The Ignored Jewish History of Gamlingay, Cambridgeshire, discovered in Merton College Archives

The Ignored Jewish History of Gamlingay discovered in Merton College archives

By Rabbi Eli Brackman 

The Domesday Book is a census that was commissioned in December 1085 by William the Conqueror, who invaded England twenty years earlier in 1066. The book contains records of 13,418 settlements in the English counties south of the border with Scotland at the time.  

The first Jew recorded living in England is recorded in it, living in a village in Oxfordshire. This does not, however, mean no other Jews lived in England at the time, as major cities like London and Winchester were not included in the book, thus leaving out a substantial number of possible Jews who might have live din the larger cities.

This essay will look at the history of an ancient village featured in the Domesday Book, called Gamlingay. Its name comes from the Old English Gamelingei, meaning "an enclosure of Gamela's people", according to A.D. Mills in his A Dictionary of English Place-names (OUP). A settlement has apparently been on the site since the middle Bronze Age and there are signs of occupation from the middle Stone Age.

In a book `Gamlingay: Six hundred years of life in an English village by James Brown (Cassell), it recalls a well recorded history of about 600 years of this village from 1279 until 1850.

The reason why the book records the history only from 1279 is because documentary evidence until then is sketchy, writes James Brown. After 1279, however, the opposite is true.

Throughout history, Gamlingay has been a farming village. Most of the village was owned by Merton College, Oxford, as well as the Cambridge colleges Downing and Clare. Until a few years ago, the houses (subdivisions) at the local village college were in fact named after Merton, Downing and Clare.

In 1279, Gamlingay was unequally divided between the few who owned the land and the many that did not. The landowners were known as lords. There were a number of principal owners of land, including Sir John Avenel, Sir Hugh de Babington and institutions such as the Church, various religious houses and Merton College in Oxford.

Sir John Avenel and Merton College owned the two long-established manors within the village itself, while Sir Hugh Babington owned the outlying manor of Woodbury. Merton College acquired its manor through its founder Walter de Merton shortly after 1260, when it became part of the extensive College estates. Indeed, Merton College still owns a sizeable chunk of the village today. The other religious institutions had usually been given their land in both large and small amounts by people anxious to secure the future well-being of their souls.

It is evident from the following records that Merton College was the second largest owner of land in Gamlingay, if not the largest. In 1279, most of the land owned by Sir John Avenel, College Merton and Sir Hugh de Babington was leased to free tenants. Sir John Avenel leased about 270 acres to forty three tenants, another nineteen held around 115 acres from Sir Hugh de Babington and forty three tenants held about 350 acres from Merton College.

Of the unfree tenants, the customary tenants, so called because they did work (‘services’) for their lord based on custom, as well as paying rent, held on average between six and ten acres each, barely enough to scrape a living from. Avenel had eleven customary tenants holding about 120 acres, and there were eight on the Woodbury estate holding around sixty five acres, but there were none on Merton manor.

The village also boasted two windmills (then a recent invention) which stood on high ground to the south of the village, soon named ‘Mill Hill’. One was owned by Merton College, the other by the Abbot of Sawtry. The windmills made redundant the watermill which was part of Sir John Avenel’s manorial complex.

Of the three manors in the parish of Gamlingay, Merton is the only one of which any detailed documentation survives, therefore most of what is documented after 1279 is based on Merton’s records.

The only mention of prior to 1279 seems to be the statement that Merton College acquired its manor through its founder Walter de Merton shortly after 1260, when it became part of the extensive College estates.

On a private visit to Merton’s archives in 2008, organised by the Oxford University Chabad Society, a most remarkable rare Hebrew manuscript was put on display. It was a Hebrew document of

1267 or 1278 from Walter de Merton, the founder of Merton College, who acquired an estate in Gamlingay, Cambridgeshire, from a William de Leycester (ref. MCR D. 1.58).

This document, called Starr, is in the archive at Merton College together with a number of other important rare medieval Hebrew manuscripts. Another Hebrew manuscript is an acquittance, by Aaron, son of Abraham, for an estate conveyed by William de Watville to Walter de Merton in 1270 (ref. MCR 1099).

Another Hebrew Starr or acquittance is by Hagimus, Denikel and Menaser son of Aharon, for estates in Cheddington and Ibstone, Buckinghamshire, conveyed by Stephen Chenduit to Walter de Merton on c. 1270 (ref. MCR 2423) and another Hebrew Starr relating to an estate in Barkby, Leicestershire, in 1271 (MCR 1146)

What seems the oldest and well known Hebrew document in Merton’s archive is dated 28 February 1266/7 on behalf of Jacob son of Moses and his wife Hannah for the sale of the house of John Halegod in Oxford to Walter de Merton.

The house was on the site of what is now the college gatehouse. The document is in Latin but is subscribed by Jacob in Hebrew at the bottom, confirming the validity of the deed on behalf of himself, his wife, and his heirs. The Hebrew inscription is largely obscured by a fold in the parchment at the bottom of the document so can be, quite literally, overlooked.

The fact that Jews owned substantial amount of land around England in the 13th century is known. In the book Rye: A history of a Sussex Cinque Port to 1660 in the chapter on the ‘The people of Rye: Economic and Occupational Activity C. 1260 to 1660’ it writes that Aaron de la Rye is prominent in the records of money lending in the later 13th century. His byname indicates that he and his brother Abraham originated or at some time lived at or near Rye, as did his debtors, who included William de Ore and Walter de Tillingham (1277).

It relates that in 1268 Aaron compounded a dept of 120 Marks owed to him by William de Ore, a Parish approximately 10 miles to the South West of Rye. Aaron’s loans and property ownership extended well beyond Rye and in the 1270’s his home was in London. In 1273 he granted all his houses, rents and tenements in the city of London to Gamaliel of Oxford, except the house in which he lived.

The reason given for this vast sale of land by a Jew is that he may have been among the many Jews executed in 1278. This refers to the imprisonment and execution of 600 Jews, apparently all the Jewish heads of households in England, on suspicion of coin clipping on 17 November 1278.

Although this a plausible reason for the vast selling of land of Jews prior to their execution, however, this would not necessarily explain the selling of Aaron’s land four years earlier in 1274.

We do however find that in April, 1270, Parliament levies a property tax to support the Eighth Crusade and this would have especially harsh impact on Jewish landowners. On 2 August 1274 Edward I had returned to England from the Ninth Crusade and in the same year, following his coronation, the Hundred Rolls census was commissioned, enquiring into the rights of English landowners. His return to England from the Ninth crusade would have also been a cause to levy further taxes.

Incidentally, in the same year, 1274, Merton College, Oxford, received its statutes, the first English university college to do so and in 1275, a new statute forbids Jews from charging interest on loans, indicating the difficult financial times they were forced to live under.

These political and financial turbulent times for the Jews would have forced the Jews to sell their lands to pay the high taxes imposed on them and to repay debts. It is recorded in medieval history of the Jews of England how in the later half of the 13th century forced taxation (tallages) were imposed on Jews in England and Gascony by Edward I and on occasion were so heavy that contributions were made to tallages on Jews by members of the Christian population.

This would indeed explain the sale of the vast amounts of land by Jews in this period to Walter de Merton, including Jacob son of Moses in 1268, which became Merton College in 1274, Aaron son of Abram in 1270, Hagimus, Denikel and Menaser son of Aharon in 1270 all to Walter de Merton, and Aaron de le Rye in 1273 to another Oxford resident Gamaliel of Oxford.

What’s interesting to this pre-expulsion story is the Hebrew document about the sale of land in 1267/8 stating that Walter de Merton acquired the estate at Gamlingay in Cambridgeshire from William de Leycester.

The fact that the seller’s name is William, rather than a Hebrew name, like the others mentioned above, does not indicate he was not Jewish. Indeed, many Jews in medieval times had Christian names. In Rye, there are records of a Jewish family name, Sampson, and their first names were John and Robert.

The overwhelming proof, however, that this land was sold by a Jew is the fact that this document is in Hebrew, as other Jewish deeds of conveyance of the time, and who seems to be among the other Jewish landowners who were forced to selling their estates due to the tallages imposed upon them or other financial woes.

Although the book about Gamlingay only covers 600 years from 1279 to 1850, this detail about the origin of possibly the largest bulk of land in Gamilingay is hardly sketchy. It is documented in the same archive as the rest of the vast material used to research this village history.

This important aspect of the history of Gamlingay therefore should also be recognised and told as part of the depressing history of the Jews in medieval England before their expulsion in the end of the 13th century.