Religion was not the only cause of bitterness. The Jews, standing outside the Church and its laws against usury, at a time when financial needs had outgrown feudal revenues, became the money-lenders and bankers of Europe; and with a standard rate of interest fixed at over 40 per cent., debtors and creditors could hardly be friends. In England the Jews reached the height of their prosperity in the twelfth century, so that in 1188 nearly half the national contribution for a Crusade came from them. In the thirteenth century their privileges and operations were cut down, and they were finally expelled from the country in 1290 (see J. Jacobs, _The Jews of Angevin England_, 1893). The Lombards, whose consciences were not nice, took their place as financiers in fourteenth-century England. 222. _trayne_: read _taynere_, OFr. _taignere_ 'a burrow'. 237-8. The cotton plant has already given us the vegetable lamb (l. 142). This more prosaic account is taken from the _Eþistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem_: '_in Bactriacen... penitus ad abditos Seres, quod genus hominum foliis arborum decerpendo lanuginem ex silvestri vellere vestes detexunt_' (Julius Valerius, ed. B. Kübler, p. 194). From the same text come the hippopotami, the bitter waters (Kübler, p. 195), and the griffins (Kübler, p. 217). The _Letter of Alexander_ was translated into Anglo-Saxon in the tenth century. 254 ff. _talouns_ etc.: In the 1725 edition there is a reference to 'one 4 Foot long in the Cotton Library' with the inscription, _Griphi Unguis Divo Cuthberto Dunelmensi sacer_, 'griffin's talon, sacred to St. Cuthbert of Durham'. This specimen is now in the Mediaeval Department of the British Museum, and is really the slim, curved horn of an ibex. The inscription is late (sixteenth century), but the talon was catalogued among the treasures of Durham in the fourteenth century. 260. _Prestre Iohn_: Old French _Prestre Jean_, or 'John the Priest', was reputed to be the Christian ruler of a great kingdom in the East. A rather minatory letter professing to come from him reached most of the princes of Europe, and was replied to in all seriousness by Pope Alexander III. Its claims include the lordship over the tribes of Gog and Magog whom Alexander the Great walled within the mountains. Official missions were sent to establish relations with him; but neither in the Far East nor in Northern Africa, where the best opinion in later times located his empire, could the great king ever be found. The history of the legend is set out by Yule in the article _Prester John_ in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_. 261. _Yle of Pentexoire_: to Mandeville most Eastern countries are 'isles'. _Pentexoire_ in the French text of Odoric is a territory about the Yellow River (Yule, _Cathay_, vol. i, p. 146). 262 ff.: For comparison the French text of the Epilogue is given from MS. Royal 20 B. X, f. 83 a, the words in < > being supplied from MS. Sloane 1464: