The Expulsion was a piece of independent royal action, made necessary by the impossibility of carrying out the only alternative policy that an honourable Christian king could adopt. And the impossibility was not of Edward’s making. It was the result of many causes, and the knowledge of it had been brought home to him by many proofs. The guesses of our contemporary, and all but contemporary, authorities who take on themselves to explain his action, show how many were the obstacles before which he had to confess himself vanquished. In one chronicle the Expulsion is represented as a concession to the prayer of the Pope;[247] in another, as the result of the efforts of Queen Eleanor;[248] in a third, as a measure of summary punishment against the blasphemy of the Jews, taken to give satisfaction to the English clergy;[249] in a fourth as an answer to the complaints made by the magnates of the continued prevalence of usury;[250] in a fifth as an act of conformity to public opinion;[251] in a sixth, as a reform suggested by the King’s independent general enquiry into the administration of the kingdom during his absence, and his discovery, through the complaints of the Council, of the “deceits” of the Jews.[252] Each of these statements gives us some information as to the nature and extent of the failure of Edward’s policy. None gives the true cause, for none sets before us the true position of the Jews and their relations with their neighbours. It is true that it was the bull of Honorius that finally compelled Edward to give up his attempt to assimilate the position of the Jews to that of Christian traders. It is true, no doubt, that his mother had from the first dissuaded him from generous treatment, and, perhaps, had induced him to lessen the chance of the success of his policy by asserting his right over them as over his serfs.[253] But the bull of the Pope and the personal influence of the Queen-mother were alike unnecessary. If Edward had waived all his rights, if the Church had in his reign relented towards the Jews instead of increasing its bitterness towards them, both acts of generosity would have come too late. The same causes that had made the Jews accept the position of royal usurers at the end of the eleventh century, and of royal chattels at the end of the twelfth, made it impossible for them to give up either position at the end of the thirteenth. From the moment of their arrival in England they had been hated by the common people. They never had an opportunity of acquiring interests in common with their neighbours, or of entering their social or industrial institutions. Isolation brought with it danger. For the sake of safety they had to accept royal protection; and their protectors long held them in a close grip, until one at last refused to tolerate them under the same conditions as had satisfied his predecessors. But to have given them their freedom would only have been to expose them to the old dislike and the old danger.