Gender, Jewish Creditors, and Christian Debtors in Thirteenth-Century Exeter

Abstract

On Monday 1 July 1286, Auntera the Jewess came before the Mayor’s Court of Exeter and brought a charge of trespass against Richard the smith. She alleged that, on the previous Thursday, he had unlawfully entered her house in the Bolehulle. He had then struck her coffers with an iron chalice (calix) and, having tried to rob them of their contents, set fire to them, causing her great financial loss. Richard pleaded guilty to the offence, but then brought his own charge against Auntera, stating that she had struck him with a stone in retaliation.¹ It is likely that this ‘Auntera Iudea’ is the same ‘Auntera, widow of Samuel, son of Moses’, the most prominent female moneylender in Exeter. Auntera’s extensive credit activities are documented in the financial records of the Jewish Exchequer which record her as making a sizeable loan of 30 quarters of grain, valued at £10 in total to William de Bysenham on 14 January 1286, just over 5 months before Richard’s attempted robbery.²