membered, which, according to the same Carew, were
certainly worked before the beginning of our era?

But leaving the Jews of the time of Nero, let us examine the more definite
and more moderate statements of Hals and Gilbert. According to them, the
deserted shafts are called by a Cornish name meaning the refuse of the
Saracens, because, as late as the thirteenth century, the Jews were sent
to work in these mines. It is difficult, no doubt, to prove a negative,
and to show that no Jews ever worked in the mines of Cornwall. All that
can be done, in a case like this, is to show that no one has produced an
atom of evidence in support of Mr. Gilbert's opinion. The Jews were
certainly ill treated, plundered, tortured, and exiled during the reign of
the Plantagenet kings; but that they were sent to the Cornish mines, no
contemporary writer has ever ventured to assert. The passage in Matthew
Paris, to which Mr. Gilbert most likely alludes, says the very contrary of
what he draws from it. Matthew Paris says that Henry III. extorted money
from the Jews, and that when they petitioned for a safe conduct, in order
to leave England altogether, he sold them to his brother Richard, "ut quos
Rex excoriaverat, Comes evisceraret."(79) But this selling of the Jews
meant no more than that, in return for money advanced him by his brother,
the Earl of Cornwall, the King pawned to him, for a number of years, the
taxes, legitimate or illegitimate, which could be extorted from the Jews.
That this was the real meaning of the bargain between the King and his
brother, the Earl of Cornwall, can be proved by the document printed in
Rymer's "Foedera," vol. i. p. 543, "De Judaeis Comiti Cornubiae assignatis,
pro solutione pecuniae sibi a Rege debitae."(80) Anyhow, there is not a
single word about the Jews having been sent to Cornwall, or having had to
work in the mines. On the contrary, Matthew Paris says, "_Comes pepercit
iis_," "the Earl spared them."

After thus looking in vain for any truly historical evidence in support of
Jewish settlements in Cornwall, I suppose they may in future be safely
treated as a "verbal myth," of which there are more indeed in different
chapters of history, both ancient and modern, than is commonly supposed.
As in Cornwall the name of a market has given rise to the fable of Jewish
settlements, the name of another market in Finland led to the belief that
there were Turks settled in that northern country. _Abo_, the ancien