Tovey, D'Bloissiers°
TOVEY, D'BLOISSIERS°
TOVEY, D'BLOISSIERS ° (1692–1745), English clergyman. He wrote the first comprehensive history of the Jews of England, Anglia Judaica or the History and Antiquities of the Jews in England, collected from all our historians, both printed and manuscript, as also from the records in the Tower, and other publick repositories (1738). Though concentrating on the medieval period, the work contains a section on the resettlement and on the English Jews of his own day. It shows appreciation of the magnitude of royal exploitation of the Jews in the Middle Ages and a healthy skepticism of ritual murder charges. It is largely based on the Short Demurrer… (1656) of William *Prynne. Tovey estimated that in 1738 there were about 6,000 Jews in England and noted that, at the time, no settled Jewish communities existed outside of London.
bibliography:
S. Levy, in: jhset, 6 (1912), 9. add. bibliography: odnb online; Endelman, Jews in Georgian England, index; Katz, England, index.
[Vivian David Lipman]