Britain and Ireland
In England the pawnbroker, like so many other distinguished personages, came in with William the Conqueror. Yet, despite the valuable services which the class rendered, not infrequently to the Crown itself, the usurer was treated with studied cruelty. Sir Walter Scott's Isaac of York was no mere creation of fiction. These barbarities began, by diminishing the number of Jews in the country, long before Edward's decree of banishment, to make it worth the while of the Lombard merchants to settle in England. In 1338 Edward III pawned his jewels to the Lombards to raise money for his war with France. An equally great king Henry V did much the same in 1415.
Read more about this topic: History Of Pawnbroking
Famous quotes containing the words britain and/or ireland:
“Hath Britain all the sun that shines? day? night?
Are they not but in Britain?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Life springs from death and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations.... They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools, they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”
—Patrick Henry Pearse (1879–1916)