ready for his service, being detained in foreign countries[1] John appears to have possessed merely a few galleys of his own.
In this reign we find the earliest mention of what may be called letters of credit, the first form, it may be supposed, of bills of exchange, the introduction and general employment of which very soon followed. In a document printed in the Fœdera, John, under date of 25th August, 1199, at Rouen, engages to repay in four instalments, in the course of two years, a sum of 2125 marks, which had been advanced by a company of merchants of Placentia to the bishops of Anjou and Bangor on the faith of the letters of King Richard. Afterwards John himself repeatedly raised money by such letters, addressed to all merchants, whereby he bound himself to repay the sums advanced to his agents to the amount named, at such time as should be agreed upon, to any person presenting his letter, together with the acknowledgment of his agents for the sum received by them. Mr. Macpherson is of opinion that, as there is no mention of interest in any of those letters, it must have been discounted when the money was advanced. It is remarkable that, although at this time, in England, no Christian was permitted by law to take interest, or usury as it was called, even at the lowest rate, upon money lent, the Jews in this respect lay under no restriction whatever. The interest which they actually received, accordingly, was sometimes enormous. In the large profits, however, which they thus made the crown largely shared, by the power of arbitrarily fining them, which it constantly exercised. William of Newburgh frankly speaks of them as well known to be the royal usurers; in other words, their usury was a mode of suction, by which an additional portion of the property of the subject was drawn into the royal treasury: and this sufficiently accounts for the manner in which they were tolerated and protected in the monopoly of the trade of money-lending.
Very few direct notices of the state of trade in this
- ↑ Macpherson's Ann. of Com. i. 379.
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