Clifford’s Tower stands on a steep mound beside the River Foss. The stone keep visitors climb is not the building where the worst of York’s history happened. That one was made of wood, and it burned.
The Horror
Richard I was crowned in 1189 and planned to go on crusade. His accession inflamed feeling against the Jews, and rumours spread that the king had ordered attacks on English Jews. In York, Richard de Malbis, who owed money to the merchant Aaron of Lincoln, used an accidental house fire to incite a mob against the home and family of a recently deceased Jewish employee of Aaron’s.
Josce of York, leader of the Jewish community, led local families into the wooden keep on the royal castle’s mound. The castle constable was refused re-entry, and the sheriff, whose name is not given, laid siege to the keep. The siege ended on March 16, 1190, when the position became untenable. Rabbi Yomtob, linked to Yom Tov of Joigny, proposed collective suicide.
About 150 Jews died. Most took their own lives, the keep was set on fire, and a few who offered to convert were killed by the crowd.
The Legend
Popular tellings add detail that is not confirmed here: that the mob was urged on by a hermit in white, that Malbis and his companions burned the debt bonds on the floor of York Minster, that the king fined York households and that Malbis lost his lands and regained them. None of this appears in the sources used, so it should be read as unconfirmed. The same applies to a tradition that a rabbinical ban forbade Jews from sleeping within the city walls, and that for centuries almost nobody did.
The Modern Relic
The wooden keep was rebuilt on the motte, which was raised by 13 ft at a cost of £207. A gale destroyed it during Henry III’s visit at Christmas 1228, and it was not repaired. In 1244 Henry ordered the castle rebuilt in limestone. Work ran from 1245 to 1270, or 1272 in another count, and the keep took an unusual four-lobed plan. It was first called the King’s Tower. The name Clifford’s Tower is explained in two ways, either from the Clifford family’s claim to the hereditary constableship or from Roger Clifford, executed after Boroughbridge in 1322 and gibbeted at the castle, and the first recorded use of the name is in 1596.
English Heritage manages the tower, which is a Grade I listed building and a scheduled monument. The first memorial tablet to the 1190 victims was laid at its base in 1978, the 800th anniversary was commemorated there in 1990, and daffodils planted on the motte flower around the anniversary. A March 2022 conservation project added internal wooden stairways and a roof deck with views over the city.
