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The historical context of The Merchant of Venice turns, for the most part, on one question: the status of Jews in Shakespeare's England. Jews had lived in England throughout the Middle Ages; they were treated then as property of the King, and were permitted to stay in England, over the protests of the Church, only by his "good graces." In fact, English kings allowed the Jews to remain in England largely for financial reasons: practicing trades, particularly money-lending, that were highly profitable but forbidden to Christians for religious reasons. Jews earned large sums of money, profits that were then, under the burden of equally large taxes, usurped by the King. Eventually, taxation impoverished most English Jews to an extent that they were no longer a source of revenue for the King; at that point, the King, Edward I, expelled the Jews from England in 1290. A few Jews converted to remain in England, but most were banished. Thus, there were essentially no Jews livin