estate or church in return for a loan, and, the principal remaining; intact, takes for himself the fruits of it until that principal have been paid. This kind, on account of the labour and expense which are usually bestowed upon agriculture, seems to be more allowable; but, beyond a doubt, it is sordid and rightly to be counted as usury. But if the creditor, avaricious and prone to the ruin of his soul, have seen fit to have the matter so expressed in writing that it shall read: "be it known to all, that I, N., owe N. one hundred marks of silver; and for these hundred marks I have pledged to him such a piece of land for £10, until I or my heir shall pay to him or his heir the aforesaid hundred marks ": when, after the death of the creditor, the tenor of this infamous charter shall come to the notice of the king or the chief justice,—first, the foul pursuit of usury shall be condemned, and the creditor, betrayed by his writing, shall be judged a usurer, unworthy of his movable goods. But if he, whose estate it is, shall in someway have obtained from the king that that which was thus alienated shall be restored to him, he shall be bounden to the king for the whole principal, even if the creditor shall have possessed the estate for two years or more; the munificence of the king, however, usually enters into an agreement concerning the amount of that total, chiefly on account of the gift of especial grace which imposes on him the duty of preferring those who are faithful; and, furthermore, because in the name of the public power he is about to receive all the goods of that creditor or usurer who had grown rich to the enormous detriment of a faithful subject. There are also many other things which pertain separately to the fisc, which cannot easily be brought under one rubric; for they are not fixed but casual. The accounts of the escheats of this third kind, however, are made out not above, after the farms, but below, after all the j^leas and before the chattels of fugitives: so that they, by their actual position, may be seen to pertain to the fisc on account of the enormous faults of the delinquents.
D. I wonder at the things that thou hast said; for they do not seem to be able to agree with what goes before. For since it is free to the lords of bondsmen not only to transfer them but also to alienate them in every kind of
