At the same time the ancient superstition regarding usury had been invigorated in England, as on the Continent, by the diligent preaching of Franciscan and Dominican friars, no less than by the economic distress of debtors. It is true that the practice was not confined to the Jews. Besides English usurers, the Italian bankers of Milan, Florence, Lucca, Pisa, Rome, and other cities, had stretched their tentacles over Europe. In France their position was confirmed by a diplomatic agreement with Philip III. In England Italian usurers scoured the country collecting taxes for the Pope and lending money on their own account at exorbitant interest. As the Jews lent under royal so did these Lombards lend under papal patronage. The extortions of the former were not amenable to any tribunal; the latter were in the habit of, in the words of the chronicler, “cloaking their usury under the show of trade,” and thus carried on their business under forms not forbidden by Canon law--even supposing that the ecclesiastical courts would have cared or dared to condemn the Pope’s agents. To the Italian usurers the great barons extended the same protection as to the Jews, and for similar reasons; but the smaller nobility and gentry, the clergy, and the lower orders of the laity hated them intensely. One of these usurers, brother of the Pope’s own Legate, was murdered at Oxford, while in London Bishop Roger pronounced a solemn anathema against the whole class. Henry III. was, after all, a Catholic and a King. The sufferings of his subjects moved him to banish the Cahorsines from his kingdom, and, were it not for his chronic impecuniosity, he might have adopted similar measures against the Jews. As it was, in spite of his religious scruples, he could ill afford to lose the rich income which he still derived from them.