In 1694 William and Mary II entered into a contract to secure a permanent loan and pledged the kingdom to pay interest on it forever.
The loan marked the turning point in the popular mind with regard to usury. As it was approved in their necessity by the king and queen at the head of the Protestant world, ecclesiastics began to shift their ground and to apologize for, and excuse, that which had been formerly unequivocably condemned. As the crown was the head of both the church and the state, the condemnation of usury seemed tinged both with disloyalty and heresy. The courts too began to modify their decisions to bring them into harmony with the action of the crown.
The change in the usury laws were not made by enactments of Parliament, but by the decisions of courts. The precedents were gradually accumulated and the statutes were merely made to conform to them.