Usury. justice must be cheaper and more reliable if the people were to prefer it to the seigniorial court. The Crown obtained the monopoly of criminal jurisdiction in the Assizes of Clarendon and Northampton, which ordered that all serious offences should be reserved for the king's judges who were enabled for this purpose even to enter private franchises. A system of writs was evolved, by which cases could be removed from a local court and tried in the king's court. Above all the inquest, that is, trial by jury, hitherto restricted to the king's own purposes, became the normal feature of legal procedure and a resource at the disposal of every litigant. The curia regis now ceased to be a court of exceptional resort confined to feudal tenants, and became an ordinary tribunal open to the whole realm. Its business became greatly enlarged, and Henry made various experiments to place it on a proper footing, and to give it a suitable organization with a definite composition and settled places and times of meeting. The most decisive result, perhaps, was the spread of common law, but here we are only concerned with his work in so far as it has a financial bearing. Henry's methods of government were decidedly autocratic, and in spite of the beneficial character of his reforms we can hardly hold that the despotism which he established was benevolent. The courts of law were turned into a vehicle for financial extortion. Fines were paid for speeding lawsuits, fines for delaying them and fines for stopping them1; and Magna Carta expressed the demand of the nation that henceforth justice should neither be sold nor denied nor delayed. Other windfalls swelled the royal income from time to time. For a century after the Conquest a bitter struggle ensued between the Crown and the baronage, whose hopes of feudal independence were kept in check by the strong hand of the Norman kings. The real danger from the barons lay in their connexion with Normandy, which enabled them to fortify a rebellion in England by stirring up revolt in the continental possessions of the English king. The evil was met by expelling the great feudal nobles from their estates, or in default of a penalty so drastic by imposing very heavy 1 Madox, Exchequer, 308-309, 314. fines1. Among the occasional windfalls to revenue may also be reckoned the forfeiture of usurers' chattels 2. In Normandy during the twelfth century a usurer was allowed to distribute his property with his own hand before his death; but in the absence of any testamentary disposition all his property passed to the king, if he could be proved to have lent money on usury within a year of his death. In England, on the other hand, not only were presentments made in courts of law for excessive usury, but the Exchequer confiscated the chattels of those who lent money at interest. According to the doctrine laid down by Glanville, "the effects of a usurer, whether he make a will or not, belong to the king. Now it is not the practice for any one during his lifetime to be appealed or convicted of the crime of usury, but amongst other royal inquisitions it is usually inquired and put to proof who have died in this offence-by the oaths of twelve lawful men. Which being proved in court, all the movables and chattels belonging to the deceased usurer shall be seized into the king's hands, without any regard to the person in whose hands they may be found. His heir is deprived of the inheritance according to the law of the realm "4. The arguments by which the prohibition of usury—that is, the exaction of interest however small for a loan of money-was supported, rested ultimately upon the teaching of the Gospel to lend, hoping for nothing again, and the dictum of Aristotle that money was barren and could not bear fruit 5. The doctrine of Aquinas based the condemnation of usury upon a distinction known to Roman law between absolute ownership and temporary possession. A loan of money was regarded as a sale in which ownership was immediately vested in the borrower, though the purchase price paid to the lender was deferred; hence to charge interest was to demand both the price of the commodity and payment for the use of it. Apart from the theory of 1 Pipe Roll, 25 Hen. II. (vol. xxviii. 31). Gilbert, the son of Fergus, renders account of £1000, pro habenda benevolentia regis." 2 Pipe Roll, 23 Hen. II. (vol. xxvi. 79). 3 Calendar of Documents in France, 478. 4 Glanville, De Legibus, vii. c. xvi. 5 Professor Ashley (Economic History, part i. c. 3 and part ii. c. 6) has given an admirable exposition of the mediaeval theory of usury. Effects of usury, there remains the more important question as to the its prohibi- effects of its prohibition on society. The indications for tion on society. forming an opinion are admittedly scanty, but the evidence 2 Pipe Roll, 22 Hen. II. (vol. xxv. 15) records a fine paid for a partner- Moreover, the customary system of tillage was breaking down under the gradual spread of enclosures and individualistic husbandry. In all these directions capital was needed for renting additional land, stocking it with cattle, putting up hedges and buying out other men's rights of common. Even in the fourteenth century there was a quickening of economic life and rural activity, although it becomes more marked in the fifteenth century. No doubt over a great part of England there was complete stagnation, and the customary routine of agriculture remained unbroken. This does not affect the contention that in agriculture, industry and trade there were pioneers of economic progress and opportunities for capitalist enterprise and productive expenditure. No doubt the rates of interest were high, but this was directly due to the mistake of condemning all interest instead of excessive interest. Where the taking of any interest at all was a crime, the lender required a substantial inducement to face the risk; and when money was lent secretly the borrower was the first to suffer. The free play of competitive forces would have reduced the rate of interest to a fit and proper level, and merchants could have been trusted to protect themselves from oppression. The careers of men like William de la Pole, Thomas de Melchburn and Walter de Cheriton, who lent money to Edward III.1, revealed the existence of a native body of financiers in the fourteenth century, whose banking operations were largely if not entirely excluded from a fruitful field of investment, unless they were prepared to share in the risks of commercial speculation. Even in the twelfth century we meet with William Cade," a Christian usurer, the first one known to us who worked on a large scale; we might almost call him the first English financier of whom record has been found" 2. An act was passed against usury in 14873, but in 1545 it was stated that statutes against usury had been " of little force and effect", and they were therefore repealed, interest 1 S. B. Terry, The Financing of the Hundred Years' War (1914), 101; A. Law, "The English Nouveaux-Riches", in Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. N.S. ix. 63; H. R. F. Bourne, English Merchants (1886). 730. 2 H. Jenkinson, "William Cade", in English Hist. Review, xxviii. 209, 3 Statutes, ii. 514. The strictness of the usury being fixed at ten per cent.1 laws prompted an inevitable recourse to systematic evasion ; and in the thirteenth century the Caursines especially earned an unenviable notoriety. As a societas they were able to escape punishment, for in canon law the offence of usury could only be brought home apparently to individuals. Alvarus Pelagius writing in the following century raised the question: "What is the case of cities or associations that give money on usury? Is each person in them a usurer and bound to restitution?" And he replies: "It seems not, for the case of a universitas is not the case of the individuals who compose it" 2. The usury laws were the more shortsighted, for at a time when the supply of currency was insufficient they combined with the prevailing sense of insecurity to induce men to hoard their treasure, or convert it into plate, instead of freely circulating it from hand to hand. Landowners especially suffered from the scarcity of money. When the lord of Berkeley travelled to London in the thirteenth century, he kept two of his servants to bring bread from Essex," rather than he would to the market or baker to buy for money"; and on his journeys he carried oats for his horses' provender "to save the expenses of his purse "4. Even two centuries later Lady Berkeley could write to her husband: "At the reverence of God send money, or else I must lay my horse to pledge and come home on my feet": her lord thereupon borrowed twenty-two marks and pledged as security "one gilt mass-book, a chalice of silver weighing eighteen ounces, and a chasuble "5. The correspondence of the Plumpton family reveals pathetic glimpses of the straits to which they were reduced. "We are brought to begger-staffe", wrote the wife of Sir Robert Plumpton 6; "I have sent to Wright of Idell for the money that he promised you, and he saith he hath it not to lend and makes excuses, so that I can get none nowhere. And as for 1 Statutes, iii. 996. Repealed ibid. iv. part i. 155 (1552). 2 De Planctu Ecclesiae, cit. R. J. Whitwell, Italian Bankers and the English Crown", in Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. N.S. xvii. 209. 3 Shaw, History of Currency, 14. 4 Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys, i. 167. • Plumpton Correspondence, ed. T. Stapleton (1839), 198. Ibid. ii. 63. |