Thomas Gresham

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 merchant mercer and Lord Mayor of London, who was knighted by King Henry VIII for negotiating favourable loans with foreign merchants.[1]

Gresham was educated at St Paul's School. After that, although his father wanted Thomas to become a merchant, Sir Richard first sent him to university at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.[2] He was concurrently apprenticed in the Mercers' Company to his uncle Sir John Gresham, founder of Gresham's School, while he was still at Cambridge.

In 1543 the Mercers' Company admitted the 24-year-old Gresham as a liveryman, and later that year he left England for the Low Countries, where, either on his own account or that of his father or uncle, he carried on business as a merchant whilst acting in various matters as agent for King Henry VIII. In 1544 he married Anne Ferneley, widow of the London merchant Sir William Read, but maintained residence principally in the Low Countries, basing his headquarters at Antwerp[1] in present-day Belgium (then the Spanish Netherlands), where he became renowned for his adept market-play.

In 1544 he married Anne Ferneley, widow of Sir William Read, a London merchant. By his wife he had an only son who predeceased him. He also had an illegitimate daughter who married Sir Nathaniel Bacon (c. 1546–1622), half-brother of Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, becoming Anne, Lady Bacon.

Gresham died suddenly, apparently of apoplexy, on 21 November 1579 and was buried at St Helen's Church, Bishopsgate in the City of London.[4]

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.[1] Thus, Gresham College, the first institution of higher learning in London, came to be established in 1597.

Gresham's law (stated simply as: "Bad money drives out good") takes its name from him (although others, including the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, had recognised the concept for years) because he urged Queen Elizabeth to restore the debased currency of England. However, Sir Thomas never formulated anything like Gresham's Law, which was the 1857 conception of Henry Dunning Macleod, an economist with a knack for reading into a text that which was not written.[5]

The Gresham family crest is: On a Mount Vert a Grasshopper Or [6] (a golden grasshopper on a green mound); it is displayed by Gresham College, which he founded, and also forms the weathervane on the Royal Exchange in the City of London, also founded by him in 1565. The Faneuil Hall at Boston, Massachusetts, has also borrowed this heraldic device. The Gresham coat of arms is blazoned: Argent, a Chevron Erminés between three Mullets pierced Sable.[7]

According to ancient legend, the founder of the family, Roger de Gresham, was a foundling abandoned as a new-born baby among long grass in Norfolk during the 13th century and found there by a woman whose attention was drawn to the child by a grasshopper. Although a beautiful story, it is more likely that the grasshopper is simply a canting heraldic crest playing on the sound "grassh-" and "Gresh-". The Gresham family uses as its motto Fiat Voluntas Tua ('Thy will be done').[8]

• Gresham's Law;
• The Royal Exchange, which he founded in 1565, was opened in 1571;
• Gresham College, funded by the bequest of his Will of 1571, was opened in 1597;
• Gresham Street in the City of London running east from St Martin's Le Grand near St Paul's Cathedral, past the Guildhall and the Bank of England is named in his memory;
• The Gresham Palace in Budapest is named after him;
• The Gresham Club in the City was also named in his honour;
• The Gresham Hotel, Dublin is indirectly named after Gresham. It was established in 1817 by another Thomas Gresham, who was given that name as he was a foundling abandoned on the steps of the Royal Exchange;
• Gresham Road, nearby Gresham's mansion at Hounslow: Osterley Park.

• Gresham appears as a background figure in a series of fictional mystery novels by the British author Valerie Anand writing under the pen-name of Fiona Buckley. The fictional heroine of the stories, Ursula Blanchard, lived in Antwerp with her first husband while he worked as one of Gresham's agents.
• Gresham also features as the central character of Herbert Strang's book On London River: A Story of the Days of Queen Elizabeth (Oxford University Press, 1936).

• 
  18th century engraving of Sir Thomas Gresham
• 
  Gresham's bust at
  Stowe School
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  Gresham's initials "TG" and date 1563 with his golden grasshopper emblem, serving as the sign of a bank[9] in Lombard Street, the historic centre of banking in the City of London
• 
  Sir Thomas & Lady Gresham's townhouse in Bishopsgate Street
• 
  Sir Thomas Gresham, portrait c. 1554 by Anthonis Mor
• 
  Dame Anne née Ferneley, wife of Sir Thomas Gresham. Portrait c. 1560 by Anthonis Mor
• 
  Intwood Hall, Gresham's Norfolk estate
• 
  Gresham arms:
  Argent a Chevron Erminés between three Mullets pierced Sable
• 
  Sir Thomas Gresham's merchant's mark as depicted in the 1544 portrait of him owned by the Mercers' Company. Also as illustrated in Elmhirst, 1959,[10] with more pronounced "heart shape", used by other marks of this type, e.g. the later HEICS mark

• List of multiple discoveries
• Titsey Place

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Gresham, Sir Thomas". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
• The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham by J.W. Burgon (London, 1839, new edition 1968)
• Sir Thomas Gresham (1518–1579) by F. R. Salter (Parsons, London, 1925)
• Baynes, T. S., ed. (1875–1889). "Sir Thomas Gresham" . Encyclopædia Britannica (9th ed.). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
• Welch, Charles (1890). "Gresham, Thomas" . In Stephen, Leslie; Lee, Sidney (eds.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 23. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
• Blanchard, Ian. "Gresham, Sir Thomas (c.1518–1579)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/11505. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• John William Burgon, The life and times of Sir Thomas Gresham comp. chiefly from his correspondence preserved in Her Majesty's state-paper office: including notices of many of his contemporaries. Published 1839 by R. Jennings in London . Volume I.
• John William Burgon The life and times of Sir Thomas Gresham Volume II.
• Knight, Charles (1845). The Life of Sir Thomas Gresham: Founder of the Royal Exchange. Charles Knight & Co.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Thomas Gresham.

• The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham (1839)
• "Gresham and Antwerp", Gresham College
• Magna Carta Ancestry, Douglas Richardson (2011)