Definition
An obsolete term from old English law meaning usury — that is, the unlawful or excessive charging of interest on a loan. The word appears in medieval legal records and is not used in modern practice. Its significance is purely historical, encountered only in the analysis of pre-modern English statutes, parliamentary rolls, and ecclesiastical or common law materials concerning moneylending.
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Common Confusion
SCHETES should not be confused with the Latin term usura or the English word usury, though all three denote the same underlying concept. The distinction that matters for researchers is terminological, not substantive: schetes is a vernacular or hybrid form appearing in specific medieval documentary contexts (notably parliamentary rolls), while usura predominates in formal legal Latin of the same period. Encountering schetes in a source while searching for usury doctrine requires recognition that these labels describe the same legal wrong under a different name.
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Why It Matters in Research
The primary research value of this entry is recognition. A researcher working through medieval English parliamentary records, plea rolls, or chronicles may encounter schetes without any cross-reference to the usury doctrine they are actually studying. Burrill's citation to Rot. Parl. 14 Ric. II (the Rotuli Parliamentorum, the rolls of Parliament, under Richard II, late fourteenth century) locates the term precisely in late medieval English statutory and legislative history. Researchers tracing the evolution of usury law in England — from canonical prohibitions through common law treatment to eventual statutory regulation — should flag schetes as a period marker indicating pre-fifteenth century English sources.
The term does not appear in modern legal databases under keyword searches for usury, interest, or moneylending. Any full-text search of digitized parliamentary rolls or Year Books that returns schetes is pointing to usury-related material. Researchers should treat it as a subject heading redirect, not a separate doctrine.
No jurisdictional variation is relevant. The term belongs entirely to medieval English legal history and has no American, Commonwealth, or civil law counterpart.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries are in agreement: schetes means usury. Black's (1st and 2nd editions) provide nothing beyond that bare equivalence, citing Cowell — a reference to John Cowell's Interpreter (1607), an early English legal dictionary that served as a primary bridge between medieval Latin and Anglo-Saxon legal vocabulary and later common law usage. Burrill adds the specific documentary anchor of Rot. Parl. 14 Ric. II, which is the more useful citation for research purposes, as it points to an identifiable primary source rather than a later lexicographer.
None of the three dictionaries elaborate on the usury doctrine itself under this heading, nor do they explain the linguistic origin or the scope of the term's use. Cowell's Interpreter is the earliest systematic source and the likely origin of the entry's transmission through subsequent legal dictionaries. Researchers needing the substantive law of usury in medieval and early modern England must look elsewhere — this term is a lexical signpost, not a doctrinal exposition.
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