' God sees the wretched people,' says
the Saxon Chronicler, 'most unjustly oppressed; first they are
despoiled of their possessions, and then butchered.' This was a
grievous year (1124). Whoever had any property, lost it by heavy
taxes and unjust decrees." 2 Middle Ages, 435-6.
"In the succeeding reign of John, all the rapacious exactions
usual to these Norman kings were not only redoubled, but mingled
with outrages of tyranny still more intolerable.
"In 1207 John took a seventh of the movables of lay and spiritual
persons, all murmuring, but none daring to speak against it."
Ditto, 446.
In Hume's account of the extortions of those times, the following
paragraph occurs:
"But the most barefaced acts of tyranny and oppression were
practised against the Jews, who were entirely out of the
protection of the law, and were abandoned to the immeasurable
rapacity of the king and his ministers. Besides many other
indignities, to which they were continually exposed, it appears
that they were once all thrown into prison, and the sum of 66,000
marks exacted for their liberty.
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