The laws against usury

King Offa ruled the Kingdom of Mercia,* which was bounded by the rivers Trent and Mersey in the north, the Thames Valley in the south, Wales in the west and East Anglia and Essex in the east from 757 to 791 AD. It was one of the seven autonomous kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy.

Offa was a wise and able administrator and a kind-hearted leader. He established the first monetary system in England. On account of the scarcity of gold he used silver for coinage and as a store of wealth. The standard unit of exchange was a pound of silver divided into 240 pennies. The pennies were stamped with a star (Old English stearra), from which the word sterling is derived. In 787 King Offa introduced a statute prohibiting usury, viz. the charging of interest on money lent, a concept which dates back to the pagan era. The laws against usury were further entrenched by King Alfred (865-99), who directed that the property of usurers be forfeited, while in 1050 Edward the Confessor (1042-66) decreed not only forfeiture, but that a usurer be declared an outlaw and be banished for life.

*Latinisation of Mierce.

Stephen Goodson
History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind