Financial legislation demonstrates the advancing role of law in the later middle ages.

This book looks at laws prohibiting usury, forestalling and regrating and regulating prices in England during the reigns of the first three Edwards and Richard II (1272-1399). The laws had the potential to affect a vast number ofpeople and their everyday sales and loans, and represent an important aspect of the advancing role of law in the later middle ages; the author takes issue with established opinion, which seems as them as the product of `monkish superstition and civil tyranny' (in Blackstone's famous phrase), arguing that they are an evolving area of activity, characterised by experiment, compromise and interaction with other rule-making and rule-enforcing bodies. Dr GWEN SEABOURNE lectures in the School of Law, University of Bristol