This command over capital was regarded with great dislike by both princes and people. Through these trading companies much ready money passed out of the country, and all objects of luxury rose in price; complaints were general, for the diminution in the worth of money, occasioned by the introduction of the American gold, was mistaken for the raising of prices by the merchants. Not only Hutten, who was deeply imbued with the prejudices of his own class, but even the Imperial Diet was jealous of the power of these great moneyed companies; among the people also, the antipathy to them was general, and the Reformers shared the opinions of their cotemporaries as to the detriment of such domination over capital. Yet even then, it may be observed that these great merchant princes had not all the same tendencies. The Welsers of Augsburg, for example, in 1512, took an active interest at Rome on behalf of Reuchlin, and that great scholar owed his deliverance from the hands of the Dominicans, more perhaps to their secret influence than to the refined rhetoric of his enthusiastic admirers in Germany. On the other hand, the Fuggers were considered by the people as reckless moneyed men and Romanists; as enemies of Luther and friends of Eck, who was suspected of being in their pay; for they had charge of the money affairs of the Elector Albrecht of Mayence, and of the Romish curie, and one of the Fugger's clerks accompanied the indulgence chest of Tetzel, and controlled the incoming receipts, on which the banking-house of the Archbishop of Mayence had made advances. The Emperor, Charles V., received the most solid support from these powerful firms, as their interests were generally concurrent with his; with the people, however, "_Fuggerei_" became the common term for usury. We learn the family tendency for outward splendour and intercourse with the great, from the description which Hans von Schweinichen gives of their opulence in the year 1575. When the dissolute Duke Hemrich von Liegnitz with his majordomo was at Augsburg, the splendour of this house appeared to the Silesian noblemen as quite fabulous. Schweinichen, who was more accurate in specifying the sums of money and prices than was necessary considering the endless debts of his master, gives the following narrative.[55]