One Hugh of Lincoln, an English boy,…
1255 CE
One Hugh of Lincoln, an English boy, disappears on July 31, 1255, and on August 29 his body is discovered in a well.
Shortly after his disappearance, a local Jew named Copin (or Jopin) after he is threatened with torture admits to killing the child.
Copin states in his confession that it is the custom of the Jews to crucify a Christian child every year.
Copin is executed, and the story would have ended there were it not for a series of events that coincided with the disappearance.
King Henry III some six months earlier had sold his rights to tax the Jews to his brother, Richard, Earl of Cornwall.
Having lost this source of income, he decides that he is eligible for the Jews' money if they are convicted of crimes.
As a result, some ninety Jews are arrested and held in the Tower of London, while they are charged with involvement in the ritual murder.
Eighteen of them are hanged—it is the first time ever that the civil government has handed out a death sentence for ritual murder—and King Henry is able to take over their property.
The remainder are actually pardoned and set free, most likely because Richard, who sees a potential threat to his own source of income, intervenes on their behalf with his brother.
The Cathedral in Lincoln is meanwhile beginning to benefit from the episode, since Hugh is seen as a Christian martyr, and sites associated with his life become objects of pilgrimage.
The legend surrounding Hugh that emerges will become part of popular culture, and his story the subject of poetry and folk songs, well into the late twentieth century.
Groups
Commodities
Subjects
Regions
North Europe
View →Subregions
