Meekly beseecheth your good and gracious lordship your continual orator, Henry Wakyngknyght, goldsmith, tenderly to consider that whereas he, by the Mayor's commandment of London, caused by the subtle suggestion of the Wardens of the Craft of Goldsmiths of London, now late is imprisoned within the Counter in Bread Street, no cause laid against him but only that he is a stranger born, occupying his craft in London, so utterly intending to keep him still in prison for ever to his utter destruction and undoing--howbeit your said orator occupieth not his said craft openly in shops but privily, in no derogation of any franchise or custom of the goldsmiths of London--without your gracious lordship to him be shewed in this behalf. Wherefore please it your said gracious lordship, the premises considered, and also the holy time of Easter now coming, to grant unto your said orator a _corpus cum causa_ directed to the Mayor and Sheriffs of London, commanding them by the same to bring up the body of the said Henry with the cause of his arrest before your lordship into the King's Chancery at a certain day by your lordship to be limited, there to answer in the premises as reason and conscience shall require, for the love of God and in way of charity. [_Endorsed._] Before the lord the King in his Chancery on Monday next, to wit, 23 March. 36. PETITION AGAINST USURY [_Parliament Roll_, 50 _Edward_ III, _No. 158_], 1376. Further, the commons of the land pray that whereas the horrible vice of usury is so spread abroad and used throughout the land that the virtue of charity, without which none can be saved, is wellnigh wholly perished, whereby, as is known too well, a great number of good men have been undone and brought to great poverty: Please it, to the honour of God, to establish in this present Parliament that the ordinance[244] made in the city of London for a remedy of the same, well considered and corrected by your wise council and likewise by the bishop of the same city, be speedily put into execution, without doing favour to any, against every person, of whatsoever condition he be, who shall be hereafter attainted as principal or receiver or broker of such false bargains. And that all the Mayors and Bailiffs of cities and boroughs throughout the realm have the same power to punish all those who shall be attainted of this falsity within their bailiwicks according to the form of the articles comprehended in the same ordinance. And that the same ordinance be kept throughout all the realm, within franchises and without. Answer.--Let the law of old used run herein [Footnote 244: Ordinance dated 1363. _See_ Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Mediæval Times_, p. 361 _n._] 37. ACTION UPON USURY [_Early Chancery Proceedings_, 64, 291],[245] _c._ 1480. To the right reverend father in God, the Bishop of Lincoln and Chancellor of England.