Edward I expelled the Jews from England, cuz they no longer had enough money to help support his military ambitions. Your hint was not necessary, cuz it's included in most things written about Edward I.
While hints may not be necessary for individuals versed in history, the typical American of 2004 does not know Agincourt from Antietam but does know that the Spanish Inquisition had to do with Spain persecuting Jews.
It is unfortunate that the complex history of Jewish tolerance and intolerance in Spain has been condensed in the American mind to a Mel Brooks song.
Jews lived in peace and tolerance in Roman Spain for centuries until the Visigothic invasians brought religious persecution not only to the Jews but also to the Catholic Church by the Visigoths who initially practiced Aryanism. After the Visogothic conversion to Catholicism, the Visigothic persecution of Catholics ended but the Visigothic persecution of Jews remained. It was no wonder that the Jews welcomed the Islamic invaders as liberators in 711 A.D.
Although the Islamic period of southern and central Spain is usually depicted as a model of Jewish toleration, that was only true in the initial wave of Islamic invasion. When the fanatical Almoravides invaded in 1086 and the even more fanatical Almohades invaded in 1146, religious toleration in Muslim Spain came to a screeching halt and thousands of Jews and Mozarabes (Christians living in Muslim territory)fled to the northern Spanish Christian Kingdoms where they were welcome.
By 1212, the Spanish Christian victory at Tolosa had broken the back of Muslim power. Cordoba fell in 1236, Valencia fell in 1238 and Seville fell in 1248. After all of Spain except the rump Muslim Kingdom of Granada had returned to Christian rule, Jews were held in high regard by the courts of both Fernando III (San Fernando) and his son Alfonso X (the Learned). There was hardly a noble house in Spain that had not intermarried with Jewish families.
Unfortunately, Jews became caught up in the three-way power struggle between the Crown, the nobles and the commoners during the reign of Peter the Cruel (1350-1369). As the aptly labeled Peter the Cruel could not trust his own people, he used only Muslim royal guards and Jewish tax collectors. Fairly or unfairly, this inflamed the resentment of the commoners against both Jews and Muslims who then not only associated Jews with the excesses and oppression of Peter the Cruel but also were jealous of Jewish prosperity and their close association with the Spanish nobility.
During the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Spanish Crown used this popular resentment against Jews to consolidate Royal power at the expense of the nobilty. The commoners and the towns that had jelously guarded their "fueros" (rights) for centuries, gladly sided with the Crown. However, once the Jews were expelled and the power of the nobility broken, the Crown eventually turned it's attention to then consolidating Royal power over the towns themsleves.
It is undoubtedly true that Spain would have been much better off if the power struggle between the Crown, the nobility and the commoners had continued on more equal terms as was the case in British history and if the Jews had never been expelled.
However, the fact remains that, up until 1492, Jews had found more tolerance in Spain than in almost any other country in Europe. In England, the Jews were not allowed to return until the time of Cromwell.
Unfortunately, the average American knows only that Jews were persecuted during the Spanish Inquisition and knows nothing about the Jewish expulsion from England.