Money-lending on interest among Christians was expressly forbidden by the canon law, and it was therefore from the frugal and careful Jews alone that large sums of ready money could be obtained when required. The author of the interesting article just referred to writes:-- "Though it is a moot point how far the money lent by the Jews was actually the King's in the first instance, there is no doubt that the Exchequer treated the money of the Jews as held at the pleasure of the King. There was a special Exchequer of the Jews, presided over by special Justices of the Jews, and all the deeds of the Jews had to be placed in charge of Exchequer officers, or else they ceased to be legal documents. The Jews thus formed a kind of sponge which first drained the country dry owing to the monopoly of capitalist transactions given them by the canon law, and then were squeezed into the royal treasury." Although the Jews were useful, and indeed, in the conditions of social life at that time, almost indispensable, they suffered many disabilities. They were unable, from the very fact of their religion, to enter the guilds founded on religious principles. Similarly they were debarred from holding land, because their possession of would have put into their hands spiritual benefices. By the order of the Lateran Council of 1215 the Jews were compelled to wear a distinctive mark on their clothing. In England this was made of cloth in the shape of the two tables of the law. The worst parts of the towns seem to have been devoted to the use of the Jews. Thus, at Southampton there are Jews' houses built close against the town wall. At Leicester the Jewry was situated quite close to the town wall, and some of the residences appear to have been built against the inside of the Roman wall there, a considerable portion of which still remains. In London in the thirteenth century there was a Jewry, or dwelling-place for Jews, within the liberty of the Tower of London. The street now known as Old Jewry, leading northward from Cheapside to Lothbury, had become deserted by the Jews, it is believed, before the date of the expulsion in 1291, and the inhabitants had removed to a quarter in the eastern part of the city afterwards indicated by the street-names "Poor Jewry Lane" and "Jewry Street." In several cases, therefore, it is evident that the pomerium, or the space between the inhabited part of the town and the actual walls of its outer defence, was devoted to the Jews, who took up their residence there.