usurers and licentious liurs as belong to
him, the realme had alreadie become sore corrupted."

In the fourteenth century, under the three Edwards, the taking of
interest was an indictable offence and Edward III made it a capital
crime.

In the fifteenth century, under Henry VII, the penalty was fixed at
one hundred pounds and the penalty of the church added, which was
excommunication.

Attorney General Noy, in the reign of James I, thought the taking of
money by usury was no better than taking a man's life. He said:
"Usurers are well ranked with murderers."

In the sixteenth century, under Henry VIII, it was enacted that all
interest above ten per cent. was unlawful. Less was not collectable by
law, but was not a punishable offence.

Edward VI revived the old laws condemning all interest.

Mary I, next following, executed these laws with extreme severity.

Elizabeth restored the laws of Henry VIII, in which usury less than
ten per cent. was not a punishable offence. This edict of Elizabeth
adds: "In the interpretation of the law it shall be largely and
strongly construed for the repression of usury."

This law of Henry VIII and Elizabeth, with the rate of interest
reduced, was the statute law of England until 1854, when all the usury
laws were repealed.

In 1694 William and Mary II entered into a contract to secure a
permanent loan and pledged the kingdom to pay interest on it forever.

The loan marked the turning point in the popular mind with regard to
usury. As it was approved in their necessity by the king and queen at
the head of the Protestant world, ecclesiastics began to shift their
ground and to apologize for, and excuse, that which had been formerly
unequivocably condemned. As the crown was the head of both the church
and the state, the condemnation of usury seemed tinged both with
disloyalty and heresy. The courts too began to modify their decisions
to bring them into harmony with the action of the crown.

The change in the usury laws were not made by enactments of
Parliament, but by the decisions of courts. The precedents were
gradually accumulated and the statutes were merely made to conform to
them.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

FRANCIS BACON.

From the short dissertation on usury found in the works of Bacon we
learn that the taking of usury was a recognized evil and odious in his
time.

It will be noticed that he eliminates risk from usury and sees that
"In the game of certainties agains