History of Pawnbroking - Britain and Ireland

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.