5 - Changing Fortunes: Edwardian Anglo-Jewry and their Credit Operations in Late Thirteenth-Century England

Summary

In 1850 the church of St. Michael's at Hackthorn, a small hamlet seven miles north of Lincoln, was being rebuilt. Whilst the rebuilding was taking place wooden furnishings had been commissioned from a local firm at nearby Coleby. However the proprietor of the business, a Mr Mainwaring, died in July 1850 and the church furnishings, which had not yet been officially handed over to the church, became part of his estate. His executors claimed that they had to be sold. The furnishings constituted ten lots at the sale, which was held at Coleby Hall on 31 October 1850. At the sale a surprising event happened. A Mr. Benjamin (described as a Jew of commanding stature) asked that the ten lots be put together. He then purchased all of them saying, ‘I offer £10 for the lot and where is the Christian who dare bid against me?’ To this day the furnishings are still in the church at Hackthorn, saved by a Jew whose fellows over half a millennium before were expelled from Lincoln on 1 November 1290.

That the Jews had connections with medieval Hackthorn is fairly easily documented. Isaac Gabbay, a Jew of Lincoln, in about 1250, quitclaimed his right and claim on the land, tenements and rent that he had in the village of Hackthorn to the prior and convent of Bullington.