Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/68

66 our commerce, and the maritime Magna Charta of England, we shall only at present observe that one of its first consequences was undoubtedly the war with Holland which broke out the year after it was passed. It is admitted also, we may add, by a writer who ranks among its most zealous eulogists, that it "occasioned at first loud complaints that, though our people had not shipping enough to import from all parts whatever they wanted, they were nevertheless, by this law, debarred receiving due supplies of merchandise from other nations, who only could, and till then did, import them." The Barbadians were at length, not without much difficulty, compelled to surrender their island to the parliamentary forces under Sir George Ayscue, in March, 1652; but, even after this, they continued, notwithstanding the prohibitory act, to keep up a considerable intercourse with the Dutch, which was connived at by the government. The wealth and importance of Barbadoes, however, were considerably reduced by Cromwell's conquest, in 1656, of Jamaica, to which many of the planters soon after removed, induced principally by the greater cheapness of land in that island.

The legal rate of interest on money had continued to be ten per cent., as fixed by the act of 1571, till, in 1624, it was reduced to eight per cent, by the statute 21 Jac. I. c. 17,—which, after authorizing this rate, drolly adds the proviso, "that no words in this law contained shall be construed or expounded to allow the practice of usury in point of religion or conscience!" The rate of interest continued to be eight per cent, till 1651, when it was further reduced by the parliament to six per cent., at which point it remained fixed for the rest of the present period. Some years before this time a regular trade in the lending of money had sprung up, of which Anderson gives the following account from a rare and curious pamphlet, entitled "The Mystery of the New-fashioned Goldsmiths or Bankers discovered," printed in 1676. For some time the usual place in which the London merchants kept their cash had been the Royal