Notes

PREFACE TO 1937 EDITION

1.References to some of the earlier literature will be found in the notes on subsequent chapters. The following list of recent books and articles is not exhaustive, but it may be of some use to those interested in the subject:

E. Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, 2 vols., London, 1931 (Eng. trans. by Olive Wyon of his Die Soziallehren der Christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen, Tübingen, 1912); Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London, 1930 (Eng. trans. by Talcott Parsons of Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus in ‘Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik’, vols. xx (1904) and xxi (1905); later reprinted in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, 3 vols., Tübingen, 1921); H. Hauser, Les débuts du Capitalisme, Paris, 1927, chap. ii (‘Les Idées économiques de Calvin’); B. Groethuysen, Origines de l’esprit bourgeois en France, Paris, 1927; Margaret James, Social Problems and Policy during the Puritan Revolution, 1640–1660, London, 1930; Isabel Grubb, Quakerism and Industry before 1800, London, 1930; W. J. Warner, The Wesleyan Movement in the Industrial Revolution, London, 1930; R. Pascal, The Social Basis of the German Reformation, 1933; H. M. Robertson, Aspects of the Rise of Economic Individualism, Cambridge, 1933; A. Fanfani, Le Origini dello Spirito Capitalistico in Italia, Milan, 1933, and Cattolicismo e Protestantesimo nella Formazione Storica del Capitalismo, Milan, 1934 (Eng. trans. Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capitalism, London, 1935); J. Brodrick, S.J., The Economic Morals of the Jesuits, London, 1934; E. D. Bebb, Nonconformity and Social and Economic Life, 1660–1800, London, 1935. The articles include the following: M. Halbwachs, ‘Les Origines Puritaines du Capitalisme Moderne’ (Revue d’histoire et de philosophie réligieuses, March-April, 1925) and ‘Économistes et Historiens, Max Weber, une vie, un œeuvre’ (Annales d’Histoire Économique et Sociale, No. 1, 1929); H. Sée, ‘Dans quelle mesure Puritains et Juifs ont-ils contribué au Progrès du Capitalisme Moderne?’ (Revue Historique, t. CLV, 1927); Kemper Fullerton, ‘Calvinism and Capitalism’ (Harvard Theological Review, July 1928); F. H. Knight, ‘Historical and Theoretical Issues in the Problem of Modern Capitalism’ (Journal of Economic and Business History, November 1928); Talcott Parsons, ‘Capitalism in Recent German Literature’ (Journal of Political Economy, December 1928 and February 1929); P. C. Gordon Walker, ‘Capitalism and the Reformation’ (Economic History Review, November 1937).

2.For Weber’s life and personality, see Marianne Weber, Max Weber, ein Lebensbild, Tübingen, 1926, and Karl Jaspers, Max Weber, Deutsches Wesen in politischen Denken, im Forschen and Philosophieren, Oldenburg, 1932.

3.Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Eng. trans., p. 183.

4.H. M. Robertson, Aspects of the Rise of Economic Individualism, p. xii.

5.Weber, op. cit., p. 26.

6.Weber, op. cit., p. 183.

7.Ibid., p. 183, and note 118 on chap. v: ‘it would have been easy to proceed … to a regular construction which logically deduced everything characteristic of modern culture from Protestant nationalism. But that sort of thing may be left to the type of dilettante who believes in the unity of the group mind and its reducibility to a single formula.’ ‘Spiritual’ is my rendering of the almost untranslatable ‘spiritualistische kausale’.

8.See below, note 32 on chap. 4, pp. 311–13, and Max Weber, op. cit., pp. 3–11.

9.Weber, op. cit., pp. 197–8. A chapter expanding the same criticism is contained in H. M. Robertson, Aspects of the Rise of Economic Individualism, pp. 57–87. The best treatment of the subject is that of Brentano, Die Anfänge des modernen Kapitalismus, 1916, pp. 117–57, and Der wirthschaftende Mensch in der Geschichte, Leipzig, 1923, pp. 363 sq.

10.See H. M. Robertson, op cit., pp. 88–110 and 133–67; and J. Brodrick, The Economic Morals of the Jesuits, which, in addition to correcting Robertson’s errors, contains the best account of the economic teaching of the Jesuits available in English.

11.E.g. H. Wiskemann, Darstellung der in Deutschland zur Zeit der Reformation herrschenden Nationalökonomischen Ansichten, Leipzig, 1861; F. Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, London, 1892, Introduction; Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, 1898, chap. III; W. Cunningham, Christianity and Social Questions, London, 1910 (see below, note 33 on chap. 4). The last work, though published seven years after the appearance of Weber’s articles, does not refer to them, nor is its argument similar to theirs.

12.E.g. H. M. Robertson, op. cit., p. xi. ‘Many writers have taken advantage of an unpopularity of Capitalism in the twentieth century to employ them [sc. the theories ascribed to Weber] in attacks on Calvinism, or on other branches of religion.’ The only Guy Fawkes of the gang – apart, of course, from myself – detected by Mr Robertson actually firing the train appears to be that implacable incendiary, Mr Aldous Huxley. ‘Infected’, like the arch-conspirator, Weber, ‘with a deep hatred of Capitalism’, we stand with him condemned of ‘a general tendency to undermine the basis of Capitalist society’ (ibid., pp. 207–8). The guilty secret is out at last.

13.H. Pirenne, Les Périodes de l’Histoire Sociale du Capitalisme, 1914.

CHAPTER 1

1.Lloyd George at Portmadoc (Times, 16 June 1921).

2.J. A. Froude, Revival of Romanism, in Short Studies on Great Subjects, 3rd ser., 1877, p. 108.

3.J. N. Figgis, From Gerson to Grotius, 1916, pp. 21 seqq.

4.Locke, Two Treatises of Government, bk. ii, chap. ix, § 124.

5.Nicholas Oresme, c. 1320–82, Bishop of Lisieux from 1377. His Tractatus de origine, natura, jure et mutationibus monetarum was probably written about 1360. The Latin and French texts have been edited by Wolowski (Paris, 1864), and extracts are translated by A. E. Monroe, Early Economic Thought, 1924, pp. 81–102. Its significance is discussed shortly by Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Early and Middle Ages (4th ed., 1905, pp. 354–9), and by Wolowski in his introduction. The date of the De Usuris of Laurentius de Rudolfis was 1403; a short account of his theories as to the exchanges will be found in E. Schreiber, Die volkswirtschaftlichen Anschauungen der Scholastik seit Thomas v. Aquin, 1913, pp. 211–17. The most important works of St Antonino (1389–1459, Archbishop of Florence, 1446) are the Summa Theologica, Summa Confessionalis, and De Usuris, Some account of his teaching is given by Carl Ilgner, Die volkswirtschaftlichen Anschau-ngen Antonins von Florenz, 1904; Schreiber, op. cit., pp. 217–23; and Bede Jarrett, St Antonino and Medieval Economics, 1914. The full title of Baxter’s work is A Christian Directory: a Summ of Practical Theologie and cases of Conscience.

6.See Chap. 4, p. 206.

7.Benvenuto da Imola, Comentum super Dantis Comœdiam (ed. Lacaita), vol. i, p. 579: ‘Qui facit usuram vadit ad infernum; qui non facit vadit ad inopiam’ (quoted by G. G. Coulton, Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation, 1919, p. 342).

8.Elucidarium, lib. ii, p. 18 (in Lanfranci Opera, ed. J. A. Giles). For the reasons for holding that Honorius of Augsburg, and not Lanfranc, as stated in my earlier editions, was the author of the Elucidarium, see J. A. Endres, Honorius Augustodunensis: Beitrag zur Geschichte des geistigen Lebens im 12. Jahrhundert, 1906, pp. 22–6. I am indebted to Professor F. M. Powicke for the correction. See also Vita Sancti Guidonis (Bollandists’ Acta Sanctorum, September, vol. iv. p. 43): ‘Mercatura rara aut nunquam ab aliquo diu sine crimine exerceri potuit.’

9.B. J. Manning, The People’s Faith in the time of Wyclif, 1919, p. 186.

10.Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2^a 2^œ, div. i, Q. iii, art. viii.

11.Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1^a 2^œ, div. i, Q. xciv, art. ii.

12.The Bull Unam Sanctam of Boniface VIII.

13.John of Salisbury, Polycraticus (ed. C. C. J. Webb), lib. v, cap. ii (‘Est autem res publica, sicut Plutarco placet, corpus quoddam quod divini muneris beneficio animatur’), and lib. vi, cap. x, where the analogy is worked out in detail. For Henry VIII’s chaplain see Starkey, A Dialogue between Cardinal Pole and Thomas Lupset (E.E.T.S., Extra Ser., no. xxxii, 1878).

14.Chaucer, The Persoun’s Tale, § 66.

15.On the Seven Deadly Sins, chap. xix (Select English Works of John Wyclif, ed. T. Arnold, vol. iii, 1871, p. 145).

16.John of Salisbury, op. cit., lib. vi, cap. x: ‘Tunc autem totius rei publicae salus incolumis praeclaraque erit, si superiora membra se impendant inferioribus et inferiora superioribus pari jure respondeant, ut singula sint quasi aliorum ad invicem membra.’

17.Wyclif, op. cit., chaps. ix, x, xi, xvii, passim (Works of Wyclif, ed. T. Arnold, vol. iii, pp. 130, 131, 134, 143, 132).

18.See, e.g., A. Doren, Studien aus der Florentiner Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 1901, vol. i, chaps. v, vii. His final verdict (p. 458) is: ‘Man kann es getrost aussprechen: es gibt wohl keine Periode in der Weltgeschichte, in der die natürliche Übermacht des Kapitals über die besitz- und kapitallose Handarbeit rücksichtsloser, freier von sittlichen und rechtlichen Bedenken, naiver in ihrer selbstverständlichen Konsequenz gewaltet hätte und bis in die entferntesten Folgen zur Geltung gebracht worden wäre, als in der Blütezeit der Florentiner Tuchindustrie.’ The picture drawn by Pirenne of the textile industry in Flanders (Belgian Democracy, its early History, trans. by J. V. Saunders, 1915, pp. 128–34) is somewhat similar.

19.In Jan. 1298/9 there was held a ‘parliament of carpenters at Mile-hende, where they bound themselves by a corporal oath not to observe a certain ordinance or provision made by the Mayor and Aldermen touching their craft’, and in the following March a ‘parliament of smiths’ was formed, with a common chest (Calendar of Early Mayor’s Court Rolls of the City of London, 1298–1307, ed. A. H. Thomas, 1924, pp. 25, 33–4).

20.The figures for Paris are the estimate of Martin Saint-Léon (Histoire des Corporations de Métiers, 3rd ed., 1922, pp. 219–20, 224, 226): those for Frankfurt are given by Bücher (Die Bevölkerung von Frankfurt am Main im XIV and XV Jahrhundert, 1886, pp. 103, 146, 605). They do not include apprentices, and must not be pressed too far. The conclusion of Martin Saint-Léon is: ‘Il est certain qu’au moyen âge (abstraction faite des villes de Flandre) il n’existait pas encore un prolétariat, le nombre des ouvriers ne dépassant guère ou n’atteignant même pas celui des maîtres’ (op. cit., p. 227 n.). The towns of Italy should be added, as an exception, to those of Flanders, and in any case the statement is not generally true of the later Middle Ages, when there was certainly a wage-earning proletariat in Germany (see Lamprecht, Zum Verständniss der wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Wandlungen in Deutschland vom 14. zum 16. Jahrhundert, in the Zeitschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, vol. i, 1893, pp. 191–263), and even, though on a smaller scale, in England.

21.The Grete Sentence of Curs Expouned, chap. xxviii (Select English Works of Wyclif, ed. T. Arnold, vol. iii, p. 333). The passage contains comprehensive denunciations of all sorts of combination, in particular, gilds, ‘men of sutel craft, as fre masons and othere’, and ‘marchauntis, grocers, and vitileris’ who ‘conspiren wickidly togidre that noon of hem schal bie over a certeyn pris, though the thing that thei bien be moche more worthi (ibid., pp. 333, 334).

Wyclif’s argument is of great interest and importance. It is (1), that such associations for mutual aid are unnecessary. No special institutions are needed to promote fraternity, since, quite apart from them, all members of the community are bound to help each other: ‘Alle the goodness that is in thes gilds eche man owith for to do bi comyn fraternyte of Cristendom, by Goddis comaundement.’ (2) that combinations are a conspiracy against the public. Both statements were points in the case for the sovereignty of the unitary State, and both were to play a large part in subsequent history. They were used by the absolutist statesmen of the sixteenth century as an argument for State control over industry, in place of the obstructive torpor of gilds and boroughs, and by the individualists of the eighteenth century as an argument for free competition. The line of thought as to the relation of minor associations to the State runs from Wyclif to Turgot, Rousseau, Adam Smith, the Act of the Legislative Assembly in 1792 forbidding trade unions (‘Les citoyens de même état ou profession, les ouvriers et compagnons d’un art quelconque ne pourront … former des règlements sur leurs prétendus intérêts communs’), and the English Combination Acts.

22.Kayser Sigmunds Reformation aller Ständen des Heiligen Römischen Reichs, printed by Goldast, Collectio Constitutionum Imperialium, 1713, vol. iv, pp. 170–200. Its probable date appears to be about 1437. It is discussed shortly by J. S. Schapiro, Social Reform and the Reformation, 1909, pp. 93–9.

23.Martin Saint-Léon, op. cit., p. 187. The author’s remark is made à propos of a ruling of 1270, fixing minimum rates for textile workers in Paris. It appears, however, to be unduly optimistic. The fact that minimum rates were fixed for textile workers must not be taken as evidence that that policy was common, for in England, and probably in France, the textile trades received special treatment, and minimum rates were fixed for them, while maximum rates were fixed for other, and much more numerous, bodies of workers. What is true is that the medieval assumption with regard to wages, as with regard to the much more important question of prices, was that it was possible to bring them into an agreement with an objective standard of equity, which did not reflect the mere play of economic forces.

24.‘The Cardinals’ Gospel’, translated from the Carmina Burana by G. G. Coulton, in A Medieval Garner, 1910, p. 347.

25.Printed from the Carmina Burana by S. Gaselee, An Anthology of Medieval Latin, 1925, pp. 58–9.

26.Innocent IV gave them in 1248 the title of ‘Romanae ecclesiae filii speciales’ (Ehrenberg, Das Zeitalter der Fugger, 1896, vol. ii, p. 66).

27.For Grosstête see Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, vol. v, pp. 404–5 (where he is reported as denouncing the Cahorsines, ‘whom in our time the holy fathers and teachers … had driven out of France, but who have been encouraged and protected by the Pope in England, which did not formerly suffer from this pestilence’), and F. S. Stevenson, Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, 1899, pp. 101–4. For the bishop of London and the Cahorsines see Matthew Paris, Chron. Maj., vol. iii, pp. 331–2. A useful collection of references on the whole subject is Ehrenberg, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 64–8.

28.Registrum Epistolarum J. Peckham, vol. i, p. 18, July 1279 (translated by Coulton, Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation, p. 345).

29.For cases of clerical usury see Selden Society, vol. v, 1891, Leet Jurisdiction in the City of Norwich, ed. W. Hudson, p. 35; Hist. MSS. Com., MSS. of the Marquis of Lothian, 1905, p. 26; and Th. Bonnin, Regestrum Visitationum Odonis Rigaldi, 1832, p. 35. See also note 86 below.

30.The Chapter of Notre-Dame appears to have lent money at interest to the citizens of Paris (A. Luchaire, Social France at the time of Philip Augustus, translated by E. B. Krehbiel, 1912, p. 130). For the bishop’s advice to the usurer see ibid., p. 166.

31.From a letter of St Bernard, c. 1125, printed by Coulton, A Medieval Gamer, pp. 68–73.

32.Aquinas, De Regimine Principum, lib. ii, cap. i–vii, where the economic foundations of a State are discussed.

33.Aquinas, Summa Theol., 2^a 2^æ, Q. lxxxiii, art. vi. For St Antonino’s remarks to the same purpose, see Jarrett, St Antonino and Medieval Economics, p. 59.

34.Gratian, Decretum, pt. ii, causa xii, Q. i, c. ii, § 1.

35.A good account of St Antonino’s theory of property is given by Ilgner, Die volkswirtschaftlichen Anschauungen Antonins von Florenz, chap. x.

36.‘Sed si esset bonus legislator in patria indigente, deberet locare pro pretio magno huiusmodi mercatores … et non tantum eis et familiae sustentationem necessariam invenire, sed etiam industriam, peritiam, et pericula omnia locare; ergo etiam hoc possunt ipsi in vendendo’ (quoted Schreiber, Die volkswirtschaftlichen Anschauungen der Scholastik seit Thomas v. Aquin, p. 154).

37.Henry of Ghent, Aurea Quodlibeta, p. 42b (quoted Schreiber, op. cit., p. 135).

38.Gratian, Decretum, pt. I, dist. lxxxviii, cap. xi.

39.Aquinas, Summa Theol., 2^a 2^æ, Q. lxxvii, art. iv.

40.Ibid. Trade is unobjectionable, ‘cum aliquis negotiationi intendit propter publicam utilitatem, ne scilicet res necessariae ad vitam patriae desint, et lucrum expetit, non quasi finem, sed quasi stipendium laboris’.

41.Henry of Langenstein, Tractatus bipartitus de contractibus emptionis et venditionis, i, 12 (quoted Schreiber, op. cit., p. 197).

42.See Chap. 2, § ii.

43.Examples of these stories are printed by Coulton, A Medieval Garner, 1910, pp. 212–15, 298, and Social Life in England from the Conquest to the Reformation, 1919, p. 346.

44.The facts are given by Arturo Segre, Storia del Commercio, vol. i, p. 223. For a fuller account of credit and money-lending in Florence, see Doren, Studien aus der Florentiner Wirtschaftsgeschichte, vol. i, pp. 173–209.

45.Bruno Kuske, Quellen zur Geschichte des Kölner Handels und Verkehrs im Mittelalter, vol. iii, 1923, pp. 197–8.

46.E.E.T.S., The Coventry Leet Book, ed. M. D. Harris, 1907–13, p. 544.

47.Wyclif, On the Seven Deadly Sins, chap. xxiv (Works of Wyclif, ed. T. Arnold, vol. iii, pp. 154–5). The word rendered ‘loan’ is ‘leeve’ (? leene) in the text.

48.For examples of such cases see Early Chancery Proceedings, Bdle. lxiv, nos. 291 and 1089; Bdle. xxxvii, no. 38; Bdle. xlvi, no. 307. They are discussed in some detail in my introduction to Thomas Wilson’s Discourse upon Usury, 1925, pp. 28–9.

49.Hist. MSS. Com., MSS. of Marquis of Lothian, p. 27; Selden Soc., Leet Jurisdiction in the City of Norwich, p. 35.

50.Aquinas, Summa Theol., 1^a 2^æ, Q. xcv, art. ii.

51.On the Seven Deadly Sins, chap. xxiv (Works of Wyclif, ed. T. Arnold, vol. iii, p. 153): ‘Bot men of lawe and marchauntis and chapmen and vitelers synnen more in avarice then done pore laborers. And this token hereof; for now ben thei pore, and now ben thei ful riche, for wronges that thei done.’

52.E.g., Aegidius Lessinus, De Usuris, cap. ix, pt. i: ‘Tantum res estimatur juste, quantum ad utilitatem possidentis refertur, et tantum juste valet, quantum sine fraude vendi potest…. Omnis translatio facta libera voluntate dominorum juste fit’; Johannes Buridanus, Quaestiones super decem libros Ethicorum Aristotelis, v, 23: ‘Si igitur rem suam sic alienat, ipse secundum suam estimationem non damnificatur, sed lucratur; igitur non injustum patitur.’ Both writers are discussed by Schreiber (op. cit., pp. 161–71 and 177–91). The theory of Buridanus appears extraordinarily modern; but he is careful to emphasize that prices should be fixed ‘secundum utilitatem et necessitatem totius communitatis’, not ‘penes necessitatem ementis vel vendentis’.

53.St Antonino, Summa Theologica, pars ii, tit. i, cap. viii, § 1, and cap. xi, § iii. An account of St Antonino’s theory of prices is given by Ilgner, Die volkswirtschaftlichen Anschauungen Antonins von Florenz, chap. iv; Jarrett, St Antonino and Medieval Economics; and Schreiber, op. cit., pp. 217–23. Its interest consists in the attempts to maintain the principle of the just price, while making allowance for practical necessities.

54.Henry of Langenstein, Tractatus bipartitus de contractibus emptionis et venditionis, i, 11, 12 (quoted Schreiber, op. cit., pp. 198–200).

55.For these examples see Cal. of Early Mayor’s Court Rolls of the City of London, ed. A. H. Thomas, pp. 259–60; Records of the City of Norwich, ed. W. Hudson and J. C. Tingey, vol. i, 1906, p. 227; Cal. of Early Mayor’s Court Rolls, p. 132; J. M. Wilson, The Worcester Liber Albus, 1920 pp. 199–200, 212–13. The question of the legitimacy of rent-charges and of the profits of partnership has been fully discussed by Max Neumann, Geschichte des Wuchers in Deutschland (1865), and by Ashley, Economic History. See also G. O’Brien, An Essay on Medieval Economic Teaching (1920), and G. G. Coulton, An Episode in Canon Law (in History, July 1921), where the difficult question raised by the Decretal Naviganti is discussed.

56.Bernardi Papiensis Summa Decretalium (ed. E. A. D. Laspeyres, 1860), lib. v, tit. xv.

57.E.g., Aegidius Lessinus, De Usuris, cap. ix, pt ii: ‘Etiam res futurae per tempora non sunt tantae estimationis, sicut eaedem collectae in instanti, nec tantam utilitatem inferunt possidentibus, propter quod oportet, quod sint minoris estimationis secundum justitiam.’

58.O’Brien (op. cit.) appears, unless I misunderstand him, to take this view.

59.Politics, I, iii, ad fin. 1258b. See Who said ‘Barren Metal’? by E. Cannan, W. D. Ross, etc., in Economica, June 1922, pp. 105–7.

60.Innocent IV, Apparatus, lib. v. De Usuris.

61.For Italy, see Arturo Segre, Storia del Commercio, vol. i, pp. 179–91, and for France, P. Boissonade, Le Travail dans l’Europe chrétienne au Moyen Age, 1921, pp. 206–9, 212–13. Both emphasize the financial relations of the Papacy.

62.E.g., Council of Aries, 314; Nicaea, 325; Laodicea, 372; and many others.

63.Corpus Juris Canonici, Decretal. Greg. IX, lib. v, tit. xix, cap. i.

64.Ibid., cap. iii.

65.Ibid., Sexti Decretal., lib. v, tit. v, cap. i, ii.

66.Ibid., Clementinarum, lib. v, tit. v, cap. i.

67.The passages referred to in this paragraph are as follows: Corp. Jur. Can., Decretal. Greg. IX, lib. v, tit. xix, cap. ix, iv, x, xiii, xv, ii, v, vi.

68.A Formulary of the Papal Penitentiary in the Thirteenth Century, ed. H. C. Lea, 1892, Nos. xcii, clxxviii (2), clxxix.

69.Raimundi de Penna-forti Summa Pastoralis (Ravaisson, Catalogue Général des MSS. des Bibliothèques publiques des Départements, 1849, vol. i, pp. 592 seqq.). The archdeacon is to inquire: ‘Whether [the priest] feeds his flock, assisting those who are in need and above all those who are sick. Works of mercy also are to be suggested by the archdeacon, to be done by him for their assistance. If he cannot fully accomplish them out of his own resources, he ought, according to his power, to use his personal influence to get from others the means of carrying them out…. Inquiries concerning the parishioners are to be made, both from the priest and from others among them worthy of credence, who, if necessary, are to be summoned for the purpose to the presence of the archdeacon, as well as from the neighbours, with regard to matters which appear to need correction. First, inquiry is to be made whether there are notorious usurers, or persons reputed to be usurers, and what sort of usury they practise, whether anyone, that is to say, lends money or anything else … on condition that he receive anything above the principal, or holds any pledge and takes profits from it in excess of the principal, or receives pledges and uses them in the meantime for his own gain;… whether he holds horses in pledge and reckons in the cost of their fodder more than they can eat… or whether he buys anything at a much lower price than it is worth, on condition that the seller can take it back at a fixed term on paying the price, though the buyer knows that he (the seller) will not be able to do so; or whether he buys anything for a less price than it is worth, because he pays before receiving the article, for example, standing corn; or whether anyone, as a matter of custom and without express contract, is wont to take payment above the principal, as the Cahorsines do.… Further, it is to be inquired whether he practises usury cloaked under the guise of a partnership (nomine societatis palliatum), as when a man lends money to a merchant, on condition that he be a partner in the gains, but not in the losses…. Further, whether he practises usury cloaked under the guise of a penalty, that is to say, when his intention in imposing a penalty (for non-payment at a given date) is not that he may be paid more quickly, but that he may be paid more. Further, whether he practises usury in kind, as when a rich man, who has lent money, will not receive from a poor man any money above the principal, but agrees that he shall work two days in his vineyard, or something of the kind. Further, whether he practises usury cloaked by reference to a third party, as when a man will not lend himself, but has a friend whom he induces to lend. When it has been ascertained how many persons in that parish are notorious for usury of this kind, their names are to be reduced to writing, and the archdeacon is to proceed against them in virtue of his office, causing them to be cited to his court on a day fixed, either before himself or his responsible official, even if there is no accuser, on the ground that they are accused by common report. If they are convicted, either because their offence is evident, or by their own confession, or by witnesses, he is to punish them as he thinks best.… If they cannot be directly convicted, by reason of their manifold shifts and stratagems, nevertheless their ill name as usurers can easily be established.… If the archdeacon proceed with caution and diligence against their wicked doings, they will hardly be able to hold their own or to escape – if, that is … he vex them with trouble and expense, and humiliate them, by frequently serving citations on them and assigning several different days for their trial, so that by trouble, expense, loss of time, and all manner of confusion they may be induced to repent and submit themselves to the discipline of the Church.’

70.E. Martène and U. Durand, Thesaurus novus Anecdotorum, 1717, vol. iv, pp. 696 seqq.

71.Pecock, The Repressor of over-much blaming of the Clergy, ed. C. Babington, 1860, pt. i, chap. iii, pp. 15–16. His words show both the difficulties which confronted ecclesiastical teaching and the attempts to overcome them. ‘I preie thee … seie to me where in Holi Scripture is yoven the hundrid parti of the teching upon matrimonie which y teche in a book mad upon Matrimonie, and in the firste partie of Cristen religioun … Seie to me also where in Holi Scripture is yoven the hundred part of the teching which is yoven upon usure in the thridde parti of the book yclepid The filling of the iiij tables; and yit al thilk hool teching yoven upon usure in the now named book is litil ynough or ouer litle for to leerne, knowe and have sufficientli into mannis behove and into Goddis trewe service and lawe keping what is to be leerned and kunnen aboute usure, as to reeders and studiers ther yn it muste needis be open. Is ther eny more writen of usure in al the Newe Testament save this, Luke vi, “Geve ye loone, hoping no thing ther of”, and al that is of usure writen in the Oold Testament favourith rather usure than it reproveth. Howevere, therefore, schulde eny man seie that the sufficient leernying and kunnyng of usure or of the vertu contrarie to usure is groundid in Holi Scripture? Howe evere schal thilk litil now rehercid clausul, Luke vi, be sufficient for to answere and assoile alle the harde scrupulose doutis and questiouns which al dai hau neede to be assoiled in mennis bargenyngis and cheffaringis togidre? Ech man having to do with suche questiouns mai soone se that Holi Writt geveth litil or noon light therto at al. Forwhi al that Holi Writt seith ther to is that he forbedith usure, and therfore all that mai be take therbi is this, that usure is unleeful; but though y bileeve herbi that usure is unleeful, how schal y wite herbi what usure is, that y be waar for to not do it, and whanne in a bargeyn is usure, though to summen seemeth noon, and how in a bargeyn is noon usure though to summen ther semeth to be?’

Pecock’s defence of the necessity of commentaries on the teaching of Scripture was the real answer to the statement afterwards made by Luther that the text, ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself, was an all-sufficient guide to action (see Chap. II, p. 108). Examples of teaching as to usury contained in books such as Pecock had in mind will be found in Myrc’s Instructions for Parish Priests (E.E.T.S., ed. E. Peacock and F. J. Furnivall, 1902), the Pupilla Oculi, and Dan Michel’s Ayenbite of Inwyt (E.E.T.S., ed. R. Morris, 1866).

72.The Catechism of John Hamilton, Archbishop of St Andrews, 1552, ed. T. G. Law, 1884, pp. 97–9. Under the seventh commandment are denounced: ‘Fyftlie, al thay that defraudis or spoulyeis the common geir, aganis the common weill for lufe of their awin pryvate and singulare weill. Saxtlie all usuraris and ockiraris synnis aganis this command, that will nocht len their geir frelie, bot makis conditione of ockir, aganis the command of Christe. Sevintlie, all thay quhilk hais servandis or work men and wyll nocht pay theim thair fee or waige, accordyng to conditioun and thair deservyng, quilk syn, as sanct James sayis, cryis vengeance before God. Auchtlie, all thai that strykis cowyne of unlauchful metall, quhair throuch the common weil is hurt and skaithit. The nynte, all Merchandis that sellis corruppit and evyll stufe for gude, and gyf thay or ony uther in bying or seelyng use desait, falsate, parjurie, wrang mettis or weychtis, to the skaith of their nychtbour, thay commits gret syn agane this command. Nother can we clenge fra breakyng of this command all kyndis of craftis men quhilk usis nocht thair awin craft leillalie and trewlie as thai suld do…. Al wrechis that wyl be ground ryche incontynent, quhay be fraud, falset, and gyle twynnis men and thair geir, quhay may keip thair nychbour fra povertie and myschance and dois it nocht. Quhay takis ouer sair mail, ouer mekle ferme or ony blake maillis fra thair tennands, or puttis thair cotarris to ouir sair labouris, quhair throw the tenentis and cottaris is put to herschip. Quha invies his nychbouris gud fortune, ouir byis him or takis his geir out of his hands with fair hechtis, or prevenis him, or begyles him at his marchandis hand.’ The detail in which different forms of commercial sharp practice are denounced is noticeable.

73.See e.g. Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj., vol. iii, pp. 191–2, for the case of a priest who, for refusing to give Christian burial to an excommunicate usurer, is seized by order of the Count of Brittany and buried alive, bound to the dead man. See also Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, vol. v, p. 38.

74.Harduin, Acta Conciliorum, vol. vii, pp. 1017–20: ‘Anno praedicto [1485], diebus Mercurii et Jovis praedictis, scilicet ante Ramos Palmarum, ibidem apud Vicanum, in claustro ecclesiae de Vicano; coram domino archiepiscopo, et mandato suo, personae infrascriptae, parochiani de Guorgonio, qui super usuraria pravitate erant quam plurimum diffamati; coram domino propter hoc vocati abjuraverunt: et per mandatum domini summas infrascriptas, quas se confessi fuerunt habuisse per usurariam pravitatem, per juramentum suum restituere promiserunt, et stare juri super his coram eo. Bertrandus de Faveriis adjuratus usuras, ut praemittitur, promisit restituere centum solidos monetae antiquae: quot, prout ipse confessus est, habuerat per usurariam pravitatem…’ Thirty-six more cases were treated in this way.

75.Villani, Cronica, book xii, chap. lviii (ed. 1823, vol. vi, p. 142): Villani complains of the conduct of the inquisitor: ‘Ma per attignere danari, d’ogni piccola parola oziosa che alcuno dicesse per iniquità contra Iddio, o dicesse che usura non fosse peccato mortale, o simili parole, condannava in grossa somma di danari, secondo che l’uomo era ricco.’

76.Constitutions of Clarendon, cap. 15: ‘Placita de debitis, quae fide interposita debentur, vel absque interpositione fidei, sint in justitia regis.’ On the whole subject see Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, 2nd ed., 1898, vol. ii, pp. 197–202, and F. Makower, Constitutional History of the Church of England, 1895, § 60.

77.Cal. of Early Mayor’s Court Rolls of the City of London, ed. A. H. Thomas, pp. 44, 88, 156, 235; Selden Soc., Borough Customs, ed. M. Bateson, vol. ii, 1906, pp. 161 (London) and 209–10 (Dublin); Records of Leicester, ed. M. Bateson, vol. ii, 1901, p. 49. For similar prohibitions by manorial courts, see Hist. MSS. Com., MSS. of Marquis of Lothian, p. 28, and G. P. Scrope, History of the Manor and Barony of Castle Combe, 1852, p. 238.

78.Annales de Burton, p. 256; Wilkins, Concilia, vol. ii, p. 115; Rot. Pari., vol. ii, p. 129b.

79.Cal. of Letter Books of the City of London, ed. R. R. Sharpe, vol. H, pp. 23–4, 24–5, 27, 28, 200, 206–7, 261–2, 365; Liber Albus, bk. iii, pt. ii, pp. 77, 315, 394–401, 683; Selden Soc., Leet Jurisdiction in the City of Norwich, p. 35; Hist. MSS. Com., MSS. of Marquis of Lothian, pp. 26, 27.

80.Rot. Parl., vol. ii, pp. 332a, 350b.

81.R. H. Morris, Chester in the Plantagenet and Tudor Reigns, 1894(?), p. 190.

82.Early Chancery Proceedings, Bdle. xi, no. 307; Bdle. xxix, nos. 193–5; Bdle. xxxi, nos. 96–100, 527; Bdle. lx, no. 20; Bdle. lxiv, no. 1089. See also Year Books and Plea Rolls as Sources of Historical Information, by H. G. Richardson, in Trans. R.H.S., 4th series, vol. v, 1922, pp. 47–8.

83.Ed. Gibson, Codex Juris Ecclesiastici Anglicani, 2nd ed., 1761, p. 1026.

84.15 Ed. III, st. 1, c. 5; 3 Hen. VII, c. 5; 11 Hen. VII, c. 8; 13 Eliz. c. 8; 21 Jac. 1, c. 17.

85.Cal. of Early Mayor’s Court Rolls of City of London, ed. A. H. Thomas, pp. 1, 12, 28–9, 33–4, 44, 52, 88, 141, 156, 226, 235, 251. The cases of the smiths and spurriers occur on pp. 33–4 and 52. In the fifteenth century a gild still occasionally tried to enforce its rules by proceedings in an ecclesiastical court (see Wm. H. Hale, A Series of Precedents and Proceedings in Criminal Causes, 1847, nos. xxxvi and lxviii, where persons breaking gild rules are cited before the Commissary’s court).

86.Canterbury and York Soc., Registrum Thome Spofford, ed. A. T. Bannister, 1919, p. 52 (1424); and Surtees Society, vol. cxxxviii, The Register of Thomas of Corbridge, Lord Archbishop of York, ed. Wm. Brown, 1925, vol. i, pp. 187–8: ‘6 kal. Maii, 1303. Wilton’. Littera testimonialis super purgacione domini Johannis de Multhorp, vicarii ecclesie de Garton’, de usura sibi imposita. Universis Christi fidelibus, ad quos presentes littere pervenerint, pateat per easdem quod, cum dominus Johannes de Multhorp’, vicarius ecclesie de Garton’, nostre diocesis, coram nobis Thoma, Dei gracia, etc., in visitacione nostra super usura fuisset notatus, videlicet, quod mutuavit cuidam Jollano de Briddale, ut dicebatur, xxxiij s. iiij d, eo pacto quod idem vicarius ab eo reciperet per x annos annis singulis x s. pro eisdem, de quibus eciam dictum fuit quod prefatus Jollanus dicto vicario pro octo annis ex pacto satisfecit et solvit predicto; eundem vicarium super hoc vocari fecimus coram nobis et ei objecimus supradicta, que ipse inficians constancius atque negans se optu-lit in forma juris super hiis legitime purgaturum. Nos autem eidem vicario purgacionem suam cum sua sexta manu vicariorum et aliorum presbiterorum sui ordinis indiximus faciendam, quam die Veneris proxima ante festum apostolorum Philippi et Jacobi (April 26), anno gracie m° ccc° tercio, ad hoc sibi prefixo, in manerio nostro de Wilton’ super articulo recipimus supradicto, idemque vicarius, unacum dominis Johanne, rectore ecclesie B.M. juxta portam castri de Eboraco, Johanne et Johanne, de Wharrum et de Wyver-thorp’ ecclesiarum vicariis ac Roberto, Johanne, Alano, Stepheno et Willelmo, de Nafferton’, Drifield’, Wetewang’, Foston’ et Wintringham ecclesiarum presbiteris parochialibus fidedignis, de me-morato articulo legitime se purgavit; propter quod ipsum vicarium sic purgatum pronunciamus et immunem sentencialiter declaramus, restituentes eundem ad suam pristinam bonam famam. In cujus rei testimonium sigillum nostrum presentibus est appensum.’

87.Early Chancery Proceedings, Bdle. xviii, no. 137; Bdle. xix, no. 2155; Bdle. xxiv, no. 255; Bdle. xxxi, no. 348. See also A. Abram, Social England in the Fifteenth Century, 1909, pp. 215–17. In view of these examples, it seems probable that a more thorough examination of the Early Chancery Proceedings would show that, even in the fifteenth century, the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts in matter of contract and usury was of greater practical importance than has sometimes been supposed.

88.Surtees Soc., vol. lxiv, 1875 (Acts of Chapter of the Collegiate Church of Ripon), contains more than 100 cases in which the court deals with questions of contract, debt, etc. The case which is dismissed ‘propter civilitatem causae’ occurs in 1532 (Surtees Soc., vol. xxi, 1845, Ecclesiastical Proceedings from the Courts of Durham, p. 49).

89.Chetham Soc., vol. xliv, 1901, Act Book of the Ecclesiastical Court of Whalley, pp. 15–16.

90.Surtees Soc., vol. lxiv, 1875, Acts of Chapter of the Collegiate Church of Ripon, p. 26.

91.Hale, op. cit. (note 85 above), no. ccxxxviii.

92.See Chap. 3, p. 166.

93.For parishes, see S. O. Addy, Church and Manor, 1913, chap. xv, where numerous examples are given. For a gild which appears to have acted as a bank, see Hist. MSS. Com., 11th Report, 1887, Appx., pt. iii, p. 228 (MSS. of the Borough of King’s Lynn), and for other examples of loans, H. F. Westlake, The Parish Gilds of Medieval England, 1919, pp. 61–3, Records of the City of Oxford, ed. Wm. H. Turner, 1880, p. 8, Statutes of Lincoln Cathedral, ed. C. Wordsworth, pt. ii, 1897, pp. 616–17, and Unwin, The Gilds and Companies of London, 1908, p. 121. For a hospital, see Hist. MSS. Com., 14th Report, Appx., pt. viii, 1895, p. 129 (MSS. of the Corporation of Bury St Edmunds), where 20d. is lent (or given) to a poor man to buy seed for his land. A statement (made half a century after the Dissolution) as to loans by monasteries is quoted by F. A. Gasquet, Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, 7th ed., 1920, p. 463; specific examples are not known to me.

94.W. H. Bliss, Cal. of Papal Letters, vol. i, pp. 267–8.

95.For the early history of the Monts de Piété see Holzapfel, Die Anfänge der Montes Pietatis (1903), and for their development in the Low Countries, A. Henne, Histoire du Règne de Charles quint en Belgique, 1859, vol. v, pp. 220–3. For proposals to establish them in England see S.P.D. Eliz., vol. cx, no. 57 (printed in Tawney and Power, Tudor Economic Documents, vol. iii, sect. iii, no. 6), and my introduction to Thomas Wilson’s Discourse upon Usury, 1925 ed., pp. 125–7.

96.Camden Soc., A Relation of the Island of England about the year 1500 (translated from the Italian), 1847, p. 23.

97.Lyndwood, Provinciale, sub. tit. Usura, and Gibson, Codex Jur. Eccl. Angl., vol. ii, p. 1026.

98.Pecock, The Repressor of over-much blaming of the Clergy, pt. iii, chap. iv, 296–7: ‘Also Crist seide here in this present process, that “at God” it is possible a riche man to entre into the kingdom of heuen; that is to seie, with grace which God profrith and geueth … though he abide stille riche, and though withoute such grace it is ouer hard to him being riche to entre. Wherfore folewith herof openli, that it is not forbodun of God eny man to be riche; for thanne noon such man schulde eure entre heuen…. And if it be not forbode any man to be riche, certis thanne it is leeful ynough ech man to be riche; in lasse than he vowe the contrarie or that he knoweth bi assay and experience him silf so miche indisposid anentis richessis, that he schal not mowe rewle him silf aright anentis tho richessis: for in thilk caas he is bonde to holde him silf in poverte.’ The embarrassing qualification at the end – which suggests the question, who then dare be rich? – is the more striking because of the common-sense rationalism of the rest of the passage.

99.Trithemius, quoted by J. Janssen, History of the German People at the Close of the Middle Ages, vol. ii, 1896, p. 102.

100.Cal of Early Mayor’s Court Rolls of the City of London, ed. A. H. Thomas, pp. 157–8.

101.See A. Luchaire, Social France at the time of Philip Augustus (translated by E. B. Krehbiel), pp. 391–2, where an eloquent denunciation by Jacques de Vitry is quoted.

102.Topographer and Genealogist, vol. i, 1846, p. 35. (The writer is a surveyor, one Humberstone.)

103.See, e.g., Chaucer, The Persoun’s Tale, §§ 64–6. The parson expresses the orthodox view that ‘the condicion of thraldom and the first cause of thraldom is for sinne’. But he insists that serfs and lords are spiritually equal: ‘Thilke that thou clepest thye thralles been goddes peple; for humble folk been Cristes freendes.’

104.Gratian, Decretum, pt. ii, causa x, Q. Ii, c. iii, and causa xii, Q. ii, c. xxxix.

105.Summa Theol., 1^a 2^æ, Q. xciv, art. v, § 3.

106.An article of the German Peasants’ programme in 1525 declared: ‘For men to hold us as their own property … is pitiable enough, considering that Christ has delivered and redeemed us all, the lowly as well as the great, without exception, by the shedding of His precious blood. Accordingly it is consistent with Scripture that we should be free.’ (The programme is printed in J. S. Schapiro, Social Reform and the Reformation, 1909, pp. 137–42.) The rebels under Ket prayed ‘that all bondmen may be made free, for God freed them all with His precious blood-shedding’ (printed in Bland, Brown, and Tawney, English Economic History, Select Documents, pt. ii, sect. i, no. 8).

CHAPTER 2

1.A Lecture on the Study of History, delivered at Cambridge, 11 June 1895, by Lord Acton, p. 9.

2.W. Sombart (Der moderne Kapitalismus, 1916, vol. i, pp. 524–6) gives facts and figures. See also J. Strieder, Studien zur Geschichte kapitalistischer Organizationsformen, 1914, kap. i, ii.

3.E. R. Dänell, Die Blütezeit der Deutschen Hanse, 1905; Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik gegen die Ende des Mittelalters, vol. i; N. S. B. Gras, The Early English Customs System, 1918, pp. 452–514.

4.Eg., The Fugger News-Letters, 1568–1605, ed. V. von Klarwill, trans. P. de Chary, 1924.

5.E. Albèri, Le Relazione degli Ambasciatori Veneti al Senato, serie i, vol. iii, 1853, p. 357 (Relazione di Filippo II Re di Spagna da Michele Soriano nel 1559): ‘Questi sono li tesori del re di Spagna, queste le miniere, queste l’lndie che hanno sostentato l’impresse dell’ Imperatore tanti anni.’

6.The best contemporary picture of the trade of Antwerp is that of L. Guicciardini, Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi (1567), of which part is reprinted in a French translation in Tawney and Power Tudor Economic Documents, vol. iii, pp. 149–73. The best modern accounts of Antwerp are given by Pirenne, Histoire de Belgique, vol. ii, pp. 399–403, and vol. iii, pp. 259–72; Ehrenberg, Das Zeitalter der Fugger, vol. ii, pp. 3–68; and J. A. Goris, Étude sur les Colonies Marchandes Méridionales à Anvers de 1488 à 1567 (1925).

7.The Meutings had opened a branch in Antwerp in 1479, the Hoch-stetters in 1486, the Fuggers in 1508, the Welsers in 1509 (Pirenne, op. cit., vol. iii, p. 261).

8.Pirenne, op. cit., vol. iii, pp. 273–6.

9.Ehrenberg, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 7–8.

10.A short account of international financial relations in the sixteenth century will be found in my introduction to Thomas Wilson’s Discourse upon Usury, 1925 ed., pp. 60–86.

11.Erasmus, Adagia; see also The Complaint of Peace.

12.For the Fuggers, see Ehrenberg, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 85–186, and for the other German firms mentioned, ibid., pp. 187–269.

13.See Goris, op. cit., pp. 510–45, where the reply of the Paris theologians is printed in full: and Ehrenberg, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 18, 21. For Bellarmin, see Goris, op. cit., pp. 551–2. A curious illustration of the manner in which it was still thought necessary in the later sixteenth century, and in Protestant England, to reconcile economic policy with canonist doctrine, will be found in S.P.D. Eliz., vol. lxxv, no. 54 (printed in Tawney and Power, Tudor Economic Documents, vol. iii, pp. 359–70). The writer, who is urging the repeal of the Act of 1552 forbidding all interest whatever, cites Aquinas and Hostiensis to prove that ‘trewe and unfayned interest’ is not to be condemned as usury.

14.Ashley, Economic History, 1893, vol. i, pt. ii, pp. 442–3.

15.Bodin, La Response de Jean Bodin aux Paradoxes de Malestroit touchant l’enchérissement de toutes choses et le moyen d’y remédier.

16.See Max Neumann, Geschichte des Wuchers in Deutschland, 1865, pp. 487 seqq.

17.Calvin’s views will be found in his Epistolae et Responsa, 1575, pp. 355–7, and in Sermon xxviii in the Opera.

18.Bucer, De Regno Christi.

19.Third Decade, 1st and 2nd Sermons, in The Decades of Henry Bullinger (Parker Society), vol. iii, 1850.

20.Luther, Kleiner Sermon vom Wucher (1519) in Werke (Weimar ed.), vol. vi, pp. 1–8; Grosser Sermon vom Wucher (1520), in ibid., pp. 33–60; Von Kaufshandlung und Wucher (1524), in ibid., vol. xv, pp. 279–322; An die Pfarrherrn wider den Wucher zu predigen, Vermahnung (1540), in ibid., vol. Ii, pp. 325–424.

21.‘Hier müsste man wahrlich auch den Fuckern und der geistlichen Gesellschaft einen Zaum ins Maul legen’ (quoted by Ehrenberg, op. cit., vol. i, p. 117 n.).

22.See p. 122.

23.Luther, Wider die räuberischen und mörderischen Rotten der Bauern (1525), in Werke, vol. xviii, pp. 357–61.

24.Latimer, Sermons; Ponet, An Exhortation, or rather a Warning, to the Lords and Commons; Crowley, The Way to Wealth, and Epigrams (in Select Works of Robert Crowley, ed. J. M. Cowper, E.E.T.S., 1872); Lever, Sermons, 1550 (English Reprints, ed. E. Arber, 1895); Becon, The Jewel of Joy, 1553; Sandys, 2nd, 10th, 11th, and 12th of Sermons (Parker Society, 1841); Jewel, Works, pt. iv, pp. 1293–8 (Parker Society, 1850). Citations from less well-known writers and preachers will be found in J. O. W. Haweis, Sketches of the Reformation, 1844.

25.Gairdner, Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. xvi, no. 357.

26.Bossuet, Traité de l’Usure. For an account of his views, see Favre, Le prêt à intérêt dans l’ancienne France.

27.Brief Survey of the Growth of Usury in England with the Mischiefs attending it, 1673.

28.For an account of these changes see K. Kamprecht, Zum Verständniss der wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Wandlungen in Deutschland vom 14. zum 16. Jahrhundert, in the Zeitschrift fur Sozial- und wirtschaftsgeschichte, Bd. i, 1893, pp. 191 seqq.

29.Lamprecht, op. cit., and J. S. Schapiro, Social Reform and the Reformation, 1909, pp. 40–73.

30.Schapiro, op. cit., pp. 20–39, and Strieder, op. cit. (see note 2), pp. 156–212.

31.For the so-called Reformation of the Emperor Sigismund see Chap. 1, note 22, and for the Peasants’ Articles, ibid., note 106.

32.For Geiler von Kaiserberg and Hipler see Schapiro, op. cit., pp. 30, 126–31. For Hutten see H. Wiskemann, Darstellung der in Deutschland zur Zeit der Reformation herrschenden Nationalökonomischen Ansichten, 1861, pp. 13–24.

33.Quoted W. Raleigh, The English Voyages of the Sixteenth Century, 1910, p. 28.

34.Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress, 1912, pp. 44–52.

35.Schapiro, op. cit., p. 137.

36.See citations in Wiskemann, op. cit., pp. 47–8, and, for a discussion of Luther’s social theory, Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der Christlichen Kirchen, 1912, pp. 549–93.

37.Luther, An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation (1520), in Werke, vol. vi, pp. 381 seqq.

38.Schapiro, op. cit., p. 139.

39.Luther, Ermahnung zum Frieden auf die zwölf Artikel der Bauer-schaft in Schwaben (1525), in Werke, vol. xviii, p. 327.

40.Von Kaufshandlung und Wucher, in ibid., vol. xv, p. 295.

41.An den christlichen Adel, in ibid., vol. vi, p. 466 (quoted by R. H. Murray, Erasmus and Luther, 1920, p. 239).

42.Von Kaufshandlung und Wucher, in ibid., vol. xv, pp. 293–4, 312.

43.Concerning Christian Liberty, in Wace and Buchheim, Luther’s Primary Works, 1896, pp. 256–7.

44.Grosser Sermon vom Wucher, in Werke, vol. vi, p. 49.

45.See note 71 on Chap. 1.

46.Printed in Neumann, Geschichte des Wuchers in Deutschland, Beilage F, pp. 618–19.

47.Concerning Christian Liberty, in Wace and Buchheim, op. cit., pp. 258–9.

48.Von Kaufshandlung und Wucher, in Werke, vol. xv, p. 302.

49.Zwingli, Von der göttlichen und menschlichen Gerechtigkeit, oder von dem göttlichen Gesetze und den bürgerlichen Gesetzen, printed in R. Christoffel, H. Zwingli, Leben und ausgewählte Schriften, 1857, pt. ii, pp. 313 seqq. See also Wiskemann, op. cit., pp. 71–4.

50.‘Quid si igitur ex negociatione plus lucri percipi possit quam ex fundi cuiusvis proventu? Unde vero mercatoris lucrum? Ex ipsius inquies, diligentia et industrie’ (quoted by Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der Christlichen Kirche, p. 707).

51.Bucer, De Regno Christi.

52.Roger Fenton, A Treatise of Usurie, 1612, p. 61.

53.Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. by J. Allen, 1838, vol. ii, p. 147 (bk. iii, ch. xxiii, par. 7).

54.Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 128–9 (bk. iii, ch. xxi, par. 7).

55.Gerrard Winstanley, A New-Yeers Gift for the Parliament and Armie, 1630 (Thomason Tracts, Brit. Mus., E., 587 (6), p. 42).

56.The Works of William Laud, D.D., ed. Wm. Scott, vol. vi, pt. i, 1857, p. 213.

57.De Subventione Pauperum.

58.‘Quod ad maiores natu spectat, a nobis quotannis repetitur in-spectio cuiusque familiae. Distribuimus inter nos urbis regiones, ut ordine singulas decurias executere liceat. Adest ministro comes unus ex senioribus. Illic novi incolae examinantur. Qui semel recepti sunt, omittuntur; nisi quod requiritur sitne domus pacata et recte composita; num lites cum vicinis, num quasebrietas, num pigri sint et ignari ad conciones frequentendas’ (quoted by Wiskemann, op. cit., p. 80 n.). For his condemnation of indiscriminate almsgiving, see ibid., p. 79 n.

59.De non habendo Pauperum Delectu (1523), and De Erogatione Elee-mosynarum (1542). See K. R. Hagenbach, Johann Oekolampad und Oswald Myconius, die Reformatoren Basels, 1859, p. 46.

60.Carl Pestalozzi, Heinrich Bullinger, Leben und ausgewählte Schriften, 1858, pp. 50–1, 122–5, 340–2.

61.Wiskemann, op. cit., pp. 70–4.

62.Quoted by Preserved Smith, The Age of the Reformation, 1921, p. 174.

63.Calvin, Inst., bk. iv, ch. xii, par. 1.

64.Printed in Paul Henry, Das Leben Johann Calvins, vol. ii, 1838, Appx., pp. 26–41.

65.R. Christoffel, Zwingli, or the Rise of the Reformation in Switzerland, trans. by John Cochran, 1858, pp. 159–60.

66.Printed in Paul Henry, op. cit., vol. ii, Appx., pp. 23–5.

67.E. Choisy, L’État Chrétien Calviniste à Genève au temps de Théodore de Bèze, 1902, p. 145. I should like to make acknowledgements to this excellent book for most of the matter contained in the following paragraphs.

68.Paul Henry, op. cit., pp. 70–5. Other examples are given by Preserved Smith, op. cit., pp. 170–4, and by F. W. Kampschulte, Johann Calvin, seine Kirche und sein Staat in Genf, 1869. Statistical estimates of the bloodthirstiness of Calvin’s régime vary; Smith (p. 171) states that in Geneva, a town of 16,000 inhabitants, 58 persons were executed and 76 banished in the years 1542–6.

69.Knox, quoted by Preserved Smith, op. cit., p. 174.

70.Calvin, Inst., bk. iii, ch. vii, par. 5.

71.Choisy, op. cit., pp. 442–3.

72.Ibid., pp. 35–37.

73.Ibid., pp. 189, 117–19.

74.Ibid., pp. 35, 165–7.

75.Ibid., pp. 119–21.

76.Ibid., pp. 189–94.

77.Paul Henry, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 70 n.

78.See the description of the Church given in Calvin, Inst., bk. iv, ch. i, par. 4: ‘Quia nunc de ecclesia visibili disserere propositum est, discamus vel matris elogio, quam utilis sit nobis eius cognitio, immo necessaria, quando non alius est in vitam ingressus nisi nos ipsa concipiat in utero, nisi pariat, nisi nos alat suis uberibus, denique sub custodia et gubernatione sua nos tueatur, donec excuti carne mortali, similes erimus angelis. Neque enim patitur nostra infirmitas, a schola nos dimitti, donec toto vitae cursu discipuli fuerimus. Adde quod extra eius gremium nulla est speranda peccatorum remissio nec ulla salus.’

79.Synodicon in Gallia Reformata: Or the Acts, Decisions, Decrees, and Canons of those famous National Councils of the Reformed Churches in France, by John Quick, 1692, vol. i, p. 99.

80.Ibid., vol. i, p. 9 (pirates and fraudulent tradesmen), pp. 25, 34, 38, 79, 140, 149 (interest and usury), p. 70 (false merchandise and selling of stretched cloth), p. 99 (reasonable profits), pp. 162, 204 (investment of money for the benefit of the poor), pp. 194, 213 (lotteries).

81.The Buke of Discipline, in Works of John Knox, ed. D. Laing, vol. ii, 1848, p. 227.

82.Scottish History Soc., St Andrews Kirk Session Register, ed. D. H. Fleming, 1889–90, vol. i, p. 309; vol. ii, p. 822.

83.W. B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, 1890 vol. i, p. 11. The words are Governor Bradford’s.

84.Winthrop’s Journal ‘History of New England’, 1630–49, ed. J. K. Hosmer, 1908, vol. i, pp. 134, 325; vol. ii, p. 20.

85.Weeden, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 125, 58.

86.Winthrop, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 20.

87.J. A. Doyle, The English in America, vol. ii, 1887, p. 57; the price of cattle ‘must not be judged by urgent necessity, but by reasonable profit’.

88.Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, 1664, chap. lv.

89.Winthrop, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 315–18. A similar set of rules as to the conduct of the Christian in trade are given by Bunyan in The Life and Death of Mr Badman, 1905 ed., pp. 118–22.

90.I owe this phrase to the excellent book of J. T. Adams, The Founding of New England.

CHAPTER 3

1.J. Rossus, Historia Regum Angliae (ed. T. Hearne).

2.4 Hen. VII, c. 19; 6 Hen. VIII, c. 5; 7 Hen. VIII, c. 1; 25 Hen. VIII, c. 13. For the Commission of 1517 see Leadam, The Domesday of Enclosures.

3.For examples see J. S. Schapiro, Social Reform and the Reformation, pp. 60–1, 65, 67, 70–1.

4.More, Utopia, p. 32 (Pitt Press ed., 1879). ‘Noblemen and gentlemen, yes and certayne abottes, holy men no doubt … leave no grounds for tillage, thei enclose al into pastures.’ For a case of claiming a bondman see Selden Society, vol. xvi, 1903, Select Cases in the Court of Star Chamber, pp. cxxiii-cxxix, 118–29 (Carter v. the Abbot of Malmesbury); for conversion of copyholds to tenancies at will, Selden Society, vol. xii, 1898, Select Cases in the Court of Requests, pp. lix–lxv, 64–101 (Kent and other inhabitants of Abbot’s Ripton v. St John; the change was alleged to have been made in 1471).

5.A Savine, English Monasteries on the Eve of the Dissolution (Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History, ed. P. Vinogradoff, vol. i, 1909, p. 100), estimates the net temporal income of English monasteries in 1535 at £109, 736, and the net income from all sources at £135, 361. These figures require to be multiplied by at least 12 to convert them into terms of modern money. An estimate of the capital value which they represent can only be a guess, but it can hardly have been less (in terms of modern money) than £20,000,000.

6.For the status and payments of grantees, see the figures of Savine, printed in H. A. L. Fisher, The Political History of England, 1485–1547, Appx. ii: the low price paid by peers is particularly striking. The best study is that of S. B. Liljegren, The Fall of the Monasteries and the Social changes in England leading up to the Great Revolution (1924), which shows in detail (pp. 118–25) the activities of speculators.

7.Star Chamber Proc., Hen. VIII, vol. vi, no. 181, printed in Tawney and Power, Tudor Economic Documents, vol. i, pp. 19–29.

8.Selden Society, Select Cases in the Court of Requests, pp. lviii–lxix, 198–200.

9.Quoted by F. A. Gasquet, Henry the Eighth and the English Monasteries, 1920, pp. 227–8.

10.See, e.g., The Obedience of a Christian Man (in Tyndale’s Doctrinal Treatises, Parker Society, 1848), p. 231, where the treatment of the poor by the early Church is cited as an example; and Policies to reduce this realme of Englande unto a Prosperus Wealthe and Estate (1549, printed in Tawney and Power, Tudor Economic Documents, vol. iii, pp. 311–45): ‘Like as we suffered our selfes to be ignorant of the trewe worshipping of God, even so God kepte from us the right knowledge how to reforme those inconveniences which we did see before our eyes to tende unto the utter Desolation of the Realme. But now that the trew worshepping of Gode is … so purely and sincerely sett forthe, it is likewise to be trusted that God … will use the kinges maiestie and your grace to be also his ministres in plucking up by the roots all the cawses and occasions of this foresaid Decaye and Desolation.’

11.Bucer, De Regno Christi.

12.A. F. Leach, The Schools of Medieval England, 1915, p. 331. He goes on: ‘The contrast between one grammar school to every 5,625 people, and that presented by the Schools Inquiry Report in 1864 of one to every 23,750 people … is not to the disadvantage of our pre-Reformation ancestors.’ For details of the Edwardian spoliation, see the same author’s English Schools at the Reformation, 1546–8 (1896).

13.See Acts of the Privy Council, vol. ii, pp. 193–5 (1548); in response to protests from the members for Lynn and Coventry, the gild lands of those cities are regranted to them.

14.Crowley, The Way to Wealth, in Select Works of Robert Crowley, ed. J. M. Cowper (E.E.T.S., 1872, pp. 129–50).

15.Crowley, op. cit., and Epigrams (in ibid., pp. 1–51).

16.Becon, The Jewel of Joy, 1553: ‘They abhore the names of Monkes, Friers, Chanons, Nonnes, etc., but their goodes they gredely gripe. And yet where the cloysters kept hospitality, let out their fermes at a reasonable price, norished scholes, brought up youth in good letters, they do none of all these thynges.’

17.Thomas Lever, Sermons, 1550 (English Reprints, ed. E. Arber, 1895), p. 32. The same charge is repeated in subsequent sermons.

18.F. W. Russell, Kett’s Rebellion in Norfolk, 1859, p. 292. For Somerset’s policy and the revolt of the gentry against it, see Tawney, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 365–70.

19.Latimer, Seven Sermons before Edward VI (English Reprints, ed. E. Arber, 1895), pp. 84–6.

20.Pleasure and Pain, in Select Works of Robert Crowley, ed. J. M. Cowper, p. 116.

21.The Way to Wealth, in ibid., p. 132.

22.Lever, op. cit., p. 130.

23.A Prayer for Landlords, from A Book of Private Prayer set forth by Order of King Edward VI.

24.Bacon, Of the True Greatness of the Kingdom of Britain.

25.For a discussion of the problem of credit as it affected the peasant and small master, see my introduction to Wilson’s Discourse upon Usury, 1925, pp. 17–30.

26.See note 69 on Chap. 1.

27.D’Ewes, Journals, 1682, p. 173.

28.Calendar S.P.D. Eliz., vol. cclxxxvi, nos. 19, 20.

29.For examples see S. O. Addy, Church and Manor, 1913, chap. xv. The best account of parish business and organization is given by S. L. Ware, The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects, 1908.

30.Lever, op. cit., p. 130. See also Harrison, The Description of Britaine, 1587 ed., bk. ii, chap. xviii.

31.A Godlie Treatise concerning the Lawful Use of Riches, a translation by Thos. Rogers from the Latin of Nicholas Heming, 1578, p. 8.

32.Sandys, 2nd, 10th, 11th, and 12th of Sermons (Parker Society, 1841); Jewel, Works, pt. iv. pp. 1293–8 (Parker Society, 1850); Thos. Wilson, A Discourse upon Usury, 1572; Miles Mosse, The Arraignment and Conviction of Usurie, 1595; John Blaxton, The English Usurer, or Usury Condemned by the Most Learned and Famous Divines of the Church of England, 1634.

33.Heming, op. cit., pp. 16–17.

34.Roger Fenton, A Treatise of Usurie, 1612, p. 59.

35.Wilson, op. cit., 1925 ed., p. 281.

36.Miles Mosse, op. cit.

37.S.P.D. Eliz., vol. lxxv, no. 54. (Printed in Tawney and Power, Tudor Economic Documents, vol. iii, pp. 359–70.)

38.Heming, op. cit., p. 11.

39.Maitland, English Law and the Renaissance, 1901.

40.Quoted by Maitland, op. cit., pp. 49–50.

41.Wilson, op. cit.

42.Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, 1660, bk. iii, ch. iii, par. 30.

43.Mosse, op. cit., Dedication, p. 6.

44.E. Cardwell, Synodalia, 1842, p. 436.

45.Cardwell, The Reformation of the Ecclesiastical Laws, 1850, pp. 206, 323.

46.The Remains of Archbishop Grindal, ed. Wm. Nicholson (Parker Soc., 1843), p. 143.

47.See, e.g., W. P. M. Kennedy, Elizabethan Episcopal Administration, 1924, vol. iii, p. 180 (Archdeacon Mullins’ Articles for the Archdeaconry of London (1585): ‘Item, whether you do know that within your parish there is (or are) any person or persons notoriously known or suspected by probable tokens of common fame to be an usurer: or doth offend by any colour or means directly or indirectly in the same’), and pp. 184, 233; Wilkins, Concilia, vol. iv, pp. 319, 337, 426.

48.Cardwell, Synodalia, vol. i, pp. 144, 308; Wilkins, Concilia, vol. iv, p. 509.

49.Ware, op. cit. (see note 29 above), quotes several examples. See also Archaeologia Cantiana, vol. xxv, 1902, pp. 27, 48 (Visitations of the Archdeacon of Canterbury).

50.Hist. MSS. Com., 13th Report, 1892, Appx., pt. iv, pp. 333–4 (MSS. of the Borough of Hereford).

51.W. H. Hale, A Series of Precedents and Proceedings in Criminal Causes, 1847, p. 166.

52.Yorkshire Arch. Journal, vol. xviii, 1895, p. 331.

53.Commissary of London Correction Books, 1618–1625 (H. 184, pp. 164, 192). I am indebted to Mr Fincham of Somerset House (where the books are kept) for kindly calling my attention to these cases. The shorter of them (p. 192) runs as follows:

Sancti Botolphi extra Aldersgate Thomas Witham at the signe of the Unicorne

Detected for an usurer that taketh above the rate of xli in the 100li and above the rate of 2s. in the pound for money by him lent for a yeare, or more than after that rate for a lesse tyme ex fama prout in rotula. Quo die comparuit, etc.

9mo Maii 1620 coram domino officiali principali etc. et in eius camera etc. comparuit dictus Witham et ei objecto ut supra allegavit that he is seldom at home himselfe but leaves his man to deale in the business of his shop, and yf any fault be committed he saith the fault is in his man and not in himselfe, and he sayeth he will give charge and take care that no oppression shall be made nor offence committed this way hereafter, humbly praying the judge for favour to be dismissed, unde dominus monuit eum that thereafter neither by himselfe nor his servant he offende in the lyke nor suffer any such oppression to be committed, et cum hac monitione eum dismisit.

54.S.P.D. Eliz., vol. lxxxv, no. 54.

55.For an account of these expedients see my introduction to Wilson’s Discourse upon Usury, 1925, pp. 123–8.

56.Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, bk. viii, chap. i, par. 5.

57.Acts of the Privy Council, vol. xxvii, 1597, p. 129.

58.The Stiffkey Papers (ed. H. W. Saunders, R.H.S., Camden Third Series, vol. xxvi, 1915), p. 140.

59.Quoted by E. M. Leonard, The Early History of English Poor Relief, 1900, p. 148.

60.For an account of the treatment of exchange business under Elizabeth, see Wilson, op. cit., Introduction, pp. 146–54.

61.For references see ibid., pp. 164–5; and Les Reportes des Cases in Camera Stellata, 1593–1609, ed. W. P. Baildon, 1894, pp. 235–7. The latter book contains several instances of intervention by the Star Chamber in cases of engrossing of corn (pp. 71, 76–7, 78–9, 91) and of enclosure and depopulation (pp. 49–52, 164–5, 192–3, 247, 346–7).

62.A Discourse of the Common Weal of this Realm of England, ed. E. Lamond, 1893, p. 14.

63.The Works of William Laud, D.D., ed. Wm. Scott, vol. i, 1847, p. 6.

64.Ibid., p. 64.

65.Ibid., pp. 89, 138.

66.Ibid., p. 167.

67.Ibid., pp. 28–9.

68.Gonner, Common Land and Enclosure, 1912, pp. 166–7. For the activity of the Government from 1629 to 1640, see Tawney, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 376, 391, and E. M. Leonard, The Inclosure of Common Fields in the Seventeenth Century, in Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., N.S., vol. xix, pp. 101 seqq.

69.Letter to Dr Gilbert Sheldon, Warden of All Souls (in Laud’s Works, vol. vi, pt. ii, p. 520): ‘One thing more I must tell you, that, though I did you this favour, to make stay of the hearing till your return, yet for the business itself, I can show you none; partly because I am a great hater of depopulations in any kind, as being one of the greatest mischiefs in this kingdom, and of very ill example from a college, or college tenant’; Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, bk. i, par. 204.

70.S.P.D. Chas. I, vol. ccccxcix, no. 10 (printed in Tawney, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 420–1); and Lords’ Journals, vol. vi, p. 468b (March 13, 1643–4), Articles against Laud: ‘Then Mr Talbot upon oath deposed how the Archbishop did oppose the law in the business of inclosures and depopulations; how, when the law was desired to be pleaded for the right of land, he bid them “Go plead law in inferior Courts, they should not plead it before him”; and that the Archbishop did fine him for that business two hundred pounds for using the property of his freehold, and would not suffer the law to be pleaded.’

71.Leonard, The Early History of English Poor Relief, pp. 150–64; Unwin, Industrial Organization in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 1904, pp. 142–7.

72.R. R. Reid, The King’s Council in the North, 1921, pp. 412, 213 p.

73.Camden Soc., N.S., vol. xxxix, 1886, Cases in the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, ed. S. R. Gardiner, p. 46. For another case of engrossing of corn, see ibid., pp. 82–9.

74.Tawney, The Assessment of Wages in England by the Justices of the Peace, in Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Bd. xi, 1913, pp. 551–4; Leonard, op. cit., p. 157.

75.The Works of William Laud, ed. Wm. Scott, vol. vi, 1857, pt. i, p. 191 (Answer to Lord Saye and Sele’s speech upon the Bill about Bishops’ Powers in Civil Affairs and Courts of Judicature).

76.Ibid., vol. i, pp. 5–6.

77.Harrington, Works, 1700 ed., pp. 69 (Oceana) and 388–9 (The Art of Law-giving).

78.G. Malynes, Lex Mercatoria, 1622. The same simile had been used much earlier in A Discourse of the Common Weal of this Realm of England, ed. E. Lamond, p. 98.

79.D’Ewes, Journals, p. 674; and 39 Eliz. c. 2.

80.For criticisms of price control see Tawney and Power, Tudor Economic Documents, vol. iii, pp. 339–41, and vol. ii, p. 188, and Stiffkey Papers (see note 58 above), pp. 130–40.

81.H. Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd series, vol. ii, 1827, letter clxxxii, and J. W. Burgon, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham, 1839, vol. ii, p. 343.

82.Wilson, op. cit. (see note 55 above), p. 249.

83.Commons’ Journals, 21 May 1604, vol. i, p. 218.

84.13 Eliz., c. 8, repealing 5 and 6 Ed. VI. c. 20; D’Ewes, Journals, pp. 171–4.

85.Owen and Blakeway, History of Shrewsbury, 1825, vol. ii, pp. 364 n., 412.

86.Hist. MSS. Com., Report on MSS. in various Collections, vol. i, 1901, p. 46 (MSS. of Corporation of Burford).

87.Wilson, op. cit. (see note 55 above), p. 233.

88.Coke, Institutes, pt. ii, 1797, pp. 601 seqq. (Certain articles of abuses which are desired to be reformed in granting of prohibitions, exhibited by Richard Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury.)

89.Thomas Ridley, A View of the Civile and Ecclesiastical Law, and wherein the practice of them is streitened and may be relieved within this Land, 1607, Dedication, p. 3.

90.W. Huntley, A Breviate of the Prelates’ intolerable Usurpation, 1637, pp. 183–4. The case referred to is that of Hinde, alleged to have been heard Mich. 18 and 19 Eliz. For the controversy over prohibitions, see R. G. Usher, The Rise and Fall of the High Commission, 1913, pp. 180 seqq.

91.D’Ewes, Journals, pp. 171, 173.

92.See, e.g., Surtees Society, vol. xxxiv, 1858, The Acts of the High Commission Court within the Diocese of Durham, Preface, which shows that between 1626 and 1639 cases of contempt of the ordinary ecclesiastical jurisdiction ran into hundreds.

93.Penn, No Cross, No Crown, pt. i, ch. xii, par. 8.

94.Sanderson, De Obligatione Conscientiae, 1660; Taylor, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living, 1650, chap. iii, sect. iii (Of Negotiation or Civil Contracts, Rules and Measures of Justice in Bargaining).

95.Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, ed. F. B. Kaye, 1924, pp. 193, 194. Similar sentiments with regard to the necessity of poverty were expressed later in the century by the Rev. J. Townsend, in his Dissertation on the Poor Laws (1785), and by Patrick Colquhoun in his Treatise on the Wealth and Resources of the British Empire (1814). Like Mandeville, both these writers argue that poverty is essential to the prosperity, and, indeed, to the very existence, of civilization. For a full collection of citations to the same effect from eighteenth-century writers, see E. S. Furniss, The Position of the Laborer in a System of Nationalism, 1920, chaps. iv–vi.

96.The Whole Duty of Man, laid down in a plain and familiar way for the use of all, 1658.

CHAPTER 4

1.Tucker, A Brief Essay on the Advantages and Disadvantages which respectively attend France and Great Britain with regard to Trade, 1750, p. 33. The best account of Tucker, most of whose works are scarce, is given by W. E. Clark, Josiah Tucker, Economist (Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, Columbia University, vol. xix, 1903–5).

2.Reliquiae Baxterianae: or Mr Richard Baxter’s Narrative of the most memorable Passages of his Life and Times, 1696, p. 5.

3.Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress.

4.The Life of the Duke of Newcastle, by Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle (Everyman ed., 1915), p. 153.

5.Baxter, op. cit., p. 31.

6.Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress.

7.Baxter, op. cit., p. 89.

8.Thomas Fuller, The Holy and Profane States, 1884 ed., p. 122.

9.Quoted S. Meyer, Memoirs of Bristol, vol. ii, 1823, p. 314.

10.R. G. Usher, The Reconstruction of the English Church, vol. i, 1910, pp. 249–50.

11.Baxter, op. cit., p. 30.

12.An orderly and plaine Narration of the Beginnings and Causes of this Warre, 1644, p. 4 (Brit. Mus., Thomason Tracts, E. 54 (3)). I owe this reference to the kindness of Father Paschal Larkin.

13.Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, bk. vi, par. 271.

14.Parker, Discourse of Ecclesiastical Politie, 1670, Preface, p. xxxix.

15.The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, written by himself, 1827 ed., vol. iii, p. 101.

16.D. C. A. Agnew, Protestant Exiles from France, 1886, vol. i, pp. 20–1. In 1640 the Root and Branch Petition included, among the evils due to the Bishops, ‘the discouragement and destruction of all good subjects, of whom are multitudes, both clothiers, merchants, and others, who, being deprived of their ministers, and over-bur-thened with these pressures, have departed the kingdom to Holland and other parts, and have drawn with them a great manufacture of cloth and trading out of the land into other places where they reside, whereby wool, the great staple of the kingdom, is become of small value and vends not, trading is decayed, many poor people want work, seamen lose employment, and the whole land is much impoverished’ (S. R. Gardiner, Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1628–60 (1889), p. 73). For instances of the comparatively liberal treatment of alien immigrants under Elizabeth see Tawney and Power, Tudor Economic Documents, vol. i, section vi, nos. 3, 4, 11 (2), 15, and Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Modern Times, 1921, pt. i, pp. 79–84.

17.Torism and Trade can never agree, p. 12. The tract is wrongly attributed to Davenant by Levy (Economic Liberalism, p. 12).

18.See, e.g., G. Martin, La Grande Industrie sous le règne de Louis XIV, 1899, chap. xvii, where the reports of several intendants are quoted; and Levasseur, Histoire du commerce de la France, 1911, vol. i, p. 421.

19.A Letter from a Gentleman in the City to a Gentleman in the Country about the odiousness of Persecution, 1677, p. 29.

20.Sir Wm. Temple, Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands, chap. v, vi.

21.The True Interest and Political Maxims of the Republick of Holland and West-Friesland, 1702, pt. i, chap. xiv.

22.Petty, Political Arithmetic, 1690, pp. 25–6.

23.The Present Interest of England stated, by a Lover of his King and Country, 1671. I am indebted to Mr A. P. Wadsworth for calling my attention to the passage quoted in the text. The same point is put more specifically by Lawrence Braddon: ‘The superstition of their religion obligeth France to keep (at least) fifty Holy days more than we are obliged to keep; and every such day wherein no work is done is one hundred and twenty thousand pounds loss to the deluded people’ (Abstract of the draft of a Bill for relieving, reforming and employing the Poor, 1717). See also Defoe, in his Enquiry into Occasional Conformity, 1702, pp. 18–19: ‘We wonder, gentlemen, you will accept our money on your deficient funds, our stocks to help carry on your wars, our loans and credits to your victualling office and navy office. If you would go on to distinguish us, get a law made we shall buy no lands, that we may not be freeholders; and see if you could find money to buy us out. Transplant us into towns and bodies, and let us trade by ourselves; let us card, spin, knit, weave, and work with and for one another, and see how you’ll maintain your own poor without us. Let us fraight our ships apart, keep our money out of your Bank, accept none of our bills, and separate your selves as absolutely from us in civil matters, as we do from you in religious, and see how you can go on without us.’

24.Swift, Examiner.

25.Bolingbroke, Letter to Sir Wm. Windham, 1753, p. 21.

26.Reliquiae Baxterianae (see note 2), p. 94. He goes on: ‘The generality of the Master Workmen (i.e., employers) lived but a little better than their journeymen (from hand to mouth), but only that they laboured not altogether so hard.’

27.Voltaire, Lettres Philosophiques, no. x, and Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, xix, 27, and xx, 22. See also the remarks to the same effect in D’Argenson, Considérations sur le Gouvernement de la France, 1765.

28.Brief Survey of the Growth of Usury in England, 1673.

29.Marston, Eastward Ho! act 1, sc. i.

30.Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, bk. i, par. 163.

31.Petty, Political Arithmetic, 1690, p. 23.

32.Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1930 (Eng. trans. by Talcott Parsons of Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, first published in the Archiv für Sozial-wissenschaft und Sozialpolitik Statistik, vols. xx, xx)i; Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der Christlichen Kirchen and Protestantism and Progress, 1912; Schulze-Gävernitz, Britischer Imperialismus und Englischer Freihandel, 1906; Cunningham, Christianity and Economic Science, 1914, chap. v.

Weber’s essay gave rise to much discussion in Germany. Its main thesis – that Calvinism, and in particular English Puritanism, from which nearly all his illustrations are drawn, played a part of preponderant importance in creating moral and political conditions favourable to the growth of capitalist enterprise – appears to be accepted by Troeltsch, op. cit., pp. 704 seqq. It is submitted to a critical analysis by Brentano (Die Anfänge des modernen Kapitalismus, 1916, pp. 117–57), who dissents from many of Weber’s conclusions. Weber’s essay is certainly one of the most fruitful examinations of the relations between religion and social theory which has appeared, and I desire to acknowledge my indebtedness to it, in particular with reference to its discussion of the economic application given by some Puritan writers to the idea expressed by the word ‘calling’. At the same time, there are several points on which Weber’s arguments appear to me to be one-sided and over-strained, and on which Brentano’s criticisms of it seem to me to be sound.

Thus (i), as was perhaps inevitable in an essay dealing with economic and social thought, as distinct from changes in economic and social organization, Weber seems to me to explain by reference to moral and intellectual influences developments which have their principal explanation in another region altogether. There was plenty of the ‘capitalist spirit’ in the fifteenth-century Venice and Florence, or in South Germany and Flanders, for the simple reason that these areas were the greatest commercial and financial centres of the age, though all were, at least nominally, Catholic. The development of capitalism in Holland and England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was due, not to the fact that they were Protestant powers, but to large economic movements, in particular the Discoveries and the results which flowed from them. Of course material and psychological changes went together, and of course the second reacted on the first. But it seems a little artificial to talk as though capitalist enterprise could not appear till religious changes had produced a capitalist spirit. It would be equally true, and equally onesided, to say that the religious changes were purely the result of economic movements.

(ii) Weber ignores, or at least touches too lightly on, intellectual movements, which were favourable to the growth of business enterprise and to an individualist attitude towards economic relations, but which had little to do with religion. The political thought of the Renaissance was one; as Brentano points out, Machiavelli was at least as powerful a solvent of traditional ethical restraints as Calvin. The speculations of business men and economists on money, prices, and the foreign exchanges were a second. Both contributed to the temper of single-minded concentration on pecuniary gain, which Weber understands by the capitalist spirit.

(iii) He appears greatly to over-simplify Calvinism itself. In the first place, he apparently ascribes to the English Puritans of the seventeenth century the conception of social ethics held by Calvin and his immediate followers. In the second place, he speaks as though all English Puritans in the seventeenth century held much the same view of social duties and expediency. Both suggestions are misleading. On the one hand, the Calvinists of the sixteenth century (including English Puritans) were believers in a rigorous discipline, and the individualism ascribed not unjustly to the Puritan movement in its later phases would have horrified them. The really significant question is that of the causes of the change from the one standpoint to the other, a question which Weber appears to ignore. On the other hand, there were within seventeenth-century Puritanism a variety of elements, which held widely different views as to social policy. As Cromwell discovered, there was no formula which would gather Puritan aristocrats and Levellers, landowners and Diggers, merchants and artisans, buff-coat and his general, into the fold of a single social theory. The issue between divergent doctrines was fought out within the Puritan movement itself. Some won; others lost.

Both ‘the capitalist spirit’ and ‘Protestant ethics’, therefore, were a good deal more complex than Weber seems to imply. What is true and valuable in his essay is his insistence that the commercial classes in seventeenth-century England were the standard-bearers of a particular conception of social expediency, which was markedly different from that of the more conservative elements in society – the peasants, the craftsmen, and many landed gentry – and that that conception found expression in religion, in politics, and, not least, in social and economic conduct and policy.

33.Cunningham, The Moral Witness of the Church on the Investment of Money and the Use of Wealth, 1909, p. 25.

34.Knox, The Buke of Discipline, in Works, ed. D. Laing, vol. ii, 1848, pp. 183 seqq.; Thos. Cartwright, A Directory of Church Government (printed in D. Neal, History of the Puritans, 1822, vol. v, Appx. iv); W. Travers, A Full and Plain Declaration of Ecclesiastical Discipline, 1574; J. Udall, A Demonstration of the Trueth of that Discipline which Christe hath described in his worde for the Government of his Church, 1589; Bancroft, Dangerous Positions and Proceedings published and practised within this Iland of Brytaine under Pretence of Reformation and for the Presbyteriall Discipline, 1593 (part reprinted in R. G. Usher, The Presbyterian Movement in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, as illustrated by the Minute Book of the Dedham Classis, 1905).

35.Cartwright, op. cit.

36.Usher, op. cit., p. 1.

37.Ibid., pp. 14–15, for Bancroft’s account of the procedure.

38.Quoted from Baillie’s Letters by W. A. Shaw, A History of the English Church during the Civil Wars and under the Commonwealth, 1900, vol. i, p. 128.

39.Shaw, op. cit., vol. ii, chap. iii (The Presbyterian System, 1646–60). For the practical working of Presbyterian discipline see Chetham Society, vols. xx, xxii, xxiv, Minutes of the Manchester Classis, and vols. xxxvi, xli, Minutes of the Bury Classis.

40.See Chap. 3, p. 147.

41.Puritan Manifestoes, p. 120, quoted by H. G. Wood, The Influence of the Reformation on Ideas concerning Wealth and Property in Property, Its Rights and Duties, 1913, p. 142. Mr Wood’s essay contains an excellent discussion of the whole subject, and I should like here to acknowledge my obligations to it. For the views of Knewstub, Smith, and Baro, see the quotations from them printed by Hawes, Sketches of the Reformation, 1844, pp. 237–40, 243–6. It should be noted that Baro, while condemning those who, ‘sitting idle at home, make merchandise only of their money, by giving it out in this sort to needy persons … without having any regard of his commodity, to whome they give it, but only of their own gain’, nevertheless admitted that interest was not always to be condemned. See also Thos. Fuller, History of the University of Cambridge, ed. M. Prickett and T. Wright, 1840, pp. 275–6, 288–9, and Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Modern Times, 1921 ed., pt. i, pp. 157–8.

42.New Shakespeare Society, Series vi, no. 6, 1877–9, Phillip Stubbes’s Anatomy of the Abuses in England, ed. F. J. Furnivall, pp. 115–16.

43.W. Ames, De Conscientia et eius iure vel casibus libri quinque, bk. v, chaps. xliii, xliv. Ames (1576–1633) was educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge, tried to settle at Colchester, but was forbidden to preach by the Bishop of London, went to Leyden about 1610, was appointed to the theological chair at Franeker in 1622, where he remained for ten years, and died at Rotterdam.

44.E.g., Stubbes, op. cit.; Richard Capel, Temptations, their Nature, Danger, Cure, 1633; John Moore, The Crying Sin of England of not caring for the Poor: wherein Inclosure, viz. such as doth unpeople Townes, and uncorn Fields, is arraigned, convicted and condemned, 1653.

45.J. O. Halliwell, The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, 1845, vol. i, pp. 206–10, 322, 354; vol. ii, pp. 96, 153–4.

46.Usher, op. cit. (see note 34 above), pp. 32, 53, 70, 99–100.

47.26 September 1645, it is resolved ‘that it shall be in the power of the eldership to suspend from the sacrament of the Lord’s supper any person that shall be legally attainted of Barratry, Forgery, Extortion, Perjury, or Bribery’ (Commons’ Journal, vol. iv, p. 290).

48.Chetham Society, Minutes of the Bury Presbyterian Classis, 1647–57, pt. i, pp. 32–3. The Cambridge classis (ibid., pt. ii, pp. 196–7) decided in 1657 that the ordinance of Parliament of 29 August 1648 should be taken as the rule of the classis in the matter of scandal. The various scandals mentioned in the ordinance included extortion, and the classis decided that ‘no person lawfully convict of any of the foresaid scandalls, bee admitted to the Lord’s supper without significance of sincere repentance’, but it appears (p. 198) to have been mainly interested in witches, wizards, and fortune-tellers.

49.Hist. MSS. Com., Report on MSS. in various Collections, vol. i, 1901, p. 132.

50.Quoted by F. J. Powicke, A Life of the Reverend Richard Baxter, 1924, p. 92.

51.Selections from those parts of The Christian Directory which bear on social ethics are printed by Jeannette Tawney, Chapters from Richard Baxter’s Christian Directory, 1925, in which most of the passages quoted in the text will be found.

52.Reliquiae Baxterianae (see note 2), p. 1.

53.Life and Death of Mr Badman (Cambridge English Classics, 1905), pp. 116–25, where Bunyan discusses at length the ethics of prices.

54.Carlyle, Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, Letter ii.

55.See on these points Weber, op. cit. (note 32 above), p. 94, whose main conclusions I paraphrase.

56.Milton, A Defence of the People of England (1692 ed.), p. xvii.

57.See, e.g., Thos. Wilson, A Discourse upon Usury, Preface, 1925 ed., p. 178: ‘There bee two sortes of men that are alwayes to bee looked upon very narrowly, the one is the dissemblinge gospeller, and the other is the wilfull and indurate papiste. The first under colour of religion overthroweth all religion, and bearing good men in hande that he loveth playnesse, useth covertelie all deceypte that maye bee, and for pryvate gayne undoeth the common welfare of man. And touching thys sinne of usurie, none doe more openly offende in thys behalfe than do these counterfeite professours of thys pure religion.’

58.Fenton, A Treatise of Usurie, 1612, pp. 60–1.

59.Brief Survey of the Growth of Usury in England, 1673.

60.S. Richardson, The Cause of the Poor Pleaded, 1653, Thomason Tracts, E. 703 (9), p. 14. For other references see note 72 below. For extortionate prices, see Thomason Tracts, E. 399 (6), The Worth of a Penny, or a Caution to keep Money, 1647. I am indebted for this and subsequent references to the Thomason Tracts to Miss P. James.

61.Hooker, Preface to The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Everyman ed., 1907, vol. i, p. 128.

62.Wilson, op. cit., p. 250.

63.Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, written by his widow Lucy, Everyman ed., 1908, pp. 64–5.

64.See the references given in note 66.

65.The Earl of Strafforde’s Letters and Despatches, by William Knowler, D.D., 1739, vol. ii, p. 138.

66.No attempt has been made in the text to do more than refer to the points on which the economic interests and outlook of the commercial and propertied classes brought them into collision with the monarchy, and only the most obvious sources of information are mentioned here. For patents and monopolies, including the hated soap monopoly, see Unwin, The Gilds and Companies of London, 1908, chap. xvii, and W. Hyde Price, The English Patents of Monopoly, 1906, chap. xvi, and passim. For the control of exchange business, Cambium Regis, or the Office of his Majesties Exchange Royall, declaring and justifying his Majesties Right and the Convenience thereof, 1628, and Ruding, Annals of the Coinage, 1819, vol. iv, pp. 201–10. For the punishment of speculation by the Star Chamber, and for projects of public granaries, Camden Society, N.S., vol. xxxix, 1886, Reports of Cases in the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, ed. S. R. Gardiner, pp. 43 seqq., 82 seqq., and N. S. B. Gras, The Evolution of the English Corn Market, 1915, pp. 246–50. For the control of the textile industry and the reaction against it, H. Heston, The Yorkshire Woollen and Worsted Industries, 1920, chaps. iv, vii; Kate E. Barford, The West of England Cloth Industry: A Seventeenth Century Experiment in State Control, in the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, Dec. 1924, pp. 531–42; R. R. Reid, The King’s Council in the North, 1921, pt. iv, chap. ii; V.C.H., Suffolk, vol. ii, pp. 263–8. For the intervention of the Privy Council to raise the wages of textile workers and to protect craftsmen, Tawney, The Assessment of Wages in England by the Justices of the Peace, in the Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirt-schaftsgeschichte. Bd. xi, 1913, pp. 307–37, 533–64; Leonard, The Early History of English Poor Relief, pp. 160–3; V.C.H., Suffolk, vol. ii, pp. 268–9; and Unwin, Industrial Organization in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 1904, pp. 142–7. For the Depopulation Commissions, Tawney, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 376, 391. For the squeezing of money from the East India Company and the infringement of its Charter, Shafa’at Ahmad Khan, The East India Trade in the XVIlth Century, 1923, pp. 69–73. For the colonial interests of Puritan members, A. P. Newton, The Colonizing Activities of the English Puritans, 1914, and C. E. Wade, John Pym, 1912.

67.E. Laspeyres, Geschichte der volkswirtschaftlichen Anschauungen der Niederländer und ihrer Litteratur zur Zeit der Republik, 1863, pp. 256–70. An idea of the points at issue can be gathered from the exhaustive (and unreadable) work of Salmasius, De Modo Usurarum, 1639.

68.John Quick, Synodicon in Gallia Reformata, 1682, vol. i, p. 99.

69.For the change of sentiment in America see Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress, pp. 117–27; for Franklin, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin, and Sombart, The Quintessence of Capitalism, 1915, pp. 116–21.

70.Rev. Robert Woodrow (quoted by Sombart, op. cit., p. 149).

71.John Cooke, Unum Necessarium or the Poore Man’s Case (1648), which contains a plea for the regulation of prices and the establishment of Monts de Piété.

72.For the scandal caused to the Protestant religion by its alleged condonation of covetousness, see T. Watson, A Plea for Alms, 1658 (Thomason Tracts, E. 2125), pp. 33–4: ‘The Church of Rome layes upon us this aspersion that we are against good workes … I am sorry that any who go for honest men should be brought into the indightment: I mean that any professors should be impeached as guilty of this sinne of covetousnesse and unmercifulnesse … I tell you these devout misers are the reproach of Christianity … I may say of penurious votaries, they have the wings of profession by which they seem to fly to heaven, but the feet of beasts, walking on the earth and even licking the dust… Oh, take heed, that, seeing your religion will not destroy your covetousnesse, at last your covetousnesse doth not destroy your religion.’ See also Sir Balthazar Gerbier, A New Year’s Result in favour of the Poore, 1651 (Thomason Tracts, E. 651 (14), p. 4: ‘If the Papists did rely as much on faith as the reformed professors of the Gospel (according to our English tenets) doe, or that the reformed professors did so much practice charity as the Papists doe?’

73.S. Richardson, op. cit. (see note 60 above), pp. 7–8, 10.

74.The first person to emphasize the way in which the idea of a ‘calling’ was used as an argument for the economic virtues was Weber (see note 32 above), to whose conclusions I am largely indebted for the following paragraphs.

75.Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress.

76.Richard Steele, The Tradesman’s Calling, being a Discourse concerning the Nature, Necessity, Choice, etc., of a Calling in general, 1684, pp. 1, 4.

77.Ibid., pp. 21–2.

78.Ibid., p. 35.

79.Baxter, Christian Directory, 1678 ed., vol. i, p. 336b.

80.Thomas Adams (quoted Weber, op. cit., p. 96 n.).

81.Matthew Henry, The Worth of the Soul (quoted ibid., p. 168 n.).

82.Baxter, op. cit., vol. i, p. 111a.

83.Steele, op. cit., p. 20.

84.Baxter, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 378b, 108b; vol. iv, p. 253a.

85.Navigation Spiritualized: or a New Compass for Seamen, consisting of xxxii Points:

of

Pleasant Observations Profitable Applications and Serious Reflections.

All concluded with so many spiritual poems. Whereunto is now added,

iA sober conversation of the sin of drunkenness.

iiThe Harlot’s face in the scripture-glass, etc.

Being an essay towards their much desired Reformation from the horrible and detestable sins of Drunkenness, Swearing, Uncleanness, Forgetfulness of Mercies, Violation of Promises, and Atheistical contempt of death, 1682.

The author of this cheerful work was a Devonshire minister, John Flavell, who also wrote Husbandry Spiritualized, or the Heavenly Use of Earthly Things, 1669. In him, as in Steele, the Chadband touch is unmistakable. The Religious Weaver, apparently by one Fawcett, I have not been able to trace.

86.Steele, op. cit. (see note 76 above).

87.Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress.

88.David Jones, A Farewell Sermon at St Mary Woolnoth’s, 1692.

89.Nicholas Barbon, A Discourse of Trade, 1690, ed. by Professor John H. Hollander (A Reprint of Economic Tracts, Series ii, no. 1).

90.The words of a member of the Long Parliament, quoted by C. H. Firth, Oliver Cromwell, 1902, p. 313.

91.The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 1827 ed., vol. ii, p. 235: ‘The merchants took much delight to enlarge themselves upon this argument [i.e., the advantages of war], and shortly after to discourse “of the infinite benefit that would accrue from a barefaced war against the Dutch, how easily they might be subdued and the trade carried by the English”.’ According to Clarendon, who despised the merchants and hated the whole business, it was almost a classical example of a commercial war, carefully stage-managed in all its details from the directorship which the Royal African Company gave to the Duke of York down to the inevitable ‘incident’ with which hostilities began.

92.Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 7–9.

93.Sir Dudley North, Discourses upon Trade, 1691, Preface.

94.Petty, Political Arithmetic, Preface.

95.Chamberlayne, Angliae Notitia (quoted P. E. Dove, Account of Andrew Yarranton, 1854, p. 82 n.).

96.Roger North, The Lives of the Norths (1826 ed.), vol. iii, p. 103; T. Watson, A Plea for Alms (Thomason Tracts, E. 2125), p. 33; Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, 2nd part, 1682, p. 9, where Sir Robert Clayton, Lord Mayor 1679–80, and Member of Parliament for the city 1679–81 and again from 1689, appears as ‘extorting Ishban’. He was a scrivener who had made his money by usury.

97.John Fawke, Sir William Thompson, William Love, and John Jones.

98.Charles King (The British Merchant, 1721, vol. i, p. 181) gives the following persons as signatories of an analysis of the trade between England and France in 1674: Patience Ward, Thomas Papillon, James Houblon, William Bellamy, Michael Godfrey, George Toriano, John Houblon, John Houghe, John Mervin, Peter Paravicine, John Dubois, Benj. Godfrey, Edm. Harrison, Benj. Delaune. The number of foreign names is remarkable.

99.For Dutch capital in London, see Hist. MSS. Comm., 8th Report, 1881, p. 134 (proceedings of the Committee on the decay of trade, 1669); with regard to investment of foreign capital in England, it was stated that ‘Alderman Bucknell had above £100,000 in his hands, Mr Meynell above £30,000, Mr Vandeput at one time £60,000, Mr Dericost always near £200,000 of Dutch money, lent to merchants at 7, 6, and 5 per cent.’

100.The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, vol. ii, pp. 289–93, and vol. iii, pp. 4–7; and John Beresford, The Godfather of Downing Street, 1925.

101.S. Bannister, William Paterson, the Merchant-Statesman, and Founder of the Bank of England: his Life and Trials, 1858.

102.A Yarranton, England’s Improvement, 1677.

103.The Complete English Tradesman (1726) belongs to the same genus as the book of Steele (see above, pp. 242–4), but it has reduced Christianity to even more innocuous proportions: see Letter xvii (Of Honesty in Dealing).

104.T. S. Ashton, Iron and Steel in the Industrial Revolution, 1924, pp. 211–26. Mr A. P. Wadsworth has shown that the leading Lancashire clothiers were often Nonconformists (History of the Rochdale Woollen Trade, in Trans. Rochdale Lit. and Sci. Soc., vol. xv, 1925).

105.Quoted F. J. Powicke, Life of Baxter, 1924, p. 158.

106.Dicey, Law and Public Opinion in England, 1905, pp. 400–1.

107.The Humble Petition of thousands of well affected persons inhabiting the city of London, Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, Hamlets, and places adjacent (Bodleian Pamphlets, The Levellers’ Petitions, c. 15. 3 Linc). See also G. P. Gooch, English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century, 1898.

108.Camden Society, The Clarke Papers, ed. C. H. Firth, 1891–4, vol. ii, pp. 217–21 (letter from Winstanley to Fairfax and the Council of War, 8, Dec. 1649).

109.Records of the Borough of Leicester, 1603–88, ed. Helen Stocks, 1923, pp. 370, 414, 428–30.

110.John Moore, op. cit. (see note 44 above), p. 13. See also Gonner, Common Land and Enclosure, 1912, pp. 53–5.

111.Camden Soc., The Clarke Papers, vol. i, pp. 299 seqq., lxvii seqq.

112.The Diary of Thomas Burton, ed. J. T. Rutt, 1828, vol. i, pp. 175–6. A letter from Whalley, referring to agitations against enclosure in Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire, Lmcolnshire, and Leicestershire, will be found in Thurloe, State Papers, vol. iv, p. 686.

113.Joseph Lee, A Vindication of a Regulated Enclosure, 1656, p. 9.

114.Aquinas, Summa Theol., 2^a 2^æ, Q. xxxii, art. v.

115.Dives et Pauper, 1493, Prol., chap. vii; cf. Pecock, The Repressor of over-much blaming of the Clergy, pt. iii, chap. iv, pp. 296–7. For an excellent account of the medieval attitude towards the poor, see B. L. Manning, The People’s Faith in the Time of Wyclif, 1919, chap. x.

116.A Lyke-wake Dirge, printed by W. Allingham, The Ballad Book, 1907, no. xxxi.

117.Latimer, The Fifth Sermon on the Lord’s Prayer (in Sermons, Everyman ed., p. 336). Cf. Tyndale, The Parable of the Wicked Mammon (in Doctrinal Treatises of William Tyndale, Parker Society, 1848, p. 97): ‘If thy brother or neighbour therefore need, and thou have to help him, and yet showest not mercy, but with-drawest thy hands from him, then robbest thou him of his own, and art a thief.’

118.Christopher Harvey, The Overseer of the Poor (in G. Gilfillan, The Poetical Works of George Herbert, 1853, pp. 241–3).

119.J. E. B. Mayor, Two Lives of N. Ferrar, by his brother John and Dr Jebb, p. 261 (quoted by B. Kirkman Gray, A History of English Philanthropy, 1905, p. 54).

120.A True Report of the Great Cost and Charges of the foure Hospitals in the City of London, 1644 (quoted, ibid., p. 66).

121.See, e.g., Hist. MSS. Comm., Reports on MSS. in various collections, vol. i, 1901, pp. 109–24; Leonard, Early History of English Poor Relief, pp. 268–9.

122.Sir Matthew Hale, A Discourse touching Provision for the Poor, 1683.

123.Stanley’s Remedy, or the Way to reform wandering Beggars, Thieves, Highway Robbers, and Pick-pockets, 1646 (Thomason Tracts, E. 317 (6)), p. 4.

124.Commons’ Journals, 19, March 1648/9, vol. vi, p. 167.

125.Ibid., vol. vi, pp. 201, 374, 416, 481; vol. vii, p. 127.

126.Samuel Hartlib, London’s Charity Inlarged, 1650, p. i.

127.Hartlib, op. cit.

128.Firth and Rait, Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1911, vol. ii, pp. 104–10. An ordinance creating a corporation had been passed 17 Dec. 1647 (ibid., vol. i, pp. 1042–5).

129.Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 1098–9.

130.Stockwood, at Paul’s Cross, 1578 (quoted by Haweis, Sketches of the Reformation, p. 277).

131.Steele, op. cit. (note 76 above), p. 22.

132.R. Younge, The Poores’ Advocate, 1654 (Thomason Tracts, E. 1452 (3)), p. 6.

133.For these and other passages from Restoration economists to the same effect, see a striking article by Dr T. E. Gregory on The Economics of Employment in England (1600–1713) in Economica, no. i, Jan. 1921, pp. 37 seqq., and E. S. Furniss, The Position of the Labourer in a System of Nationalism, 1920, chaps. v, vi.

134.Das Kommunistische Manifest, 1918 ed., pp. 27–8; ‘Die Bourgeoisie, wo sie zur Herrschaft gekommen, hat alle feudalen, patriarchalischen, idyllischen Verhältnisse zerstört. Sie hat die buntscheckigen Feudalbande, die den Menschen an seinen natürlichen Vorgesetzten knüpften, unbarmherzig zerrissen, und kein anderes Band zwischen Mensch und Mensch übrig gelassen, als das nackte Interesse, als die gefühllose bare Zahlung.’

135.Defoe, Giving Alms no Charity, 1704, pp. 25–7.

136.Petty, Political Arithmetic, p. 45.

137.Sir Henry Pollexfen, Discourse of Trade, 1697, p. 49; Walter Harris, Remarks on the Affairs and Trade of England and Ireland, 1691, pp. 43–4; The Querist, 1737 (in The Works of George Berkeley, D.D., ed. A. C. Fraser, 1871, p. 387); Thomas Alcock, Observations on the Defects of the Poor Laws, 1752, pp. 45 seqq. (quoted Furniss, op. cit., p. 153).

138.Arthur Young, Eastern Tour, 1771, vol. iv, p. 361.

139.Harrison, The Description of Britaine, 1587 ed., bk. ii, chap. x, Of Provision Made for the Poor.

140.H. Hunter, Problems of Poverty: Selections from the … writings of Thomas Chalmers, D.D., 1912, p. 202.

141.For the influence of Chalmers’ ideas on Senior, and, through him, on the new Poor Law of 1834, see T. Mackay, History of the English Poor Law, vol. iii, 1899, pp. 32–4. Chalmers held that any Poor Law was in itself objectionable. Senior, who described Chalmers’ evidence before the Committee on the State of the Poor in Ireland as ‘the most instructive, perhaps, that ever was given before a Committee of the House of Commons’, appears to have begun by agreeing with him, but later to have adopted the principle of deterrence, backed by the test workhouse, as a second best. The Commissioners of 1832–4 were right in thinking the existing methods of relief administration extremely bad; they were wrong in supposing distress to be due mainly to lax administration, instead of realizing, as was the fact, that lax administration had arisen as an attempt to meet the increase of distress. Their discussion of the causes of pauperism is, therefore, extremely superficial, and requires to be supplemented by the evidence contained in the various contemporary reports (such, e.g., as those on the handloom weavers) dealing with the industrial aspects of the problem.

142.W. C. Braithwaite, The Second Period of Quakerism, 1919, pp. 560–2. Defoe comments on the strict business standards of the Quakers in Letter xvii (Of Honesty in Dealing), in The Complete English Tradesman. Mr Ashton (Iron and Steel in the Industrial Revolution, p. 219) remarks, ‘The eighteenth century Friend no less than the medieval Catholic held firmly to some doctrine of Just Price,’ and quotes examples from the conduct of Quaker ironmasters.