Everything about Thomas Gresham totally explained
Sir
Thomas Gresham (c. 1519 –
21 November,
1579) was an English
merchant and
financier who worked for King
Edward VI of England and for Edward's half-sister Queen
Elizabeth I of England.
Family and Childhood
Born in
London and descended from an old
Norfolk family, Gresham was one of two sons and two daughters of Sir
Richard Gresham, a leading London merchant, who for some time held the office of
Lord Mayor, and who for his services as agent of
Henry VIII in negotiating loans with foreign merchants received the honour of
knighthood. Though his father intended him to follow his own profession, he nevertheless sent him for some time to
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, but no information survives as to the duration of his residence. Either before or after this he became apprentice to his uncle
Sir John Gresham, also a merchant, who founded
Gresham's School in
Holt, Norfolk in 1555: we've his own testimony that he served an apprenticeship of eight years.
Agent in the Low Countries
In 1543 the
Mercers Company admitted the 24-year-old Gresham as a
liveryman, and in the same year he went to the
Low Countries, where, either on his own account or on that of his father or uncle, he both carried on business as a merchant and acted in various matters as an agent for King Henry VIII. In 1544 he married Anne Fernley, the widow of William Read, a London merchant, but he still continued to reside principally in the Low Countries, having his headquarters at
Antwerp in present-day
Belgium, where he played the market skilfully.
Financial Wizard
Rescue of the pound
When in 1551 the mismanagement of Sir
William Dansell, king's merchant in the Low Countries, had brought the English government into great financial embarrassment, the authorities called in Gresham to give his advice, and then chose him to carry out his own proposals. He called for the adoption of various methods — highly ingenious, but quite arbitrary and unfair — for raising the value of the
pound sterling on the
bourse of Antwerp, and this proved so successful that in a few years King
Edward VI discharged almost all of his debts. The government sought Gresham's advice in all their money difficulties, and also frequently employed him in various diplomatic missions. He had no stated salary, but in reward of his services received from King Edward various grants of lands, the annual value of which at that time amounted ultimately to about 400
pounds a year.
Indispensable services to the crown
On the accession of Queen
Mary in 1553 Gresham went out of favour for a short time, and Alderman William Dauntsey displaced him in his post. But Dauntsey's financial operations proved not very successful and Gresham was soon re-instated; and as he professed his zealous desire to serve the Queen, and manifested great adroitness both in negotiating loans and in smuggling money, arms and foreign goods, not only were his services retained throughout her reign (1553 - 1558), but besides his salary of twenty shillings
per diem he received grants of church lands to the yearly value of 200 pounds. Under Queen Elizabeth (reigned 1558 - 1603), besides continuing in his post as financial agent of the crown, Gresham acted temporarily as ambassador at the court of the duchess of
Parma, receiving a knighthood in 1559 prior to his departure. The unsettled times preceding the
Dutch Revolt compelled him to leave Antwerp on
10 March 1567; but, though he spent the remainder of his life in London, he continued his business as merchant and financial agent of the government in much the same way as formerly. Overall he made himself one of the richest men in England.
Queen Elizabeth also found Gresham useful in a great variety of other ways, including acting as jailer to
Lady Mary Grey (sister of
Lady Jane Grey), who, as a punishment for marrying Thomas Keys the sergeant porter, remained a prisoner in his house from June 1569 to the end of 1572.
He served as her Royal Factor.
Foundation of the Royal Exchange
In 1565 Gresham made a proposal to the court of aldermen of London to build at his own expense a bourse or exchange — what became the
Royal Exchange, modelled on the Antwerp
bourse — on condition that they purchased for this purpose a piece of suitable ground. In this proposal he seems to have had an eye to his own interest as well as to the general good of the merchants, for by a yearly rental of 700 obtained for the shops in the upper part of the building he received a sufficient return for his trouble and expense.
The foundation of the Royal Exchange is the background of
Thomas Heywood's play:
If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody part 2, in which a Lord extols the quality of the building when asked if he's ever seen "a goodlier frame":
"Not in my life; yet I've been in Venice,
In the Rialto there, called Saint Mark's;
'Tis but a bauble, if compared to this.
The nearest, that which most resembles this,
Is the great Burse in Antwerp, yet no comparable
Either in height or wildeness, the fair cellarage,
Or goodly shops above. Oh my Lord Mayor,
This Gresham hath much graced your city, London;
His fame will long outlive him.
Death
Gresham died suddenly, apparently of
apoplexy, on
21 November 1579. His only son predeceased him, and his illegitimate daughter Anne, whom he married to
Sir Nathaniel Bacon, brother of
Francis Bacon.
Bequest for the foundation of Gresham College
Apart from some small sums to various charities, Gresham bequeathed the bulk of his property (consisting of estates in
London and around
England giving an income of more than 2,300 pounds a year) to his widow and her heirs, with the stipulation that after her death his own house in Bishopsgate Street and the rents from the
Royal Exchange should be vested in the
Corporation of London and the
Mercers Company, for the purpose of instituting a
college in which seven professors should read lectures, one each day of the week, in
astronomy,
geometry,
physic,
law,
divinity,
rhetoric and music. Thus,
Gresham College, the first institution of higher learning in London, came to be established in 1597.
Further Information
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