of Manorbier, Gerald was educated at Paris, entered Henry II’s service accompanying and describing the king’s Welsh campaigns, and made an unsuccessful bid for his uncle David’s former see of S. David’s after the bishop’s death, a failure that embittered his later years. He later served Richard I, accompanying the king on Welsh campaigns, before retiring to a life of letters in 1202 to produce a remarkable body of topographical and historical works, including his Itinerarium Cambriae and Descriptio Cambriae.

Alongside these literary achievements, the period witnessed revolutionary changes in higher learning. Cambridge emerged as Oxford’s chief rival in the late 12th century, its origins as a settlement and its religious houses providing the foundation for a new center of learning. Students and masters gathered under increasingly organized conditions, following the traditional trivium and quadrivium curriculum. This rapid growth of the studia generalia formed part of a broader revolutionary movement that was transforming European universities.

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