In truth, though the kings might pretend to resent affronts and wrongs offered to them, they were, and all men knew that they were, unable to extend any real protection to them, even had they been anxious to do so. All classes of men became, as time went on, more and more determinedly set against them. The barons, on whose estates they held heavy mortgages; the merchants, who found the trade of the country, in spite of all their own efforts, getting into the hands of the Jews; the common people, who resented Jewish riches, which contrasted with their own grinding poverty; above all, the clergy, to whose warnings and threatenings they would not listen—all these bore a bitter grudge against them, which grew more bitter in every succeeding generation. Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, together with some of his suffragans, put forth a decree, A.D. 1222, forbidding all Christian men, on pain of excommunication, to sell the necessaries of life to the Jews.[124] The Crown then issued an edict, which commanded all men, as loyal subjects of the king, to refuse obedience to this order; a needless demonstration, as it would have been impossible to enforce it. But the protection of the king was merely nominal. When the wars in France engaged the public attention in 1230, Henry demanded a third part of their movables to be paid into his exchequer. Two years afterwards he claimed 18,000 marks of them; and again, four years after that, 10,000 marks. A Jew assured Matthew of Paris that the king had exacted from him alone 30,000 marks of silver and 200 of gold. Other Jews fared no better. Accusations were for ever being trumped up against them. On one occasion they were charged with coining false money, at another, with fraudulently affixing the royal seal to documents, and the like. The Jews seldom took the trouble to defend themselves. Like the aristocrats in France during the Reign of Terror, they knew that they were already condemned when they were brought up for trial. All they could do was to bribe the judges, or the king himself, as the case might be, to pardon their imaginary trespasses. In 1225, the old charge of stealing children, to crucify them at the ensuing Passover, was again alleged. In this instance the child was recovered before the act of crucifixion had taken place; and some penalty—we are not told what—was inflicted. Some years afterwards, in 1243, the Jews in London were charged with the same offence. Though in this instance the child had not been stolen, but sold, it was averred, by the parents, the murder had been committed, and the corpse was (as usual) discovered by a miracle. A hue and cry was made after the supposed murderers, but they could not be found.