Jo McMurtry, Understanding Shakespeare’s England:  A Companion for the American Reader, pages 80-81

England, or for that matter western Europe, did not have in the sixteenth century banks of the sort we know today.  No central banks offered customers the convenience of savings plans or personal loans.  Banking functions were evolving in various parts of the economy, but one could not go to one place and conduct one’s financial business with the kind of assistance we know today. 

With regard to the ease with which monetary operations could take place, a considerable difference existed between large-scale and small-scale transactions.  A small businessman had no means of transferring money easily.  With no paper currency and no regular systems of credit, he had to carry around bags of coins.  A large trading company had more scope.  It might, for example, set up a system of agents and pay its accounts through bills of exchange, thus keeping the wheels of commerce turning.  Since these bills were drawn on a specific mercantile house, the necessary element of faith was easy to achieve. 

On this comparatively large scale, and particularly when the business was being done abroad, loans could be arranged, usually at a reasonable rate of interest because the borrower was not helpless and might seek better terms elsewhere.  Nations as well as companies were involved here.  The financial wizard Sir Thomas Gresham, for example, spent much of his career in Antwerp negotiating loans for the Tudor sovereigns. 

International finance owed a considerable amount of its growth to the Jewish moneylenders who in many countries of Europe had become an important part of the picture.  Holland particularly welcomed refugees fleeing persecution elsewhere, in contrast to England’s continuing medieval bias. 

The association between Jews and lending money on interest, or usury, had been mandated, in the view of many Englishmen, by the Bible itself, which appeared to say that Jews might charge interest from Christians and that Christians should not charge interest from each other.  Upon examination one finds that this interpretation depends on a somewhat twisted logic.  In Exodus 22:25 and Deuteronomy 23:19, Jews are forbidden to lend money ‘upon usury’ to fellow Jews but are allowed (in Deuteronomy) to enter such transactions with ‘strangers’—interpreted as Christians, although an Old Testament text could hardly be specific about this particular type of stranger.  Neither passage goes into the question of what kind of loans strangers are allowed to make to each other. 

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Gradually, during the sixteenth century, England’s official attitude toward the charging of interest, whether by Jews or Christians, shifted.  The view of capital as a commodity like any other—warehouse space, for example—to be made available for lease on certain terms, began to win practical acceptance, and the notion that money might ‘breed’ other money no longer seemed an offense against nature.  Between 1545 and 1552, Parliament allowed certain types of interest-bearing loans to be made, provided the interest charged was no higher than ten percent.  (This stipulation referred to transactions within England.  Loans arranged in foreign countries, even if English merchants or the English government were involved, had never come under Parliament’s authority.)  The ban on usury was renewed in 1552 but was finally lifted in 1571, the same year that Gresham opened the London Royal Exchange—a handsome, four-story building modeled after the bourse at Antwerp, with a central court surrounded by arcaded walkways where merchants might discuss business matters without having to stand in the rain.  The building served as a quite practical symbol of England’s increasing prominence in the world’s economy.

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Here are a couple of paragraphs from McMurtry on Jews, pages 146-47:

In theory, at least, the Elizabethans did not know any Jews, for Jews had been banned from England since the late thirteenth century.  There was, nevertheless, a small Jewish community in London, temporary residents in that the authorities could throw them out at any time.  They were not part of the general environment, and the typical Englishman had neither a personal acquaintance with individual Jews nor any detailed knowledge of Jewish culture.  Headline cases, so to speak, such as the trial and execution of Roderigo Lopez, a physician to Queen Elizabeth who was accused of plotting to poison her, simply confirmed the stereotype.

The stereotype was lurid indeed.  Jews, to begin with, were already barred from spiritual salvation by their ancestors' having preferred Barabbas to Christ when Pilate offered to free one or the other (Matthew 27:21); there was thus no hope for them and they could be considered in a sense nonhuman.  In the popular imagination, Jews spent most of their time kidnapping Christian children for sacrifice in secret rites.  During leisure moments, they arranged loans at high interest and extorted payments from helpless victims.  Each possessed piles of ill-gotten wealth which it behooved honest Christians to take away from them.  And each usually possessed, as well, a beautiful daughter who wanted nothing more than to be rescued from her cultural fate by some handsome Christian.