Rebecca Abrams’s vivid new biography of Licoricia of Winchester introduces this remarkable “woman of worth” to a wide range of readers. This beautifully illustrated book also illuminates the history and everyday life of Anglo-Norman Jewry from their arrival around 1070 to their expulsion in 1290. Abrams draws on original documents as well as major studies by historians including Suzanne Bartlet, Joe Hillaby, and Robert Stacey. In his Foreword Simon Sebag Montefiore notes that Licoricia, at one point the wealthiest woman in Plantagenet England, was both “exceptional” for her wealth and influence, and “typical” in her vulnerability as a woman and a Jew in thirteenth-century England (p. xi). Licoricia was a product of her time and her community, a tiny minority that had lived under the favour and at the mercy of the monarchy since William the Conqueror invited the Jews of Rouen to assist in establishing trade and shoring up England’s financial system. She lived at a tragically eventful time. Official regulations and restrictions made life increasingly difficult for Jews, who went from “protection to restriction and from privilege to precarity” (p. 29). Just as Abrams locates Licoricia within her family, city, and country, she also shows that England’s Jews did not live in isolation. They belonged to a Europe-wide community and lived alongside Christian neighbours. Some striking examples of these connections include consultation with the Paris Beth Din on questions about Licoricia’s second marriage, and the induction of her son Benedict into Winchester’s merchant guild. He was the only known Jewish member (p. 69).
Abrams relates the stories of Licoricia and of Anglo-Norman Jewry using a wealth of textual and visual evidence. The first chapter introduces the challenges of bringing Licoricia’s story to life. Although she was twice married and widowed, bore at least five children, negotiated with the king, and spent time in prison, Licoricia’s life is sparsely attested. No documents survive bearing her signature. What we have are “dry official records, written by court clerks who were not always literate in Latin” (pp. 3–4). Hence Abrams sets her task as recovering some of the “resilience, energy, charm and intelligence” that Licoricia must have possessed (p. 4). Such qualities would have been necessary for successfully navigating the paradoxes of medieval English Jewish existence. In Chapter 2, “Protection and Peril: Being Jewish in Medieval England”, we learn that Anglo-Norman Jews, holding the anomalous legal status of the “King’s Jews”, were free to practise their religion and travel. But they were also subject to capricious royal demands for money, arbitrary tallages, and a host of legal restrictions. Regulations prevented Jews from leaving the country, remarrying, or even carrying a corpse over a bridge without paying for permission (p. 19). Although Rouen’s Jews had originally been invited for their mercantile expertise, the need for moneylenders and the official Christian prohibition against usury meant that some Jews made considerable fortunes through moneylending and related activities.
In this discussion Abrams dismantles some persistent, damaging myths. She teaches readers that despite usury bans, Christians (not Jews) constituted the majority of moneylenders (p. 11). During the reign of Henry II (1154–89), moneylending became more central to the economy as the king attempted to take control of the monetary system. At this time the Exchequer of the Jews was established to regulate all Jewish financial transactions, “essentially an instrument for state control of Jewish capital” (p. 14). Within this system, the Crown assisted Jews as long as doing so furthered its own interests. But as the twelfth century gave way to the thirteenth, a raft of new restrictions took hold in England after the Third Lateran Council (1215), which attempted to regulate Christendom and demarcate its Others. Jews became required to identify themselves with distinctive hats and the sartorial badge of two “tablets”. By 1222 Jews were forbidden to build new synagogues in places not already settled, to buy or eat meat during Lent, and to enter churches. During this period, the infamous blood libel arose and spread. Yet, against this increasingly dark backdrop, Abrams shows that Jewish education and culture flourished in certain cities, notably Winchester and Oxford, as the evidence of schools, homes, books, and artefacts demonstrates.
Licoricia was born into this paradoxical world. Chapter 3 affords a wealth of information, along with images, about Jewish culture in Winchester, where Licoricia settled after her first marriage. Winchester Jewry was relatively large and central, and as Abrams stresses, Jews lived alongside Christians as in other English towns, for “there were no ghettos in medieval England” (p. 37). Winchester was home to a thriving synagogue, a cemetery, and certainly a mikveh (ritual bath-house), though the location of the last is unknown. This chapter also develops arguments for the interconnection of Anglo-Norman Jewry with co-religionists in France, in terms of trading and consultation on religious law.
Licoricia’s eventful life occupies Chapter 4, “A Woman of Worth: The Life of Licoricia”. Although no information survives about her parentage or childhood, she may have been born in Winchester. Her married life with Abraham began unremarkably with the births of four children but took a disastrous turn in 1225 when Abraham, a moneylender, was accused of murdering a Christian child. Although his fate is not known, Licoricia appears as a widow by 1234, the year of her first recorded business dealings. She may have taken over her husband’s business, perhaps aided by her female friend Chera of Winchester, a noted financier.
As a widow, Licoricia had considerable freedom to expand her business, and she increased her wealth and influence via a strategic second marriage to David of Oxford. This marriage went forward despite the fact that David was already married. A protracted legal battle with David’s wife was ultimately settled by the king. Licoricia and David became a powerful couple in Oxford, but when he died suddenly, she found herself in a perilous financial position. This was a period of trial for Licoricia, imprisoned in the Tower of London for eight months while David’s estate was adjudicated. Ultimately she paid the massive price of 5000 marks to repurchase David’s estate, of which 4000 went towards the construction of a shrine to Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey. Licoricia was allowed to keep David’s debts and bonds in return for a small yearly tax. Her ability to negotiate this deal with the king set her on a path to financial mastery. Licoricia became a leader of Winchester Jewry and an independent negotiator in business dealings across several counties.
The financial history of Licoricia is traced piecemeal through legal disputes that she cannily negotiated over these years. Testifying to the theme of “protection and peril”, Abrams shows how Licoricia negotiated these two poles during a time of painful exactions on Winchester’s Jews. Her business was a family affair, and her middle son Benedict was the most prominent and successful of her children. His 1268 induction into the Winchester merchants’ guild is an astounding event, a distinction affording him the full citizenship that Jews were otherwise denied. Sadly, his election ended in riots and anti-Jewish violence. This aggression presaged further suffering in the aftermath of the Barons’ War, Simon de Montfort’s rebellion against King Henry. After his defeat, de Montfort’s supporters victimized Jewish communities, Winchester’s included. Licoricia’s family and fortunes suffered during this period, when records of loans were scattered, in many cases never recovered.
The final chapter of Jewish life in medieval England (“From Murder to Expulsion”) traces Licoricia’s difficulties after the accession of Edward I. Edward’s policies became increasingly draconian, culminating in 1275’s Statute of Jewry. This set of regulations banned Jews from lending at interest and pawnbroking, among other practices. Many were unable to pursue their traditional occupations, even as numerous professions remained barred to Jews. After Licoricia was killed in a botched (and unsolved) robbery in 1277, her son Benedict was hanged after being found guilty of coin-clipping. This was part of a series of punishments that claimed at least 269 Jewish lives. The investigations of coin-clipping were probably “not just part of a financial clean-up but an active mechanism for Jewish persecution” (p. 83). As Jewish fortunes dwindled further, England’s monarchs magnified antisemitic discourses, officially embracing the blood libel accusation for the first time. The Edict of Expulsion came in 1290.
Why was England the first European country to expel its Jews? Abrams reviews some possible explanations, including the fact that Jews were no longer financially useful after years of financial exactions and persecution; the desire to forge an English identity distinct from “foreign” influence; and the antisemitism of England’s queen, Eleanor of Castile. What became of Licoricia’s family post-Expulsion is unknown. In 2022, a statue of Licoricia and her youngest son was placed in Winchester’s Jewry Street. Abrams’s book offers an equally fitting tribute to this singular Jewish woman, who worked tirelessly to support her family and community.