Henry III. was as exacting as his predecessors; but he lacked the firmness by which some of them had prevented their subjects from trespassing on the royal preserves. Under his weak rule the nobles and the towns grew in importance. The decline of the King’s prerogative and the increased power of the subjects were alike fatal to the Jews. The burgesses hated them as the instruments of royal avarice and as interlopers in a community for the freedom of which they themselves had paid a heavy price to King or lord paramount. Their exemption from municipal burdens, and their independence of municipal authority irritated their fellow-townsmen. The constant interference of the King’s officers on behalf of the King’s serfs was resented as a violation of privilege. These grievances, reasonable enough, were intensified by religious rancour, and by that antipathy which the English, perhaps more than any other, _bourgeoisie_ has always displayed towards foreigners. The Jew’s isolation also added to his unpopularity, and all these causes, acting upon the minds of the townspeople, gave rise to frequent acts of aggression. The Kings, as has been seen, had always found it hard to curb popular license, each attempt at repression, each measure of precaution, only serving to embitter the ill-feeling towards those on whose behalf these efforts were made. ♦1234♦ Under Henry III. the wrath of the burgesses broke out again and again in many towns, notably at Norwich, where the Jews’ quarter was sacked and burnt, and the inhabitants narrowly escaped massacre, and at Oxford, where town and gown joined in the work of devastation and pillage. The animosity of the towns was shared by the smaller nobility who lay under heavy obligations to the Jewish money-lenders, but, unlike their betters, had not the means of making their tenants pay their debts for them. The great barons played towards the Jews within their domains the same rôle as the King, only on a smaller scale. They lent them their protection, were sleeping partners in their usurious transactions, and upon occasion made them disgorge their ill-gotten gains. This rôle was beyond the ability of the smaller nobility. So far from sharing in the spoils of usury, they themselves were among its worst victims. The King’s Continental expeditions forced them to mortgage their estates to the Jews, from whose clutches none but the lands of tenants on the royal demesne were safe; and, if the holders of the pledge were afraid to enforce their claims in person, they passed the bonds to the more powerful nobles, who seized the land of their inferiors and sometimes refused to part with it, even when the debtors offered to redeem it by paying off the debt with interest.