The Domus Conversorum: the personal interest of Henry III

In 1232 a new kind of institution was born in London. It was called the Domus Conversorum and was to be a home for Jews converted to the Christian faith. The house was founded by King Henry III in New Street, which is now called Chancery Lane, and it previously occupied the site of the former Public Record Office. From 1232 until 1604 this house remained a home for converts, though it doubled as a receptacle for Chancery documents from the fourteenth century onwards. In the 1250s, the house may well have been overflowing with converts, because the king chose to send a number of them away to other religious houses across England. By the mid-fourteenth century the numbers had dwindled and the house was occupied by a small group of foreign converts and their fami? lies until the house closed at the beginning of the seventeenth century. At various

Written by

Lauren Fogle

Published in

Volume 41

2007

Other articles within the volume

• In memoriam: Lionel Kochan, 1922-2005
• Kindertransport: Tylers Green Hostel for young Jewish refugees
• Mac Goldsmith
• Addendum III: Lieutenant Marcus Bloom: a Jewish hero of the SOE
• Addendum II: More than just a few: Jewish pilots and aircrew in the Battle of Britain
• Addendum I
• Captain Isidore Newman, SOE
• A Jewish contribution to British psychiatry: Edward Mapother, Aubrey Lewis and their Jewish and refugee colleagues at the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital and Institute of Psychiatry, 1933-66
• Hagedud Ha-Sini: The Jewish Company of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, 1932—42
• Jewish missionary activity in Portugal between the Wars
• Izak Goller (1891—1939): Zionist poet, playwright and preacher
• Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment
• England expects…: British Jews under the white ensign from HMS Victory to the loss of HMS Hood in 1941
• John Braham — from meshorrer to tenor
• An eighteenth-century Sephardi lady: her relations and her property
• The Mahamad as an Arbitration Court
• The Domus Conversorum: the personal interest of Henry III
• Preface