——­Here lay

A manor bound fast in a skin of parchment,
The wax continuing hard, the acres melting;
Here a sure deed of gift for a market-town,
If not redeem’d this day, which is not in
The unthrift’s power; there being scarce one shire
In Wales or England, where my monies are not
Lent out at usury, the certain hook
To draw in more. 

                                                MASSINGER’S City Madam.

This genius of thirty per cent. first had proved the decided vigour of his mind, by his enthusiastic devotion to his law-studies:  deprived of the leisure for study through his busy day, he stole the hours from his late nights and his early mornings; and without the means to procure a law-library, he invented a method to possess one without the cost; as far as he learned, he taught, and by publishing some useful tracts on temporary occasions, he was enabled to purchase a library.  He appears never to have read a book without its furnishing him with some new practical design, and he probably studied too much for his own particular advantage.  Such devoted studies was the way to become a lord-chancellor; but the science of the law was here subordinate to that of a money-trader.

When yet but a clerk to the Clerk in the Counter, frequent opportunities occurred which Audley knew how to improve.  He became a money-trader as he had become a law-writer, and the fears and follies of mankind were to furnish him with a trading capital.  The fertility of his genius appeared in expedients and in quick contrivances.  He was sure to be the friend of all men falling out.  He took a deep concern in the affairs of his master’s clients, and often much more than they were aware of.  No man so ready at procuring bail or compounding debts.  This was a considerable traffic then, as now.  They hired themselves out for bail, swore what was required, and contrived to give false addresses, which is now called leg-bail.  They dressed themselves out for the occasion; a great seal-ring flamed on the finger, which, however, was pure copper gilt, and they often assumed the name of some person of good credit.  Savings, and small presents for gratuitous opinions, often afterwards discovered to be very fallacious ones, enabled him to purchase annuities of easy landowners, with their treble amount secured on their estates.  The improvident owners, or the careless heirs, were soon entangled in the usurer’s nets; and, after the receipt of a few years, the annuity, by some latent quibble, or some irregularity in the payments, usually ended in Audley’s obtaining the treble forfeiture.  He could at all times out-knave a knave.  One of these incidents has been preserved.  A draper, of no honest reputation, being arrested by a merchant for a debt of L200, Audley bought the debt at L40, for which the draper immediately offered him L50.  But Audley would not consent, unless the draper indulged a sudden whim of his own:  this was a formal contract, that the draper should pay within twenty years, upon twenty certain days, a penny doubled.  A knave, in haste to sign, is no calculator; and, as the contemporary dramatist describes one of the arts of those citizens, one part of whose business was