=7. Dishonest Jews.=――In truth, the terrible pressure put on the Jews for money, drove many of them into dishonest ways of obtaining it. The vast sums continually demanded could not possibly be raised in any legitimate way. In their dreadful straits, Jews clipped and adulterated the coin of the realm. Although, in strict equity, those who called for money, which they knew quite well could not be honestly come by, really caused this crime, and were as guilty in some respects as those who perpetrated it, still, two wrongs never yet made one right, and no amount of poverty is any justification whatever for dishonesty. It is better to starve than to steal, to be shunned than to cheat. There is, therefore, no cause for complaint in the fact that fraudulent practices, whenever discovered, were punished in the severest manner. In November 1279, all the Jews in the kingdom were arrested, on a tolerably substantial charge against some of them, of having clipped and adulterated the coin. Many non-Jews were likewise arrested, but their punishments, when found guilty, were of a much less severe sort than were pronounced upon the Jews. On this occasion, eighty Jews were executed in London alone. =8. Efforts at Conversion.=――Although their wealth was the chief interest which Jews possessed for those in authority, yet their conversion was always a secondary object, and was never quite lost sight of. It served sometimes as the excuse, and sometimes as the occasion, for a little extra persecution. During the reign of Edward I., Pope Honorius IV. issued a bull denouncing usury and fraud, which, all men would agree with him, are practices quite justly to be denounced. But Pope Honorius went further; he denounced them as _Jewish_ practices, and took the occasion to speak strongly against the Jewish religion generally and the Talmud in particular. This bull of his was issued especially for the guidance of the Archbishop of Canterbury and of the English clergy, and it was supplemented by an English statute of about the same date, which compelled Jews, under penalties, to attend places where Dominican friars preached proselytising sermons. Whether these sermons checked usury or promoted conversion may be doubted, but such compulsory attendances must in any case have provoked bad feeling, and, further, put the Jews into a false position with the priests and the populace.