The 16,000[120] Jews of England were thus called upon to change at once their old occupation for a new one, and the task was imposed upon them under conditions which made it all but impossible of fulfilment. They were forbidden to become burgesses of towns; and the effect of the prohibition was to make it impossible for them, in most parts of England, to become traders, for it practically excluded them from the Gild Merchant. It is true that some towns professed that their Gild was open to all the inhabitants, whether burgesses or not, so long as they took the oath to preserve the liberties of the town and the king’s peace.[121] But most of the Gilds were exclusive bodies, to which all non-burgesses would find it hard to gain admission,[122] and Jewish non-burgesses, though not as a rule kept out by a disqualifying religious formula,[123] would on account of the unpopularity of their race and religion, find it trebly hard.[124] As non-Gildsmen, they would be at a disadvantage both in buying goods and in selling them. They would find it hard to buy, because, in some towns at any rate, the Gildsmen were accustomed to “oppress the people coming to the town with vendible wares, so that no man could sell his wares to anyone except to a member of the society.”[125] They would find it in all towns hard to sell, in some impossible. In some towns non-Gildsmen were forbidden to deal in certain articles of common use, such as wool, hides, grain, untanned leather, and unfulled cloth; in others, as in Southampton, they might not buy anything in the town to sell again there, or keep a wine tavern, or sell cloth by retail except on market day and fair day, or keep more than five quarters of corn in a granary to sell by retail. There were even towns where the municipal statutes altogether forbade non-Gildsmen to keep shops or to sell by retail.[126] It was almost as difficult for Jews to become agriculturists or artisans, as to become traders. They were allowed by the statute to farm land, but for ten years only, and they were far too ignorant of agriculture to be able to take advantage of the permission. They could not work on the land of others as villeins, because, even if a Christian lord had been willing to receive them, they would have been prevented by their religion from taking the oath of fealty.[127]