英国民族22

It could have been worse, and for the Jews of England, it was. The Welsh wars cost ten times the King's annual revenue, and the price of victory and castle building had so exhaustively bled the Jews - the usual source of loans and taxation - so they had nothing left to yield, and so could be dispensed with altogether. Early in his reign, Edward, perhaps acting from religious conviction, outlawed money lending, and so put most of England's Jews out of business. He then forced them to wear yellow felt badges of identification and so be recognised as the sub-species of humanity he undoubtedly believed they were. A year after his first Welsh invasion, Edward arrested all the heads of the Jewish households and hanged nearly 300 in the Tower.

如果说还有谁比这更不幸，那就是英格兰的犹太人。威尔士战争的费用是全国一年总收入的十倍，维持战争和修建城堡的资金筹募，榨干了犹太人的全部财产。而他们正是贷款和赋税的主要来源，在失去利用价值后，他们被彻底抛弃，无一幸免。在统治的早期，爱德华，或许是根据教会的裁定，禁止了资金借贷，导致大部分英格兰的犹太人破产。随后他强迫犹太人佩戴黄色毛毡徽章以标识身份，犹太人被界定为下等民族，爱德华对这一点确信无疑。在他入侵威尔士一年之后，爱德华抓捕了所有犹太家庭的户主，并在伦敦塔上吊死了其中将近300人。