her feelings towards them. Some, like John Parsons suggest she was sympathetic because
“as a child in Castile” she was alleged to “have become accustomed to meeting with Jews on
a regular, even familiar, basis”. 23 However, others like Sara Cockerill suggest she dealt with
Jews “only in the way of business”. 24 An example of this can be shown through the fact that
Eleanor had to amass her own estates, because her husband was too ‘impoverished’ to
grant her land, which, as Queen, she was entitled to. She needed to ensure she was
financially supported should she b e widowed. Using her husband’s clerks, she began to
secure estates. She foreclosed on properties which were given as loans; many by Jewish
money-lenders. This caused a bad name for them because of her actions. She also,
according to Cockerill, implemented “seizure of the goods of a number of condemned
Jews”. 25 However, there are conflicting opinions about her ‘sympathies’ to medieval Jews.
Parsons argues that she might have had some sympathy for them. 26 Eleanor is often
compared by historians to her mother-in-law, Eleanor of Provence, who is known to have
convinced her son in 1275 “to expel all Jews from towns she held in dower”. 27 H. Stokes
compares the two women and emphasises that the elder was “ against ” the Jews and the
younger was “for” them. 28 However, he furthers that Eleanor of Castile “cannot in any sense
be described as friendly to the Israelites, excepting that she favoured and patronised certain
individual Jews of whom she found useful in helping her finances”. 29 It can be deduced that
she appreciated them for business purposes. But these business purposes, Cockerill asserts,
23 John Parsons, Eleanor of Castile, (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and London: Macmillan Press, 1994), p. 138. 24 Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile, (Gloucestershire, Amberly Publishing, 2014), p. 218). 25 Cockerill, p. 218. 26 Parsons, p. 139. 27 Parsons, p. 139. 28 H. Stokes,’The Relationship between the Jews and the Royal Family of England in the Thirteenth Century’, Transactions (Jewish Historical Society of England), 8 (1915-1917), 153-170 (p. 165). 29 Stokes, p. 166.
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