semi-religious associations, or ‘guilds,’ as they were called, of masters and workers. In the thirteenth century such organisations were general in all trades. From these recognised and respectable guilds, Jewish apprentices and Jewish employers of labour were equally excluded. In the cities, and in the free towns, Jewish traders were put on a footing different from, and altogether lower than, the other inhabitants. Agriculture, commerce, public and professional employment, even honest citizenship, were all made impossible to the Jew of the Middle Ages. And almost at will he might be plundered. ‘_Les meubles du juif sont au baron_,’ was a proverb. His possessions were held on so precarious a tenure that there came to be need for them to be portable and of an easily hidden sort, and thus it was that the Jews, in the ‘dark’ ages, grew by degrees to deal chiefly in money. =2. Jews become Money-lenders.=――Jews had no liking for the trade of money-lending, but if they were to live at all, some means of earning a living had to be hit upon. Coin and jewels and deeds and documents which represent money, were the easiest sort of property for hunted folks to hold or to hide. There were plenty of needy people, too proud or too idle to work, and just a little too scrupulous to rob outright, who were always eager to buy on credit and to borrow on interest. The knight might want a suit of armour, or trappings for his horse, or a set of ornaments for his lady love; the priest might covet a jewelled cup or cross for his altar, and from king to peasant a loan might be needed for any purpose. Every one with such wants would go to ‘his Jew’ to supply them, and if the actual things were not forthcoming, the money was generally at hand to procure them elsewhere. The very fact of being able to lend gained Jews a chance of consideration from eager borrowers. Only a chance, perhaps, for the mood when borrowing differs greatly from the mood when repaying. The goods or the money once had, the obligation to pay was frequently altogether forgotten, and the Jew’s reminder of what was due to him was often bitterly resented by the debtors, and his demand for interest on the debt denounced by them as usury.