The Jews, who are supposed to have come over to England about the time of the Conquest, gradually possessed themselves of the greater part of the coin of the country; and the early English kings constantly resorted to them for loans. As it was thought unchristian to charge usury or interest, the business of a money-lender was consequently held in abhorrence, with the result that the Jews monopolized the trade, and acquired immense fortunes by their dealings. Their wealth naturally excited the intense cupidity of their Christian neighbours, who, making a pretext of their so-called abominations, raided from time to time the Jewish quarters of the various towns, in the hopes of annexing the fabulous treasure in Jewry. Under the ban of the Church, and detested by the people, the popular feeling against the usurers became so embittered that Edward I, under whose protection they lived, after having in vain attempted to persuade the Jews to accept Christianity, was compelled to banish them from England; and from 1290 to the time of the Commonwealth (a period of about 360 years) the prohibition remained in force. But the money-lender is a necessary evil; and after the departure of the Jews certain Italian merchants, known as Lombards, who had previously settled in England, immediately filled their place; and Lombard Street became as notorious for usury as had been the Jewry. The Jew may be described as a money-lender, and the Lombard as a merchant-banker, though neither was a banker as the word is now understood. Both, however, lent money at high rates of interest. A banker, in the English sense of the word, is a middleman who borrows from one set of persons at a rate in order to lend to another set at a greater rate, the difference between the two rates being his margin of profit; and banking in this sense was not practised in England until quite the end of the first Charles’s reign, when certain goldsmiths, who were originally dealers in plate and in bullion, became private bankers. The first run upon them was made in 1667, when a Dutch fleet sailed up the Medway; and, later, in 1672 Charles II closed the Exchequer, refusing to pay the bankers either their principal or interest, with the result that failures were numerous.