I lerned among Lumbardes And Jewes a lesson, To weye pens with a peis, And pare the heaviest. Richard in ‘Richard the III.’ finely says— I’ll strive, with troubled thoughts, to take a nap, Lest leaden slumber peise me down to-morrow. (Act v. scene 3.) With the above, therefore, we must associate our ‘Tollers,’ once registered as ‘Bartholomew le Tollere’ or ‘Ralph le Toller,’ together with our ‘Tolemans’ and ‘Tolmans,’ they who took the King’s levy at fair and market—by the roadside and the wharf.[433] Piers Plowman, in a list of other decent folk, includes— Taillours and tynkers, And tollers in markettes, Masons and mynours, And many other crafts. Cocke Lorelle is not so complimentary. He says— Then come two false towlers in nexte, He set them by pykers (thieves) of the beste.[434] In concluding this chapter, and our survey of trade generally, it will be necessary to the completion thereof that we should say a word or two about the money trading of four hundred years ago or more. Banks, bank-notes, bills of exchange, drafts to order—all these are as familiar to the tongues of the nineteenth century as if the great car of commerce had ever gone along on such greased and comfortable wheels. But I need not say it is not so. Very little money in the present day is practically coin. Our banks have it all. It was different with our ancestors. As a rule it was stored up in some secret cupboard or chest. Hence it is, as I have shown, the trade of ‘le Coffer’ and the office of ‘le Cofferer’ are so much thrust before our notice in surveying mediæval records. Still, trading in money was largely carried on, so far, at any rate, as loans were concerned. The Jew, true to his national precedents, was then, I need not say, the pawnbroker of Europe, and as his disciple, the Lumbard soon bid fair to outstrip his master. Under the Plantagenet dynasty both found a prosperous field for their peculiar business in England, and, as I have elsewhere said, Lombard Street[435] to this day is a memorial of the settlement of the latter. In such uncertain and changeful times as these, kings, and in their train courtiers and nobles, soon learnt the art, not difficult in initiation, of pawning jewels and lands for coin. The Malvern Dreamer speaks familiarly of this— I have lent lordes And ladies my chaffare, And been their brocour after, And bought it myselve; Eschaunges and chevysaunces With such cheffare I dele.