With a few notable and important exceptions, medieval historians have largely relegated Jewish converts to Christianity to an obscure nether world of the historical record. Many have noted the fact that some ordinary Jews converted; very few have explored how they were perceived by Christian society at large or what their lives were like following their baptism. For good reason: documentary evidence that sheds light on either of these questions can be difficult to come by. Lauren Fogle's The Kings Converts grapples with such questions. Through dogged detective work, she tracks the lives, movements, and activities of converts over time and provides impressively rich portraits of converts who passed through London's Domus Converorum.

Founded in 1232 by King Henry III, the Domus provided housing, religious instruction, and a modest stipend for converts from Judaism. A fairly sizable body of documentary evidence in the royal records attests to the movements, social status, and living conditions of the converts who had affiliation with the Domus. Fogel's study builds on Robert Stacey's landmark article, “The Conversion of Jews to Christianity in Thirteenth-Century England” (Speculum 67, no. 2 [April 1992]: 262–282). Taking Stacey's emphasis on the social and cultural circumstances of conversion as her point of departure, Fogle provides a highly detailed chronological portrait of the reception and treatment of converts from the twelfth century to the fifteenth through the lens of the institution that housed them.

Fogle arranges her evidence thematically. Each chapter addresses a specific topic emerging from the documentation—i.e., families, financial conditions, the king's commitment and responsibility to converts. Focusing on the tension between the push to convert Jews and the ambivalence with which recent converts were received, chapters 1 and 2 demonstrate some of the reasons for conversion as perceived by both Christians and Jews as well as the social and financial circumstances that met converts after baptism in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Henry III's effort to provide financial support, housing, and religious instruction for converts, Fogle argues, was both an expression of his piety and commitment to the effort to unify his realm under proper Christianity and a bureaucratic strategy to keep records of the financial status of converts. Because converts were required to relinquish material property, the Christian community at large recoiled against accepting them, in part because caring for them entailed financial liability. Much of the material presented in these opening chapters is already well known, but it does the important work of providing a solid foundation for more focused document-based case studies that follow in subsequent chapters.

Nearly half of The King's Converts focuses on the Christian life of converts in London. Using tax and court records, deeds, land use charters, and registries of those in royal service, Fogle pieces together a detailed picture of how converts—both residents of the Domus and those who made a life outside its walls—functioned in Christian society. Chapter 3 provides occupational biographies of successful converts, many of whom worked as agents of the king and established and maintained positions associated with the royal court. These people were granted substantial stipends by the king for their service. Yet in nearly every case, the designation “le Convers” was appended to their names, showing that their status as converts may have made them particularly well suited to serve the king, whether because they brought specialized knowledge from their previous lives or because the king believed that having Jewish converts in his service was illustrative of his own piety.

Chapters 4 and 6 touch on the financial and social challenges converts in England faced. Prior to the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290, kings used fees and taxes paid by Jews to fund the Domus Conversorum and pay stipends to converts. In the wake of the expulsion, these payments would come from the royal treasury. Henry III's successors were generally less committed to maintaining provisions for converts in times of war and, in the decades following the expulsion, when Jews were no longer converting on English soil. Though the Domus remained active, by the fifteenth century the main residents were a handful of descendants of earlier converts, individuals who either immigrated to convert or converted elsewhere then made their way to England to take advantage of the resources provided at the Domus, and destitute Christians in need of housing. Unlike other religious houses, the Domus never received substantial bequests for its maintenance, so the converts had to rely on the wards of the Domus to negotiate for subsidies from the king to maintain the building and payments to its residents. As Fogle shows, the majority of converts endured poverty and occasional itinerancy. Some families remained at the Domus for multiple generations, suggesting that ambivalence about converts persisted throughout the period. Even in the heyday of the Domus, Jewish converts faced obstacles to full seamless integration into Christian society. Chapters 5 and 7 on the structure, financing, property holdings, and administration of the Domus fill out this picture, providing substantial evidence of converts’ dependence on increasingly inconsistent royal support.

The King's Jews sheds new light on how converts lived in medieval London, but it also tells the story of the role, function, and symbolic and practical significance of the Domus Conversorum for the English kings who supported it—some reluctantly—through its history. Fogle's exhaustive presentation of documentary evidence illustrates the mechanics of the social, financial, and cultural dynamics that impeded the full integration of converts in England. It should be noted, though, that some readers might find this book overly technical and detailed. Though she rightly directed it toward medieval English historians, Fogle could have made it more accessible to a wider audience of laypeople and students had she been systematic about defining terms and explaining the technicalities of royal administration, especially related to landownership and taxation. Nevertheless, this is an important and welcome addition to the growing scholarship on Jewish conversion.