Editing Domus Conversorum (section)

{{Use dmy dates|date=November 2019}}

{{Infobox
| title            = Domus Conversorum
| image            = [[File:Domus conversorum.jpg|200px|alt=A line drawing of a building with long narrow windows and a tower]]
| caption          = The Domus Conversorum, from a 13th-century sketch by [[Matthew Paris]]
}}
{{History of the Jews in England}}
The '''''Domus Conversorum''''' ('House of the Converts'), later '''Chapel of the Master of the Rolls''', was a building and institution in [[London]] for [[Jew]]s who had converted to [[Christianity]].  It provided a communal home and low wages. It was needed because, until 1280, all Jews who converted to Christianity forfeited their possessions to the Crown.<ref name="Mundill2002">{{cite book|author=Robin R. Mundill|title=England's Jewish Solution: Experiment and Expulsion, 1262–1290|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rD7KpxEhRu8C&dq=%22domus+conversorum%22&pg=PA100|date=16 May 2002|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-52026-3|page=100}}</ref>

It was established in 1232 by [[Henry III of England|Henry III]]. With the [[History of the Jews in England--The Expulsion|expulsion of the Jews]] by [[Edward I of England|Edward I]] in 1290, it became the only official way for Jews to remain in the country. At that stage there were about eighty residents. By 1356, the last one of these died. Between 1331 and 1608, 48 converts were admitted.  The warden was the [[Master of the Rolls]].<ref>[http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C596 Records of the Master of the Rolls and the Rolls (Chapel) Office], National Archives</ref>

The building was in [[Chancery Lane]].  No records exist after 1609, but, in 1891, the post of chaplain was abolished by [[Act of Parliament]] and the location, by then known as the [[Maughan Library#Rolls Chapel| Rolls Chapel]] which had been used to store legal archives, became the [[Public Record Office]]. The site is today home to the [[Maughan Library]] of [[King's College London]].

"''Domus Conversorum''" was sometimes used also to describe the living quarters of [[lay brother]]s in [[monastery|monasteries]].