These [usurious money-lenders] are the boars that plough up whole acres, nay, whole fields, of gentlemen’s lands with their snouts; these are swine that eat up whole orchards, and these are they whose fiery consciences drink up whole fish-pools at a draught. . . . It is this that makes Newmarket Heath and Royston Downs about Christmas-time so full of highwaymen that poor country people cannot pass quietly to their cottages, but some gentleman will borrow all the money they have – only, indeed, they will make them take their bonds.1

William Fennor

Notes

• they will make them take their bonds: there is a pun here. The highwaymen make their victims take ‘bonds’, in the shape of the bindings with which they tie them up. People who borrow money from moneylenders also leave their bonds behind them: these are the legal documents in which they commit themselves to repay what they owe.  [return]