It was not unlawful to reserve a penalty for non- payment of a debt, or rent, and if default was made, such penalty might be recovered by legal means; and this kind of usury is considered by the statute as lawful, the statute having provided that the " prin- cipal debt with the usury which was before the death of his ancestor should not remain." And the statute ' Co. Lit, 246. '^ Coke on Lit, 247. ^ Ord on Usury, p. 12.
does not fix any penalty upon those who act contrary • to it, nor does it contain any of those terms of op- probrium, with which usury was described by the Legislature and Judges, when they contemplated it in its legal sense. On the contrary, usury, in its strict legal sense, was always considered as unlawful; and the payment of the usury, or interest, could not be enforced by a legal remedy ; ^ for even at common law, an action on an usurious contract could not be supported.
In the following reign ' usury was made an in- dictable offence before the Justices in Eyre, whose duty it also was to discover the goods of usurers, and declare their forfeiture ; and Bracton ' details some of the horrors inflicted upon the unfortunate usurer, under this system, in his time.
Probably at no period in the History of Usury in England was so much oppression and cruelty jaractised, as at the time of which we speak. The scandalous and open extortion daily committed by usurers brought upon them the bitterest execrations of the people; their rapacity seemed insatiable, and they enforced their claims with inflexible rigor and boldness, sparing none from the extreme penalty. Even the sacred person of one of the dignitaries of the church was not exempt from molestation. " I am dragged (said Peter of Blois, Archdeacon of Bath, 1 2 RoUe's, Abr., 801. » Edward I., A. D. 1272. ' Henry de Bracton, a noted English Law