[239]
The churchwardens and overseers of the poor accounts, especially in
London and the larger cities, abound with receipt items of gifts from
great personages or wealthy merchants.[240]
Owing to the difficulty of investing money because present-day
intermediaries were absent between capital seeking employment and
would-be borrowers; and because the medieval stigma attaching to money
loaned at interest had by no means wholly disappeared,[241] there grew
up in Elizabethan parishes a system of laying out money, raised by the
parish or donated by benefactors, in various trades, such as
wool-spinning, linen-weaving, the buying of wood or coal to sell again
at a profit,[242] etc. Sometimes well-to-do parishioners with good
credit would themselves borrow parish money, returning ten per cent.
for its use.[243] Usually, however, parish money was loaned gratis,
the parish taking sureties for its repayment and sometimes articles of
value, being, apparently, not always above doing a little pawnbroking
business.[244] On the other hand, when the parish itself had occasion
to borrow money it would occasionally give its own valuables as
security. Thus the Mere, Wiltshire, wardens record in 1556 that they
have redeemed on the repayment of 40s. to one Cowherd, "borowed of hym
to thuse of the Churche," "certeyn sylver Spones of the Churche
stocke.
Pages:
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68