ca. 1194

“Ordinance of the Jews” issued by Richard I [England] [Provisional]: “All the debts, pledges, mortgages, lands, houses, rents and possessions of the Jews shall be registered. The Jew who shall conceal any of these shall forfeit to the King his body and the thing concealed, and likewise all his possessions and chattels, neither shall it be lawful to the.Tew (sic) to recover th-e.thing (sic) concealed. Likewise six or seven places (1) [Editor includes ‘(1) Probably London, Lincoln, Norwich, Winchester, Canterbury, Oxford, Cambridge, Nottingham, Hereford, or Bristol.] shall be provided in which they shall make all their contracts, and there shall be appointed two lawyers that are Christians and two lawyers that are Jews, and two legal registrars, and before them and the clerks of William of the Church of St. Mary’s and William of Chimilli, shall their contracts be made. And charters shall be made of their contracts by way of indenture. And one part of the indenture shall remain with the Jew, sealed with the seal of him, to whom the money is lent, and the other part shall remain in the common chest…And from henceforth no contract shall be made with, nor payment, made to, the Jews, nor any alteration made in the charters, except before the said persons or the greater part of them, if all of them cannot be present…Moreover every Jew shall swear on his Roll, that all his debts and pledges and rents, and all his goods and his possessions, he shall cause to be enrolled, and that he shall conceal nothing as is aforesaid…”
“Medieval Sourcebook: English Jewry is Organized: The Ordinance of the Jews, 1194.” Paul Halsall. January 1999, Accessed online 8/4/2011