Note 46 — Chapter X · FINANCE

The numerous references to Jews on the Pipe Rolls and in contemporary chronicles have been brought together in Jacobs’ The Jews of Angevin England. Examples of their dealings with monastic houses may be found in Jocelin of Brakelond’s Chronicle, relating to St. Edmund’s Abbey, and in the Gesta Abbatum concerning St. Alban’s, while an idea of their importance to the litigant in want of ready money for legal expenses may be gathered from Richard of Anstey’s famous story of the costs of his lawsuit (translated in Hall’s Court Life of the Plantagenets), in which he accounts for some seventeen different loans, amounting in all to £87, on which he paid £53 for usury.