There was every reason why the hatred of usury should be as strong in England as anywhere. The Franciscan movement had spread throughout the country, and had found among Englishmen many of its chief literary champions.[88] And the Englishman’s pious dislike of usury had been strengthened by many years of bitter experience. Italian usurers had in the previous reign gone up and down the country collecting money on behalf of the Pope, and lending money on their own account at exorbitant rates of interest.[89] From some of the magnates they obtained protection (for which they are said to have paid with a share of their profits),[90] but to the great body of the Baronage, to the Church, and to the trading classes their very name had become hateful. One of them, the brother of the Pope’s Legate, had been killed at Oxford.[91] In London Bishop Roger had solemnly excommunicated them all, and excluded them from his diocese.[92] No English king who wished to follow the teachings of Christianity could willingly countenance any of his subjects in carrying on a traffic which was thus hated by the people and condemned by all the doctors of Christendom. Even Henry III. was once so far moved by indignation and religious feeling as to expel the Caursines from his kingdom,[93] and had religious scruples about the retention of the Jews.[94] But, as has been shown, he could not do without the Jewish revenue. Edward was not only free from dependence on that source of income, but he was also a far more religious king than his father. He was a man to obey the behests of the Church, instead of setting them at naught with an easy conscience, as his father had done. In the second year of his reign the Church, by a decree passed at the Council of Lyons, demanded from the Christian world far greater efforts against usury than ever before.[95] Till this time, though Popes and Councils had declared the practice accursed, churches and monasteries had had usurers as tenants on their estates, or had even possessed whole ghettos as their property.[96] Now this was to be ended, and it was ordained by Gregory X. that no community, corporation, or individual should permit foreign usurers to hire their houses, or indeed to dwell at all upon their lands, but should expel them within three months. Edward, in obedience to this decree, ordered an inquisition to be made into the usury of the Florentine bankers in his kingdom with a view to its suppression, and allowed proceedings to be taken at the same time and with the same object against a citizen of London.[97] And the events of the last reign enabled him to proceed to what at first seems the far more serious task of bringing to an end the trade that the Jews had carried on under the patronage, and for the benefit, of the Royal Exchequer.