OCR Text |
Show Usurer's Golden Age. Five per cent Interest on a loan would have been scoffed at by the men who had money to lend in medieval times. In the thirteenth and fourteenth four-teenth centuries the usual rate seems to have been 20 per cent, and in the preceding centuries it was probably higher, observes the London Chronicle;. The rate of interest decreased with !he increase of specie, wiih an occa-siniiNl occa-siniiNl limitation by -the state. Elizabeth Eliza-beth reduced ihe rale by law to 1(1 per cent. James I to 8. and Charles II In fl. In ancient Itome. according to Niebuhr, the rate was, S 1-3 for a ten months year the equivalent of 10 per cent per annum. |