Today in 1579 Thomas Gresham died. I’m actually working on an episode about him right now. He was a merchant and financier. He founded the Royal Exchange in London, and he served four Tudor monarchs. Initially, he was an agent for Henry VIII in the Low Countries, but he really came to prominence in 1551 when he stepped in to save the value of the pound allowing Edward VI to pay off almost all of his debts in two years. He served Mary using his skills at negotiating loans, smuggling money, and foreign goods.
When he died, 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. And so, Gresham College, the first institution of higher learning in London, came to be established in 1597.
That’s your Tudor Minute for today. Remember you can dive deeper into life in 16th-century England through the Renaissance English History Podcast at englandcast.com.
Suggested link:
Episode 094: Gresham, The Royal Exchange, and England’s First Mall
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, one of the longest running indie history podcasts, going since 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. She writes books, created the original Tudor Planner (a yearly diary filled with Tudor history) and in 2019 created the world's first Tudorcon (you can "attend" online this year!). She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.