r present
money.[v***] This is ten times cheaper than the usual rent at present.
But commodities were not above four times cheaper; a presumption of the
bad husbandry in that age.

Some laws were made with regard to beggars and vagrants;[v****] one of
the circumstances in government, which humanity would most powerfully
recommend to a benevolent legislator; which seems, at first sight, the
most easily adjusted; and which is yet the most difficult to settle
in such a manner as to attain the end without destroying industry.
The convents formerly were a support to the poor; but at the same time
tended to encourage idleness and beggary.

* 25 Henry VIII. c. 2.

** 24 Henry VIII. c. 3.

*** 33 Henry VIII. c. 11.

**** Strype, vol. i. p. 392.

v 6 Henry VIII. c. 5. 7 Henry VIII. c. 1.

v* 25 Henry VIII. c. 13.

v** 25 Henry VIII. c. 13.

v*** Anderson, vol. i. p. 374.

v**** 22 Henry VIII. c. 12. 22 Henry VIII. c. 5.

In 1546, a law was made for fixing the interest of money at ten per
cent.; the first legal interest known in England. Formerly all loans
of that nature were regarded as usurious. The preamble of this very law
treats the interest of money as illegal and criminal; and the prejudices
still remained so strong, that the law permitting interest was repealed
in the following reign.

This reign, as well as many of the foregoing and even subsequent reigns,
abounds with monopolizing laws, confining particular manufactures to
particular towns, or excluding the open country in general.[*] There
remain still too many traces of similar absurdities. In the subsequent
reign, the corporations which had been opened by a former law, and
obliged to admit tradesmen of different kinds, were again shut up by act
of parliament; and every one was prohibited from exercising any trade
who was not of the corporation.[**]

Henry, as he possessed himself some talent for letters, was an
encourager of them in others. He founded Trinity College in Cambridge,
and gave it ample endowments. Wolsey founded Christ Church in Oxford,
and intended to call it Cardinal College: but upon his fall, which
happened before he had entirely finished his scheme, the king seized all
the revenues; and this violence, above all the other misfortunes of that
minister, is said to have given him the greatest concern.[***] But Henry
afterwards restored the revenues of the college, and only changed