100 miles, under threat of severe punishment if they approached nearer to the city, or pledged or sold any of their property. Of course they conspired, and in 1412 every male, down to the smallest child, was exiled. Any Florentine who dared to harbour an Alberti was fined, while any who killed one of the hated family above eighteen years of age within the Florentine territory, received a recompense and the permission to carry arms. Any citizen marrying an Alberti or allowing his daughter to do so, was to be fined 1,000 florins; none were to trade with them, their loggia was destroyed and an inventory made of their property, which was seized as a guarantee that the exiles would behave properly. After the taxes had been paid and the dowers of the girls deducted, the income that remained was doled out to the respective owners. Leon Battista tells us that his ancestors met their evil fate courageously; “meeting often and consulting together with fraternal affection, full of charity and good offices.... Their number, their intelligence, their assiduity in making friends by kindliness and giving help to many men, caused them to be much liked. They despised,” he continues, “the habit common to so many of saying that it is enough to know how to sign one’s name and to sum up what is owing.... It became a proverbial saying in Italy when a man was courteous and well-bred, such a one is as though born and brought up among the Alberti.... They were merchants, trafficking in noble and honest merchandize, and no pedlars; dealing in France and England in cloth and wool, as do the highest and the worthiest men of the city, an occupation that is good and honourable and he that engages in it is well-considered and respected in the land.”[3] The Alberti had houses of business at Bruges, Ghent, Brussels and in various French and English towns, as well as in Greece, Syria, Spain and all the Mediterranean ports. By their rigid integrity and their refusal to enter into speculative loans as the Bardi, Peruzzi and others, had done, they augmented their riches even whilst in exile. When Pope John XXII. called upon them to pay within eight days 80,000 golden florins deposited in their London bank, Ricciardo Alberti handed the sum to him in Bologna on the fifth day, it having been sent from Venice by his brother Lorenzo. Their condition however was a sad one. Fugitives, scattered over the face of the earth and far from home and friends, their joy must have been great, when Cosimo de’ Medici on his return to power in 1434 recalled them to Florence. By his influence Alberto Alberti was created a cardinal, and their name appears constantly in the magistrature under the Medici.