Feudal England in 1189: Society, Towns and the Jewish Communities
When Richard I was crowned at Westminster on 3 September 1189, he inherited a kingdom of roughly 2.5 million people built on a steep social pyramid known as feudalism. The king sat at the top, holding all land in his own right; below him came tenants-in-chief (the great barons and bishops), then sub-tenants and knights, and at the base the unfree peasants who actually worked the soil. Land was the currency that bound it together. Those who held land owed service in return: armed knights for the king’s wars, days of labour for the lord’s fields, and a steady stream of cash payments at moments of family change.
England in 1189 was a feudal society of roughly 2.5 million people. The king granted land in return for knight service (military service) or labour service (work on the lord’s fields). Failure to perform service could lead to forfeiture — the loss of land back to the lord.
Homage, Knight Service and Forfeiture
A new tenant began his tenancy by performing homage. He knelt before his lord, placed his hands between the lord’s and swore to be his man. In return the lord granted him a fief — an estate of land. The grandest tenants, the tenants-in-chief, did homage directly to the king and owed him knight service: typically forty days’ armed service a year. Lower down the ladder, peasants performed labour service — ploughing, harvesting and carrying for the lord’s demesne (the home farm) on set days each week. If a tenant refused his service, rebelled, or committed a serious crime, his land could be taken back through forfeiture.
The Countryside: Peasant Life
More than nine in ten English people in 1189 lived in the countryside. The typical village was farmed under the open-field system: two or three great fields divided into long strips, with each peasant household holding scattered strips so that good and bad land was shared. Crops rotated each year — wheat or rye in one field, barley or oats in another, the third left fallow to recover. Common pasture, woodland and meadow were used by all. Most peasants were villeins (unfree), tied to the manor and unable to leave without the lord’s permission. They paid rent in labour (week-work and boon-work at harvest), in kind (eggs, hens, grain), and in cash. A small minority of free peasants held their land for money rent and could move on.
Life was hard. Famine followed bad harvests; a single wet summer could push a village to the edge. The lord’s manorial court enforced custom and punished offences. Yet the manor was also a community: the priest baptised, married and buried the villagers; the alewife brewed; the smith shod oxen. The peasant economy fed the kingdom and paid for the king’s wars.
Towns and the Economy
Towns were small by modern standards — London, the largest, had perhaps 25,000 people; York around 8,000 — but they were the engine of trade. A borough charter from the king or a great lord turned a market settlement into a self-governing borough, with the right to collect its own tolls, hold a regular market, and choose its own bailiffs. By 1189 around a hundred chartered towns dotted the kingdom. Wool was the great export — raw fleeces moved through Boston, Lincoln, York and London to Flemish and Italian buyers. Imports came back: wine from Gascony, cloth from Flanders, spices and silks through Venice. Towns also housed the craft guilds — weavers, tanners, bakers, fullers — whose ordinances set quality standards and trained apprentices.
Towns paid an annual sum called the farm of the borough straight into the royal exchequer. They were also a tax reserve: when Richard needed to raise his crusade or, later, his ransom, royal officers turned first to the wealthier boroughs and Jewish communities. Borough charters were therefore a two-way bargain — self-government in exchange for cash. The Cinque Ports of the south coast received special privileges in return for ship service to the Crown.
The Anglo-Jewish Community
A small Jewish community lived in around twenty English towns — principally London, York, Lincoln, Norwich, Lynn and Stamford — perhaps 5,000 people in total. They had been brought to England by William the Conqueror after 1066. Their legal status was distinctive: in law they belonged directly to the king as his property and were under his personal protection. This protection had a price. Jews could not own land or join most craft guilds, but they were permitted to lend money at interest, an activity the Church forbade Christians. They became the principal moneylenders to the Crown, the great barons and the higher clergy. Their loans helped finance castle-building, royal campaigns and the rebuilding of cathedrals at Norwich and St Albans.
Antisemitism was widespread, fuelled by religious hostility, the resentment of debtors, and lurid rumours such as the false ‘blood libel’ first circulated at Norwich in 1144. The Crown profited heavily from Jewish moneylending: Henry II had taxed the community at extraordinary rates, and Richard inherited that habit.
The pogroms of 1189–90 began at Richard I’s coronation banquet on 3 September 1189 and reached their worst point at York’s Clifford’s Tower on 16 March 1190. Around 150 Jews died there. Indebted Norman gentry led by Richard Malebisse then burned the moneylending records held in the cathedral.
The Pogroms of 1189–90
Richard’s coronation triggered the worst antisemitic violence in English history to that point. A delegation of Jewish leaders arrived at Westminster Hall to present gifts; they were refused entry, beaten, and rumours spread through the city that the king had ordered an attack. A London mob burned Jewish homes and killed those they found. Over the winter of 1189–90 the violence travelled north — Norwich, Lynn, Stamford, Lincoln — reaching its climax at York on 16 March 1190, when around 150 Jews who had taken refuge in Clifford’s Tower were killed or chose to take their own lives rather than be murdered.
Students often write that the 1189–90 attacks were spontaneous bigotry. English Heritage research on Clifford’s Tower shows otherwise. The York massacre was led by indebted Norman gentry — particularly Richard Malebisse — who immediately afterwards rode to York Minster and burned the bonds (the written debt records) that were stored there. Wiping out the moneylenders also wiped out their debts. Antisemitic feeling around Richard’s coronation and crusading fervour gave the violence its religious cover, but the engine was debt politics.
After the violence Richard was furious — not because Jews had died, but because his property had been destroyed. The king ordered an inquiry, fined some of the rioters and set up the archae, chests in which fresh copies of every loan would be kept under royal oversight. The Crown’s grip on the Jewish community tightened, and royal exploitation through tallages (special taxes) intensified through the 1190s.