120,000 gold florins, when King Philip III. took advantage of a decree of the Council to proceed against the usurers, a manœuvre which Philip IV. the Fair repeated fourteen years later. If Florentines suffered among those prosecuted by this king for ‘money coining on the Seine,’[44] Florentines certainly aided him in other extortions and dishonesties in France and in Flanders, and it was the bank of the Peruzzi which paid the sum by means of which the constables of Philip the Fair, and chief among them the Tuscan knight and financier Musciatto Franzesi, accomplished the attempt on Pope Boniface VIII. in 1303 at Anagni.[45] New oppressions arose under Philip VI., in whose person the line of Valois ascended the French throne. He not only again debased the coinage for the necessities of the English war, but also extorted a heavy forced loan from all foreign merchants and bankers, and furthermore assisted the Duke of Athens, after his expulsion, in his reprisals against the Florentine trade. But notwithstanding all partial losses, and the great catastrophes which befell the Florentine trade in the same century, it remained, even in the following, mistress of the French money transactions, and, in certain respects, of French trade. The Florentine money market suffered the severest blow from England. At the end of the twelfth century there were already Florentine houses of exchange in London, and if Pisans, Genoese, and Venetians managed the trade by sea in the times of the Crusades, it was the Florentines mostly who looked after financial affairs in connection with the Papal chair, as we have seen. Numerous banks appeared about the middle of the thirteenth century, among which the Frescobaldi, a family of ancient nobility, and as such attainted by the prosecutions against it, took the lead, and were referred to the custom-house of the country for re-imbursement of the loans made to the kings Edward I. and II. Later, the two great trading companies of the Bardi and Peruzzi came into notice, and with their money Edward III. began the French war against Philip of Valois. But even in the first year of this war, which began with an unsuccessful attack upon Flanders, the king suspended the payments to the creditors of the State by a decree of May 6, 1339. The advances made by the Bardi amounted to 180,000 marks sterling, those of the Peruzzi to above 135,000, according to Giovanni Villani,[46] who knew only too well about these things, since he was ruined by them himself to the extent of ‘a sum of more than 1,355,000 gold florins, equivalent to the value of a kingdom.’ Bonifazio Peruzzi, the head of the house, hastened to London, where he died of grief in the following year. The blow fell on the whole city, for, as may be supposed, numerous families were interested in the business of the great houses, which not only counted a number of partners or shareholders, but had also money from all sides, from the city and from foreign countries,