5.
In 1546, a law was made for fixing the interest of money at ten per cent.; the first legal interest known in England.

Formerly all loans of that nature were regarded as usurious.

The preamble of this very law treats the interest of money as illegal and criminal; and the prejudices still remained so strong, that the law permitting interest was repealed in the following reign.
This reign, as well as many of the foregoing and even subsequent reigns, abounds with monopolizing laws, confining particular manufactures to particular towns, or excluding the open country in general.[*] There remain still too many traces of similar absurdities.

In the subsequent reign, the corporations which had been opened by a former law, and obliged to admit tradesmen of different kinds, were again shut up by act of parliament; and every one was prohibited from exercising any trade who was not of the corporation.[**] Henry, as he possessed himself some talent for letters, was an encourager of them in others.

He founded Trinity College in Cambridge, and gave it ample endowments.