ABSTRACT
The eighteenth-century English commercial economy was almost entirely reliant upon the use of credit. As writers from Daniel Defoe to the modern era have described, it was not a system one entered voluntarily but a mandatory prerequisite of trade. However, credit in this era was remarkably insecure, being conducted informally and rarely with contracts more substantial than an oral promise “to pay”. This chapter uses contemporary discussions of credit and debt as well as the financial accounts of traders to explore the unstable economy of credit where the line between indebtedness and insolvency was both fine and precarious. Additionally, it evaluates the various legal routes for enforcing payment such as common law and bankruptcy, demonstrating that while debt imprisonment was far from a perfect system it was the least flawed option for the majority of creditors dealing with the intransigent and the unwilling.
