"The Jews were originally introduced into England by , and to them belongs the merit of benefiting commerce by that important improvement—the inventing bills of exchange. Their industry and frugality caused them to accumulate vast sums of money, which the idleness and profusion common to the English nobility in those days enabled them to lend out at a high rate of interest upon the security of property. They were the principal artificers of the time, and wrought most of the gold and silver ornaments for the use of the churches,which on many occasions they were afterwards called upon to take as pledges for the repayment of money lent to the priors and other ecclesiastics. ...[E]ach successive monarch extorted from them large sums of money, and that frequently by the most barbarous and cruel methods. ...[A]t the general massacre of the Jews at York... the gentry of the neighbourhood, who were all indebted to the Jews, ran to the cathedral, the place where their bonds were kept, and made a solemn bonfire of the papers before the altar. ...[M]any atrocities [were] committed by the people of England upon the Jews ...Richard the First, after the massacre... banished the remainder."