By the time of Edward I. the need for the financial aid of the Jews was no longer felt, and from that moment their fate in England was fixed. The canon law against usury was extended so as to include the Jews. They were henceforth forbidden to lend money on interest, and, as has been explained, owing to their religion they could not hold lands nor take up any trade. The expulsion followed as a matter of course in a few years. In order to rearrange the national finances, Italians who had no religious difficulties were substituted for the Jews. Certain Jews, it is known, from time to time returned to London disguised as Italians, but it was not until the time of the Commonwealth, when Cromwell took a more tolerant view of the outcast Jews, and when the State recognised the legality of difference of creed, that the return of the Jews became possible. This event is fixed with some precision by the lease of the Spanish and Portuguese burial-ground at Stepney, which bears the date of February, 1657. LONDON AS A WALLED TOWN It is not by any means easy to imagine the present London as a walled town. The multiplicity of streets, the lofty and pretentious character of its buildings, and the immense suburban area of bricks and mortar which surrounds it, render it an extremely difficult task to picture in the mind's eye what the ancient city looked like when all the houses were enclosed by a lofty and substantial wall, largely of Roman masonry, and when admission could only be obtained by strongly defended gateways, approached by means of drawbridges spanning the encircling moat of City Ditch. [Illustration: OLD WOODEN HOUSES AT CRIPPLEGATE (RECENTLY DEMOLISHED).] Whatever additions or reparations may have been made in the Middle Ages to the wall of London, there is no reason to doubt that the area it enclosed was that which its Roman builders had laid out, with the exception of an extension at the south-western corner made to enclose the house of the Black Friars. What happened to the wall of London when the Roman occupation of Britain was determined by the withdrawal of the legions is a matter which scarcely falls within the scope of this paper. Whether the place was abandoned, like other Roman walled towns, such as Silchester, etc., or whether it maintained a population throughout the dark ages, are questions which have exercised the ingenuity and imagination of several antiquarian authorities,[72] but it must be confessed that the evidence is insufficient to enable one to settle it conclusively.