he kings and the barons. In these contests the barons were
usually successful in the end, and then they always insisted on the
vanquished monarch's ratifying or signing the Magna Charta anew. It is
said that in this way it was confirmed and re-established not less
than _thirty times_ in the course of four or five reigns, and thus it
became at last the settled and unquestioned law of the land. The power
of the kings of England has been restricted and controlled by its
provisions ever since.

All this took place in the reigns preceding the accession of Richard
II.

Besides these contests with the barons, the kings of those times were
often engaged in contentions with the people; but the people, having
no means of combining together or otherwise organizing their
resistance, were almost always compelled to submit. They were often
oppressed and maltreated in the most cruel manner. The great object of
the government seems to have been to extort money from them in every
possible way, and to this end taxes and imposts were levied upon them
to such an extent as to leave them enough only for bare subsistence.
The most cruel means were often resorted to to compel the payment of
these taxes. The unhappy Jews were the special subjects of these
extortions. The Jews in Europe were at this time generally excluded
from almost every kind of business except buying and selling movable
property, and lending money; but by these means many of them became
very rich, and their property was of such a nature that it could be
easily concealed. This led to a great many cases of cruelty in the
treatment of them by the government. The government pretended often
that they were richer than they really were, while they themselves
pretended that they were poorer than they were, and the government
resorted to the most lawless and atrocious measures sometimes to
compel them to pay. The following extract from one of the historians
of the time gives an example of this cruelty, and, at the same time,
furnishes the reader with a specimen of the quaint and curious style
of composition and orthography in which the chronicles of those days
are written.

=Furthermore, about the same time, the King taxed the Jewes,
and greeuouslie tormented and emprisoned them bicause divers
of them would not willinglie pay the summes that they were
taxed at. Amongst other, there was one of them at Bristow
who would not consent to give any fine for his