Powerless as the Jews were against royal oppression in England, the position that was offered to them by Richard and John was no worse than that of their co-religionists in other countries of Europe. Those of Germany were the Emperor’s _Kammerknechte_;[33] those of France had been expelled in 1182, and though they were soon recalled, might at any time be expelled again.[34] A Jew in a feudalised country was liable to be the subject of quarrel between the lord on whose estate he dwelt and the king of the country, and he could be handed about, now to the one and now to the other.[35] The right to live and to be under jurisdiction, was everywhere still a local privilege that had to be enjoyed by the permission of a lord, lay or clerical, and had to be paid for. In England, the Jews, so long as they were protected by the King, were at any rate under the greatest lord in the land. The towns where especially they wished to settle for the purposes of their business, were, thanks to the policy of William the Conqueror, mostly on the royal domain. And the royal power acting through its local officers was used to the full to protect the Jews. The sheriffs of the counties were especially charged to secure to them personal safety and the enjoyment of the immunities that had been granted to them.[36] The arrangement by which Jewish money-lenders received on English soil the protection of the King against his own subjects was not very honourable to either of the parties. But the King had no compunction, and the Jews had no choice. It could endure so long as the royal power was strong enough to override the objections of barons and abbots to a measure in favour of their creditors, of the towns to an encroachment on their privileges, and of the Church to the royal support of a body of infidel usurers. At the end of the twelfth century neither towns nor landholders nor Church were in a position to offer any effectual protest. In the thirteenth century the strength of the opposition of each of these three orders grew steadily. But in each it pursued a separate course, though to the same end, and each order struck its decisive blow at a different moment. Hence the various forms of opposition must be separately considered. III.--THE CONFLICT WITH THE TOWNS.