The taking of interest for the loan of money was first prohibited in England by Edward the Confessor. This law, however, appears to have become obsolete; for, in a council held at Westminster, in the year 1126, usury was prohibited only to the clergy, who, in case they practised it, were to be degraded; and in another Council, held twelve years afterwards, it was decreed that, "such of the clergy as were usurers and hunters after sordid gain, and for the public employments of the laity, ought to be degraded."

The earliest mention in English history of a certain yearly allowance for the usury or interest of money, is in the year 1199, the tenth and last year of Richard I. In this case the rate of interest was 10 per cent. This appears to have been the ordinary or market-rate of interest from that period until the time of Henry VIII, but there are many instances on record of a much higher rate of interest being taken, especially by the Jews and the Lombards, who, in those times, were the principal money-lenders. The exorbitant interest taken by them is supposed by eminent writers to have been the effect of the prohibition of usury.

The Jews, who were previously famous in foreign countries for their "egregious cunning in trade and in the practice of brokerage," arrived in England about the time of the Norman Conquest (1066) and soon became remarkable for wealth and usury. "The prejudices of the age," says Hume, "had made the lending of money on interest pass by the invidious name of usury; yet the necessity of the practice had still continued it, and the greater part of that kind of dealing fell everywhere into the hands of the Jews. The industry and frugality of this people had put them in possession of all the ready money, which the idleness and profusion common to the English with the European nations enabled them to lend at exorbitant and unequal interest."

Henry III prohibited the Jews taking more than twopence a week for every 20 shillings they lent to the scholars at Oxford. This is after the rate of £43 6s. 8d. per cent. per annum. Peter of Blois, Archdeacon of Bath, writes thus to his friend the Bishop of Ely: "I am dragged to Canterbury to be crucified by the perfidious Jews amongst their other debtors, whom they ruin and torment with usury. The same sufferings await me also at London, if you do not mercifully interpose for my deliverance. I beseech you, therefore, O most Rev. Father and most loving friend, to become bound to Samson the Jew for £6 which I owe him, and thereby deliver me from that cross."