The loans in the reign of Edward III. were very considerable, and the unpopularity of the Italians was great. In 1376 a petition was presented to the King by the Mayor, Aldermen and Commons of the City of London against usurious foreign moneylenders dwelling in London, asking that the Lombards might be forbidden from dwelling in the city, or acting as brokers and buying and selling by retail which they alleged to be against their ancient franchises. The King answered the petition to the effect that if the citizens would put the city under good government for the future no foreigner should be allowed to dwell, act as broker, or sell by retail in London or the suburbs save and except the merchants of the Hanse towns.[348]
On the whole we must extend our sympathy to the Italians, for the King was not very prompt in paying his debts, and he considered it immoral to have promised any interest. The effect was that he ruined many of these unfortunate foreigners. The name of Lombard Street occurs in the city books in 1382, and was in common use at the beginning of the fourteenth century. It is a remarkable fact that the locality in which the Italian financiers first settled in London should obtain a name which has continued to the present day as a synonym of finance, and was used by the late Mr. Bagehot as the title of his great work.
Matthew Paris tells us that the houses which the Italian moneylenders built for themselves were so costly that, although at one period the Italians were anxious to leave the kingdom to escape the persecutions they suffered from, they were constrained to remain by the loss they feared to incur by deserting their houses.[349]
In 1456 a serious attack was made upon the houses of the Lombards by the mercers and other crafts led by William Cantelowe, alderman and mercer, who was summoned before the King’s Council and imprisoned. We learn also from the Paston Letters that two of the men who joined in the attack were hanged (ed. J. Gairdner, 1872, vol. i. p. 387). In Gregory’s Chronicle it is said that the Lombards were compelled to quit London and take up their residence in Southampton and Winchester. Dr. James Gairdner writes of this outbreak: ‘The withdrawal of the Lombard merchants in all probability produced a sensible effect upon the commerce of the city; for they made a bye-law among themselves that no individual merchant of Northern Italy should henceforth go to London and trade there.’ This ordinance the Signory of Venice ratified by a decree of the Senate, and prohibited, under a heavy fine, all Venetian vessels from visiting the port of London.[350]
In spite of all this turmoil affairs settled down again, and the foreigners appear to have returned to their London houses.
In connection with the introduction of Italian bankers into London, the popular derivation of bankrupt from a broken bench is naturally called to mind, and I have tried to find some allusion in the city records to a broken bench in Lombard Street, but without success.
In Florio’s A New Worlde of Wordes; or, Dictionarie in Italian and English (1598), we find the following entries:—
‘Banca, a bench or a forme.
‘Bancarotta, a bankrupt.’
In Torriano’s edition of Florio (1650) we come upon these amplified entries—