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JURNET, JEW OF NORWICH, AND LADY MIRYLD, HIS WIFE. By Lee Max Friedman. At this time Jurnet was a man, we should WHO would look in the musty old accounts of the Royal Exchequer j'udge, of thirty years, already a person of of England for a romantic love story? Yet substance and prominence among the peo among these dry records of moneys owed ple of Norwich. We can picture him a and fines collected long ago, in the twelfth goodly shaped fellow, with curly black hair, century, we find a version of the yet older an olive complexion and intense black eyes; tale of true love. It begins uninterestingly a fellow pleasant to look upon, sharp-witted and blindly with an entry in the Pipe Rolls and with a knowledge of men and things, in of the thirty-second and thirty-third years short a man of parts who had studied and of" the reign of His Royal Highness, King travelled, with whom the heavy, rustic townsmen of provincial Norwich were un Henry the Second (i 186-7). "Judaei Anglia? debent M M M M M & D able to cope. & XXV marcas & dimidiam, de MiseriBut why did he lose his mortgages? cordia Junet de Norwico, cujus Cartas Aye, there is the question. Seek out the woman, the French advise, and curiously habuerunt ad ipsum acquietandum." enough we find her not far from Norwich "The Jews of England owe fifty-five hun dred and twenty-five marks and a half for in her father's ancient castle of Erlham. The Hautvilles or Hautviles (they were the amerciament of Jurnet of Norwich, whose charters they have for acquitting the not particular as to their spelling in those good old days), Lords of Rainham and Erl same." Who was Jurnet of Norwich, what were ham, were a noble old family whose name these charters and why were they taken stands prominent on the roll of Battle Abbey away from him and sold to the Jews of and to whom the chroniclers devoted many pages in explaining their family honors and England? Herein lies the story. their kinship to the kings of Naples and These charters were formal acknowledg ments of indebtedness and mortgage deeds Sicily and other such fine folk, and how given to secure loans of money, much the they had held Rainham by grant of King same as are our mortgages to-day. Jurnet Stephen as hereditary falconers to the king. was a young Jew of Norwich, and tradition Now at this time Humfry Hauteville was connects him with Gernutus, that " bloudic head of the English branch of the family Jewe" of Venice, who formed the basis for and lived at Erlham with Miryld, his lady Shakespeare's character of Shylock, and daughter. about whom the old ballad runs : — How or where Jurnet, this Jew of Nor wich, met Miryld, the fair daughter of the "In Venice towne, not long agoe, proud Hautevilles, the records do not show. A cruel Jewe did dwell, He may have come to the castle on busi Which lived all on usurie As Italian writers tell. ness with her father. Perhaps the Norman Miryld had brothers, reckless young blades, "Gernutus called was the Jewe, who had fallen into the hands of the Jews, so Which never thought to dye, that it was for them that Jurnet called at the Nor ever yet did any good castle. He may have met her at Norwich To them in street that lie."'