06 / The Expulsion of Jews from England (1290)

In 1290, King Edward I issued the Edict of Expulsion, ordering the removal of every Jewish person from England. Men, women, and children—entire families who had lived in England for generations—were given months to leave the country, taking only what they could carry. Their homes, synagogues, and cemeteries were seized. Some died during the forced departure. Others were robbed, abused, or drowned while attempting to leave. England would remain officially Jew-free for more than 350 years, until Jews were quietly readmitted under Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s.

This expulsion did not happen suddenly. It was the result of decades of church-supported hostility, legal discrimination, and theological demonization that steadily made Jewish life impossible. For 150 years before the expulsion, “Britain … was in effect a persecuting society, replete with ‘massacres, forced conversions, and a zealotry in enforcing discriminatory Church laws against the Jews unmatched in the rest of Europe.’”¹

Jews had lived in England since at least the Norman Conquest (1066). They were legally classified as servi camerae—“servants of the royal chamber.” This status offered nominal protection but also made them financial assets of the crown, heavily taxed and exploited. When kings needed money, Jews were squeezed. When popular resentment grew, Jews were blamed.

Theology Shaped Perception

At the same time, Church teaching shaped public perception. Medieval Christianity increasingly portrayed Jews not simply as religious outsiders, but as Christ-killers, spiritual corrupters, and enemies of Christian society. As we covered in the first five stories, this was not original. Jews were so often the scapegoats that one must see a demonic hand behind the plots agaisnt the very people who brought the Messiah and His Gospel into the world. Sermons reinforced the idea that Jewish suffering was divinely ordained punishment for rejecting and killing Jesus. These ideas filtered down into popular imagination and law. 

Of course, the passages showing Jewish devotion to Jesus were ignored. Who were the 5,000 who followed him in the Galilee? Jews. Who worshiped him as he entered Jerusalem, Jews. Acts records thousands of Jews professing faith in Yeshua and being immersed in water on Pentecost. Acts 9 records a revival in what is now the Greater Tel Aviv area after the miracle of Aeneas and Tabitha. It says, “All those who lived in Lydda and Sharon saw [Aeneas healed] and turned to the Lord” (v. 35). The miracle of Tabitha “became known all over Joppa, and many people believed in the Lord” (v. 42). 

The revival was all over Israel! “So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied” (Acts 9:31). This was before the Gospel was even preached to non-Jews.

Jews Treated as “Perpetual Outsiders”

Accoring to Historian John Tolan, the Jews were in integral part of English society for two hundred years. 

“Jews financed building projects, provided loans to students, and bought and rented out housing. Historical texts showed that they shared meals and beer, celebrated at weddings, and sometimes even had romantic relationships with Christians.”²

By the late 12th and 13th centuries, English Jews were subject to severe legal restrictions. They were barred from most professions, forced into moneylending (one of the few occupations legally open to them), and then resented for it. Special taxes targeted Jews disproportionately. Laws required them to wear identifying badges (Yes, the Nazis weren’t the first). Synagogues were restricted. Jewish testimony was often discounted in courts.

In 1190, during the coronation of Richard I, anti-Jewish riots erupted in London and spread across England. The most infamous atrocity occurred in York, where approximately 150 Jews were besieged in Clifford’s Tower, “One of the worst anti-Semitic massacres of the Middle Ages.”³ Many chose suicide rather than forced baptism or massacre. 

Lucrative Blood Libels 

Rather than curbing antisemitism, Church rhetoric often sanctified it. Blood libel accusations—claims that Jews murdered Christian children for ritual purposes—circulated widely, including the notorious case of Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln (1255). Despite a lack of credible evidence, Jews were arrested, tortured, and executed. These accusations were preached from pulpits and embedded in popular devotion.

Blood libels were good for the Church. The child could be declared a saint, and a pilgrimage would bring much-needed income into the city.

At the time of the [Passover] feast, Jews from all over the country gathered in Lincoln and it was then, they said, that the child was mocked, as Christ had been, crucified, stabbed to death and disembowelled, for the purpose of their magic arts. … It is believed that Hugh’s story was spread by local church officials hoping to start a lucrative pilgrimage and was subsequently approved by King Henry III who also stood to profit from it. (emphasis added)⁴

Of course, just like William of Norwich, it was proven to be a lie, along with Harold of Gloucester and Robert of Bury. But this didn’t stop the people of the day from believing the myths. Thomas of Monmouth claimed “every year, around Passover, Jews would capture a Christian child in order to torture and kill it.”⁵

Centuries of Anti-Jewish Dogma Come to a Head

By the reign of Edward I, Jewish life in England had become untenable. Expulsion was seen as the solution—removing a group long portrayed as dangerous, corrupting, and cursed. The Edict of Expulsion framed the act as a righteous response to Jewish “crimes,” echoing decades of theological justification. Just as Hitler could not have carried out the final solution without quoting the theology of Martin Luther⁶, England relied heavily on centuries of anti-Jewish Church dogma.

What is especially sobering is that this expulsion occurred in a society that considered itself deeply Christian. Church festivals were a huge part of the British calendar while Scripture shaped law. Bishops were respected by kings. And yet, the removal of an entire minority population was widely accepted—even applauded—as an act of moral purification. Might I remind us that Jesus never taught us to create Christian societies by force, but to demonstrate the Gospel through persuasion. 

A Word About the Bible

England’s Jews were expelled not because they posed a real threat, but because Christian theology had trained the culture to see them as one. Noticed that I did not say the Bible, but Christian theology as handed down by the popes and bishops, dictated to people who were not allowed to read the Bible on their own—a Bible that had been conveniently translated into Latin, a language that nobody spoke.

Let me explain: Jerome translated the Bible into Latin. We call that version the Vulgate—ironically, The Vulgate means the people, because Latin was the language of the day in the late fourth century. Over time, it turned into French, Italian, Spanish, etc. In addition, literacy rates dropped. It was no longer necessary for survival. By the seventh and eighth centuries, those who were able to read were typically members of the clergy, administrators, and nobles. 

By the year 800 CE, it was rare for the average person to be able to follow a text in the Vulgate, which was the only Bible available. This enabled the bishops to have complete control over interpretation and manipulate the people. And this was one reason why the Church leadership was terrified when people began to translate the Bible into the spoken languages of the day. Wycliff (d. 1384), Tyndale (d. 1536), and Jan Hus (d. 1415) were all persecuted or executed for translating the Bible.

Conclusion

The consequences were long-lasting. Jewish absence became normalized. Antisemitic myths went unchallenged because there were no Jews left to contradict them. When Jews were readmitted centuries later, old suspicions resurfaced easily, having never been repented of or dismantled. For centuries, no one in England knew Jewish people, so myths were continued based on stereotypes and the stories of blood libels. 

The Expulsion of 1290 shows how theological hostility, when fused with political power, leads not to faithfulness but to injustice. This is something that we need to be aware of today. It demonstrates how a majority, convinced of its righteousness, can justify removing a minority “for the good of society.” And it reminds us that persecution does not begin with expulsion—it begins with sermons, laws, and stories that dehumanize.

Abraham a Sancta Clara, the populist seventeenth-century Viennese Catholic preacher, expressed sentiments similar to Luther’s when he claimed, “After Satan Christians have no greater enemies than the Jews…. They pray many times each day that God may destroy us through pestilence, famine and war, aye, that all beings and creatures may rise up with them against the Christians.” Like Luther, Abraham a Sancta Clara believed that Jews had changed God into the devil and were themselves devils. Thus, at the intellectual heights of European Christendom, as in its lower depths, Jews ceased to be living human beings. ⁷

Remembering the expulsion of Jews from England is not about assigning guilt to modern Christians. It is about recognizing a pattern. When Jews are portrayed as spiritually dangerous, socially corrupt, collectively guilty, and ultimately not human, history shows where such thinking leads. The Gospel calls believers to humility, repentance, and love—not to the repetition of sins that once emptied an entire nation of its Jewish neighbors.

[1] Robert Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession (New York: Random House, 2010), 365.

[2]  John Tolan, “Expulsion of the Jews from England,” Museam of Jewish Heritage, accessed February 5, 2026, https://mjhnyc.org/events/the-history-of-antisemitism-expulsion-of-jews-from-england.

[3]  The Massacre at Clifford’s Tower,” English Heritage, accessed February 5, 2026, https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/cliffords-tower-york/history-and-stories/massacre-of-the-jews/

[4]  Elizabeth den Hartog, “Q-Anon in the Middle Ages: The Shrine of Little Hugh of Lincoln,” Leiden Medievalists Blog, March 5, 2021, https://www.leidenmedievalistsblog.nl/articles/q-anon-in-the-middle-ages-the-shrine-of-little-hugh-of-lincoln

[5]  Ibid. 

[6]  Emily Paras, “The Darker Side of Martin Luther,” Constructing the Past 9, no. 1 (2008): https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/constructing/vol9/iss1/4.

[7]   Robert Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession (New York: Random House, 2010), 215–216.