Lincoln was home to an important and vibrant Jewish community in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Fortunately for us, this community has left behind a remarkable trail of evidence in our national and regional archives. Past histories of Lincoln’s Anglo-Jewish community have been dominated by the story of Little Hugh of Lincoln, for whose death 19 innocent Jews were executed in 1255. While evidencing the increasingly difficult circumstances in which the Anglo-Jewry lived prior to their expulsion from England in 1290, the surviving records provide some fascinating insights into the dynamics of Jewish life, the Jews’ religious, social and business interactions with one another, and their encounters with their Christian neighbours, the Cathedral clergy and the Crown’s officials.
For many years now, Lincoln has been home to the Lincolnshire Archives, one of the UK’s largest regional collections, which preserves the manuscript records of the medieval city, cathedral and diocese of Lincoln. In 2023, Professor Louise Wilkinson of the Medieval Studies Research Group received funding from the University of Lincoln’s QR Collaborations Scheme for a pilot project to survey the archival holdings relating to the medieval Lincoln Jewry that are held locally. She received valuable assistance from Dr Dean Irwin, our visiting fellow, who acted as academic advisor, from Simon Neal, our archival researcher, and from Jessica Holt, our research assistant. The project surveyed and compiled a handlist of documents relating to the medieval Jewish community that are held in Lincoln. We also hosted a free talk and document workshop at the Lincolnshire Archives in June 2023 to showcase its remarkable collections. In the longer term, we hope that this initiative may aid long-standing plans for an exhibition that is warmly supported by the head of Lincoln’s Jewish community.
A major output of our project has been the first handlist of documents held in the Lincolnshire Archives on the medieval Jewry. Simon Neal has produced English summaries of the Latin documents (some of which also contain Hebrew or have Hebrew records associated with them) that contain references to members of the medieval Jewish community. Simon worked carefully through a range of original single sheet deeds, as well as entries in cartularies and other miscellaneous documents. He also consulted microfilm copies and transcriptions of cartularies for Lincolnshire religious houses held elsewhere that are also available for readers to consult at the Lincolnshire Archives. The records of the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln Cathedral proved to be particularly fruitful, since they contain references to local Jewish families, their neighbours, their associates, their business partners and their residences. These include, for instance, a portion of a thirteenth-century chirograph that recorded the notification of a grant by Robert le Turnur to Jacob, son of Leo, a Jew of Lincoln, of some land in the parish of St Michael on the Mount, which lay next to Jacob’s house (Lincolnshire Archives, D&C, Dij/76/2/47). A notification of a grant by Lincoln’s famous female castellan, Lady Nicholaa de la Haye (d. 1230), to Peter the Woad Seller, of her land and houses in the parish of St Michael also carefully recorded how this property lay near the land formerly of Moses son of Benedict, a Jew of Lincoln (Lincolnshire Archives, D&C, Dij/76/2/22).
There are also references among the documents in the Lincolnshire Archives to the properties of Jewish women like Belaset of Wallingford, who was hanged for clipping the king’s money (Lincolnshire Archives, D&C, A/1/8, fol. 107, no. 290), and Floria of London, who went into exile in Edward I’s reign (Lincolnshire Archives, D&C, Dij/75/2/27). In fact, there are some extremely interesting post-1290 grants of former Jewish property that enrich our understanding of the local context of the sad events surrounding the Expulsion.
Researchers are welcome to contact Louise Wilkinson to request a copy of the handlist.