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 of people 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