York Castle, crusade finance, and massacre

York provides the review's starkest example of a castle becoming a refuge that failed. The book begins with crusade finance and Christian restrictions on lending, circumstances that pushed rulers toward Jewish creditors while also feeding resentment against them. It recounts Richard I's exclusion of Jews from his coronation and a false rumor that the king had authorized anti-Jewish killing. Although Richard ordered the London violence stopped, he soon departed on crusade and attacks spread to York. Jewish families took shelter in the keep at Clifford's Tower, where siege, collective death, fire, and murder killed roughly 150 people. Together, these details trace a causal chain of royal policy, debt, antisemitism, rumor, and mob violence.