Matthew Paris tells us that the houses which the Italian moneylenders built for themselves were so costly that, although at one period the Italians were anxious to leave the kingdom to escape the persecutions they suffered from, they were constrained to remain by the loss they feared to incur by deserting their houses.[349] In 1456 a serious attack was made upon the houses of the Lombards by the mercers and other crafts led by William Cantelowe, alderman and mercer, who was summoned before the King's Council and imprisoned. We learn also from the Paston Letters that two of the men who joined in the attack were hanged (ed. J. Gairdner, 1872, vol. i. p. 387). In Gregory's _Chronicle_ it is said that the Lombards were compelled to quit London and take up their residence in Southampton and Winchester. Dr. James Gairdner writes of this outbreak: 'The withdrawal of the Lombard merchants in all probability produced a sensible effect upon the commerce of the city; for they made a bye-law among themselves that no individual merchant of Northern Italy should henceforth go to London and trade there.' This ordinance the Signory of Venice ratified by a decree of the Senate, and prohibited, under a heavy fine, all Venetian vessels from visiting the port of London.[350] In spite of all this turmoil affairs settled down again, and the foreigners appear to have returned to their London houses. In connection with the introduction of Italian bankers into London, the popular derivation of bankrupt from a broken bench is naturally called to mind, and I have tried to find some allusion in the city records to a broken bench in Lombard Street, but without success. In Florio's _A New Worlde of Wordes_; or, _Dictionarie in Italian and English_ (1598), we find the following entries:-- 'Banca, a bench or a forme. 'Bancarotta, a bankrupt.' In Torriano's edition of Florio (1650) we come upon these amplified entries-- 'Banca-rotta, a bankrout merchant, one that hath broken his credit. 'Banca fallito, a bank broken, a merchant's credit crackt.' This is the explanation that commends itself to Dr. Murray (_New English Dictionary_), who writes that he cannot trace the reference to a broken bench earlier than that of Dr. Johnson, who introduced the suggestion with the formula 'it is said.' There is, however, an early note bearing on this derivation in Sir John Skene's remarkable little book, _De Verborum Significatione_ (1641),[351] where we read under the words 'Dyour, Dyvour' this explanation: 'In Latine, _cedere bonis_, quhilk is most commonly used amongst merchandes to make bankrout, bankrupt or bankrompue; because the doer thereof, as it were, breakis his bank, stalle or seete quhair he used his traffique of before.'