The offence had long been prevalent. In 1248 such mischief had been done that, according to Matthew Paris “no foreigner, let alone an Englishman, could look on an English coin with dry eyes and unbroken heart.”[159] It was in vain that Henry III. issued a new coinage, so stamped that the device and the lettering extended to the edge of the piece,[160] and caused it to be proclaimed in every town, village, market-place, and fair that none but the new pieces with their shapes unaltered should be given or taken in exchange.[161] The opportunity for dishonesty was too tempting. The coins that actually circulated in the country were of many different issues,[162] they were not milled at the edges,[163] they were so liable to damage and mutilation of all kinds that their deficiency of weight had to be recognised and allowed for.[164] Hence anyone who had many coins passing through his hands could secure an easy profit by clipping off a piece from each one before he passed it again into circulation. In the early part of the reign of Edward I., such was the deficiency in the weight of genuine coins (an annalist of the period estimates it at 50 per cent.),[165] and such the amount of false coin in circulation, that the price of commodities rose to an alarming height, foreign merchants were driven away, trade became completely disorganised, shopkeepers refused the money tendered to them, and the necessities of life were withdrawn from the markets.[166] The King had to promise to issue a new coinage, but the announcement of his intention only increased the general disturbance. The Archbishop of Canterbury complained that in consequence of the disturbance of circulation, he could not find anyone, except the professional usurers, from whom he could borrow money on which to live during the interval before the revenues of his see began to come in.[167] When the King at this period of his reign went to a priory to ask for money, the first and most cogent of the excuses that he heard was that “the House was impoverished by the change in the coinage of the realm.”[168] Public opinion ascribed to the Jews the greatest share in the injuries to the coinage. “They are notoriously forgers and clippers of the coin,” says Matthew Paris.[169] And that the suspicion was not absolutely without justification is shown by the fact, that early in Henry III.’s reign, the community made a payment to the King in order to secure as a concession the expulsion from England of such of its members as might be convicted of the crime.[170] When inquiries were ordered into the causes of the debasement, in 1248, it was generally considered that the guilt would be found to rest with the Jews.[171] The official verdict included them with the Caursines and the Flemish wool-merchants in its condemnation.[172]