Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/187

 9< s. viii. AUG. 31, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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enabled such lords to grant licences for the aliena- tion, by devise, sale, exchange, or mortgage, of any portion or parcel of the copyhold tenement, and to apportion the rents accordingly ; and the Copyhold Act, 1894, continues these provisions."* It would seem from what has been said that at Crowland such licences were not generally granted. To grant them would probably have been only a temporary measure, the best thing both for lord and tenant being enfranchisement.

These " whole copyholders " and a half copyholders" at Crowland will remind us of the " yardlings " and " half-yardlings "t of old English records, and of the plenarii villani arid dimidii villani of the ' Black Book of Peterborough' (A.D. 1125-28) and other early documents. We must, however, remember that the " full villein " was a vir- gater whose normal holding was thirty acres of arable land, besides a messuage and common rights. It is interesting to notice that at Crowland copyhold house and arable land could not be severed at all before the year 1841. 1 do not know the extent of the rights which the copyhold tenants had in the Wash.

It will be seen that I have merely given a cursory and imperfect sketch of a subject which might have been expanded into a more complete and useful monograph. It was my intention to pay at least one more visit to Crowland, and also to apply for leave to examine the court rolls, which are in the custody of the stewards .of the manor, Messrs. Beaumont & Son, of Coggeshall, in Essex, solicitors, but I have found this impossible at present. S. O. ADDY.

BEVIS MARKS SYNAGOGUE BICENTENARY.

(Continued from p. 160.)

THE Jews and their history have hitherto occupied but a small place in our general literature, and the Jew, with three notable exceptions, has found little place in fiction. Sir Walter Scott makes Rebecca, the beautiful daughter of Isaac of York, one of the most important figures in 'Ivanhpe,' and repre- sents her as singing that glorious hymn When Israel, of the Lord beloved, Out of the land of bondage came.

George Eliot's 'Daniel Deronda' was, how- ever, as Lady Magnus states, the first serious attempt by a great writer to make Jews and

,t Vinogradoff 's 'Villainage in England,'p. 148. The vtllanus dimidius occurs in Hamilton's ' Inquisitio Comitatus Cantab.' (eleventh century), p. 52.
 * Scriven's ' Law of Copyholds,' p. 241.

Judaism the central interest of a great work, and it was not until after a long interval that this was followed by Mr. Israel Zang- will's ' Children of the Ghetto : a Study of a Peculiar People.' This last treats mostly on the Jewish poor, and, in fact, puts into romance the revelation first made by the commissioners of the Morning Chronicle so far back as 1849.

At the recent celebration Dr. Gaster ren- dered a graceful tribute to England, and Englishmen may also cordially render their tribute to their Jewish fellow-subjects. A notable characteristic of the Jew has always been his faithfulness and affection for the land of his adoption.

The Jews of Holland were full of gratitude to William of Orange for the freedom he had given them, and, when he was in need of funds to fit out his expedition to England, one of their community placed at his disposal two millions of guilders, saying, " If you succeed, you will no doubt repay the loan; if you fail, I am content to lose it in the cause of religious freedom " Prof. Marks, in a lecture delivered at South Place Institute, 'The Jews in Modern Times' ('Religious Systems of the World,' Sonnenschein, 1890), referring to France as being the first Christian state of Europe that fully carried into effect the principle of liberty of conscience, when in 1789 it proclaimed complete emancipation to all its Jewish subjects, states that " they have repaid the debt by a passionate devotion to all its national interests." France contains upwards of a hundred thousand Jews, and they are remarkable for their staunch patriotism. They differ from their ancestors of a bygone age, in so far as they have lost all feeling for the land of the Patriarchs, and exult in the exclamation, "Notre Zion c'est la France."

The Great Powers at the Congress of Vienna in 1814, in return for the patriotic efforts made by the Jews during the war, caused to be inserted a special article in the treaty pledging themselves to secure for the Jews a perfect equality of rights in all the Allied States. It was long, how- ever, before the pledge was redeemed by Germany and Austria, while in Russia it still remains unfulfilled, and a recent ministerial edict limits the number of Jewish students in the Russian universities to three per cent, of the total number of the alumni. This applies to all the Imperial universities, except that of Moscow, to which no Jew is admitted.

The affection of the Jews for England is proverbial. They gave a notable instance of this so far back as the '45 troubles. The