In concluding this chapter, and our survey of trade generally, it will be necessary to the completion thereof that we should say a word or two about the money trading of four hundred years ago or more. Banks, bank-notes, bills of exchange, drafts to order—all these are as familiar to the tongues of the nineteenth century as if the great car of commerce had ever gone along on such greased and comfortable wheels. But I need not say it is not so. Very little money in the present day is practically coin. Our banks have it all. It was different with our ancestors. As a rule it was stored up in some secret cupboard or chest. Hence it is, as I have shown, the trade of ‘le Coffer’ and the office of ‘le Cofferer’ are so much thrust before our notice in surveying mediæval records. Still, trading in money was largely carried on, so far, at any rate, as loans were concerned. The Jew, true to his national precedents, was then, I need not say, the pawnbroker of Europe, and as his disciple, the Lumbard soon bid fair to outstrip his master. Under the Plantagenet dynasty both found a prosperous field for their peculiar business in England, and, as I have elsewhere said, Lombard Street[[435]] to this day is a memorial of the settlement of the latter. In such uncertain and changeful times as these, kings, and in their train courtiers and nobles, soon learnt the art, not difficult in initiation, of pawning jewels and lands for coin. The Malvern Dreamer speaks familiarly of this—
I have lent lordes
And ladies my chaffare,
And been their brocour after,
And bought it myselve;
Eschaunges and chevysaunces
With such cheffare I dele.
This species of commerce is early marked by such names as ‘Henry le Chaunger’ or ‘Adam le Chevestier,’[[436]] while still better-known terms are brought to our notice by entries like ‘John le Banckere,’ ‘Roger le Bencher,’ ‘Thomas le Brokur,’ or ‘Simon le Brokour.’ Holinshed, in the form of ‘brogger,’ has the latter to denote one who negotiated for coin. As ‘Broggers,’ too, we met them in the York Pageant. There, probably, they would transact much of the business carried on between ourselves and the Dutch in the shipping off of fleeces, or the introduction of the cloth again from the Flemish manufacturers.[[437]] The pawnbroker of modern days, dealing in petty articles of ware, was evidently an unknown personage at the date we are considering. The first distinctive notice of him I can light upon is in the ‘Statutes of the Realm’ of the Stuart period. It will be there found that (chapter xxi.) James I., speaking of the change from the old broker into the more modern pawnbroker, refers to the former as one who went ‘betweene Merchant Englishe and Merchant Strangers, and Tradesmen in the contrivinge, makinge and concluding Bargaines and Contractes to be made betweene them concerning their wares and merchandises,’ and then adds that he ‘never of any ancient tyme used to buy and sell garments, household stuffe, or to take pawnes and bills of sale of garments and apparele, and all things that come to hand for money, laide out and lent upon usury, or to keepe open shoppes, and to make open shewes, and open trade, as now of late yeeres hathe and is used by a number of citizens, etc.’