STOCK-EXCHANGE CELEBRITIES.

sisting of 500 shareholders, and the shares were originally of £50 each, but are now of uncertain amount, the last addition being a call of £25 per share, made for the construction of the new edifice. The affairs of this company are conducted under a cumbersome and restrictive deed of settlement, by nine "managers," elected for life by the shareholders, no election taking place till there are four vacancies. The members or subscribers, however, entirely conduct their own affairs by a committee of thirty of their own body. Neither members nor committee are elected for more than one year.

The number of members at present exceeds 2,000. The subscription is paid to the "managers," who liquidate all expenses, and adopt alterations in the building, upon the representations of the committee of the members, or even on the application

of the subscribers. The shares, as mentioned before, amount in number to about 4,000; and the whole, with scarcely an exception, are held by the members themselves. No one person is allowed. to hold, directly or indirectly, more than ten.

The present building stands in the centre of the block of buildings fronting Bartholomew Lane, Threadneedle Street, Old Broad Street, and Throgmorton Street. The principal entrance is from Bartholomew Lane through Capel Court. There are also three entrances from Throgmorton Street, and one from Threadneedle Street. The area of the new house is about 75 square yards, and it would contain i, 100 or 1,200 members. There are, however, as a rule, considerably less than that number present. The site is very irregular, and has enforced some peculiar construction in covering it. into which iron enters largely.

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The Greshams-Important Negotiations-Building of the Old Exchange-Queen Elizabeth visits it-Its Milliners' Shops-A Resort for IdlersAccess of Nuisances-The various Walks in the Exchange-Shakespeare's Visits to it-Precautions against Fire -Lady Gresham and the Council-The "Eye of London"-Contemporary Allusions-The Royal Exchange during the Plague and the Great Fire-Wren's Design for a New Royal Exchange-The Plan which was ultimately accepted-Addison and Steele upon the Exchange-The Shops of the Second Exchange.

In the year 1563 Sir Thomas Gresham, a munifi- | gifts of Church lands. Sir Richard died at Bethnal cent merchant of Lombard Street, who traded largely with Antwerp, carrying out a scheme of his father, offered the City to erect a Bourse at his own expense, if they would provide a suitable plot of ground; the great merchant's local pride having been hurt at seeing Antwerp provided with a stately Exchange, and London without one.

A short sketch of the Gresham family is here necessary, to enable us to understand the antecedents of this great benefactor of London. The family derived its name from Gresham, a little village in Norfolk; and one of the early Greshams appears to have been clerk to Sir William Paston, a judge. The family afterwards removed to Holt, near the sea. John Gresham married an heiress, by whom he had four sons, William, Thomas, Richard, and John. Thomas became Chancellor of Lichfield, the other three brothers turned merchants, and two of them were knighted by Henry VIII. Sir Richard, the father of Sir Thomas Gresham, was an eminent London merchant, elected Lord Mayor in 1537. Being a trusty foreign agent of Henry VII, and a friend of Cromwell and Wolsey, he received from the king five several

Green, 1548-9, and was buried in the church of St. Lawrence Jewry. Thomas Gresham was sent to Gonville College, Cambridge, and apprenticed probably before that to his uncle Sir John, a Levant merchant, for eight years. In 1543 we find the young merchant applying to Margaret, Regent of the Low Countries, for leave to export gunpowder to England for King Henry, who was then preparing for his attack on France, and the siege of Boulogne. In 1554 Gresham married the daughter of a Suffolk gentleman, and widow of a London mercer. By her he had several children, none of whom, however, reached maturity.

The

It was in 1551 or 1552 that Gresham's real fortune commenced, by his appointment as king's merchant factor, or agent, at Antwerp, to raise private loans from German and Low Country merchants, to meet the royal necessities, and to keep the privy council informed in the local news. wise factor borrowed in his own name, and soon raised the exchange from 16s. Flemish for the pound sterling to 225., at which rate he discharged all the king's debts, and made money plentiful. He says, in a letter to the Duke of Northumberland, that

he hoped in one year to save England £20,000. It being forbidden to export further from Antwerp, Gresham had to resort to various stratagems, and in 1553 (Queen Mary) we find him writing to the Privy Council, proposing to send £200 (in heavy Spanish rials), in bags of pepper, four at a time, and the English ambassador at Brussels was to bring over with him £20,000 or £30,000, but he afterwards changed his mind, and sent the money packed up in bales with suits of armour and £3,000 in each, rewarding the searcher at Gravelines with new year presents of black velvet and black cloth. About the time of the Queen's marriage to Philip, Gresham went to Spain, to start from Puerto Real fifty cases, each containing 22,000 Spanish ducats. All the time Gresham resided at Antwerp, carrying out these sagacious and important negotiations, he was rewarded with the paltry remuneration of £1 a day, of which we often find him seriously complaining. It was in Antwerp, that vast centre of commerce, that Gresham must have gained that great knowledge of business by which he afterwards enriched himself. Antwerp exported to England at this time, says Dean Burgon, in his excellent life of Gresham, almost every article of luxury required by English people.

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minded the Queen in after years, when he had to complain to his friend Cecil that the Marquis of Winchester had tried to injure him with the Queen.

Gresham soon resumed his visits to Flanders, to procure money, and send over powder, armour, and weapons. He was present at the funeral of Charles V., seems to have foreseen the coming troubles in the Low Countries, and to have been a man of integrity and foresight.

The death of Gresham's only son Richard, in the year 1564, was the cause, Mr. Burgon thinks, of Gresham's determining to devote his money to the benefit of his fellow-citizens. Lombard Street had long become too small for the business of London. Men of business were exposed there to all weathers, and had to crowd into small shops, or jostle under the pent-houses. As early as 1534 or 1535 the citizens had deliberated in common council on the necessity of a new place of resort, and Leadenhall Street had been proposed. In the year 1565 certain houses in Cornhill, in the ward of Broad Street, and three alleys-Swan Alley, Cornhill; New Alley, Cornhill, near St. Bartholomew's Lane; and St. Christopher's Alley, comprising in all fourscore householders-were purchased for £3,737 6s. 6d., and the materials sold for £478. The amount was subscribed for in small sums by about 750

The

Later in Queen Mary's reign Gresham was frequently displaced by rivals. He made trips to Eng-citizens, the Ironmongers' Company giving £75. land, sharing largely in the dealings of the Mercers' Company, of which he was a member, and shipping vast quantities of cloth to sell to the Italian merchants at Antwerp, in exchange for silks. A few years later the Mercers are described as sending forth, twice a year, a fleet of 50 or 60 ships, laden with cloth, for the Low Countries. Gresham is mentioned, in 1555, as presenting Queen Mary, as a new year's gift, with "a bolt of fine Holland," receiving in return a gilt jug, weighing 16 ounces. That the Queen considered Gresham a faithful and useful servant there can be no doubt, for she gave him, at different times, a priory, a rectory, and several manors and advowsons.

Gresham, like a prudent courtier, seems to have been one of the first persons of celebrity who visited Queen Elizabeth on her accession. She gave the wise merchant her hand to kiss, and told him that she would always keep one ear ready to hear him; "which," says Gresham, "made me a young man again, and caused me to enter on my present charge with heart and courage."

The young Queen also promised him on her faith that if he served her as well as he had done her brother Edward, and Queen Mary, her sister, she would give him as much land as ever they both had. Of this gracious promise Gresham re

The first brick was laid by Sir Thomas, June 7,
1566. A Flemish architect superintended the
sawing of the timber, at Gresham's estate at Rings-
hall, near Ipswich, and on Battisford Tye (common)
traces of the old sawpits can still be seen.
slates were bought at Dort, the wainscoting and
glass at Amsterdam, and other materials in Flanders.
The building, pushed on too fast for final solidity,
was slated in by November, 1567, and shortly after
finished. The Bourse, when erected, was thought
to resemble that of Antwerp, but there is also
reason to believe that Gresham's architect closely
followed the Bourse of Venice.

The new Bourse, Flemish in character, was a long four-storeyed building, with a high double balcony. A bell-tower, crowned by a huge grasshopper, stood on one side of the chief entrance. The bell in this tower summoned merchants to the spot at twelve o'clock at noon and six o'clock in the evening. A lofty Corinthian column, crested with a grasshopper, apparently stood outside the north entrance, overlooking the quadrangle. The brick building was afterwards stuccoed over, to imitate stone. Each corner of the building, and the peak of every dormer window, was crowned by a grasshopper. Within Gresham's Bourse were piazzas for wet weather, and the covered walks

were adorned with statues of English kings. A statue of Gresham stood near the north end of the western piazza. At the Great Fire of 1666 this statue alone remained there uninjured, as Pepys and Evelyn particularly record. The piazzas were supported by marble pillars, and above were 100 small shops. The vaults dug below, for merchandise, proved dark and damp, and were comparatively valueless. Hentzner, a German traveller who visited England in the year 1598, particularly mentions the stateliness of the building, the assemblage of different nations, and the quantities of merchandise.

on January 23, 1570, Queen Elizabeth came from Somerset House through Fleet Street past the north side of the Bourse to Sir Thomas Gresham's house in Bishopsgate Street, and there dined. After the banquet she entered the Bourse on the south side, viewed every part; especially she caused the building, by herald's trumpet, to be proclaimed 'the Royal Exchange,' so to be called from henceforth, and not otherwise."

Such was the vulgar opinion of Gresham's wealth, that Thomas Heywood, in his old play, If You know not Me, You know Nobody, makes Gresham crush an invaluable pearl into the wine-cup in

Many of the shops in the Bourse remained unlet which he drinks his queen's health

till Queen Elizabeth's visit, in 1570, which gave them a lustre that tended to make the new building fashionable. Gresham, anxious to have the Bourse worthy of such a visitor, went round twice in one day to all the shopkeepers in "the upper pawn," and offered them all the shops they would furnish and light up with wax rent free for a whole year. The result of this liberality was that in two years Gresham was able to raise the rent from 40s. a year to four marks, and a short time after to £4 10S. The milliners' shops at the Bourse, in Gresham's time, sold mousetraps, birdcages, shoeing-horns, lanthorns, and Jews' trumps. There were also sellers of armour, apothecaries, booksellers, goldsmiths, and glass-sellers; but the shops soon grew richer and more fashionable, so that in 1631 the editor of Stów says, "Unto which place,

(See page 501.)

"Here fifteen hundred pounds at one clap goes. Instead of sugar, Gresham drinks the pearl Unto his queen and mistress. Pledge it, lords!" The new Exchange, like the nave of St. Paul's, soon became a resort for idlers. In the Inquest Book of Cornhill Ward, 1574 (says Mr. Burgon), there is a presentment against the Exchange, because on Sundays and holidays great numbers of boys, children, and "young rogues," meet there, and shout and holloa, so that honest citizens cannot quietly walk there for their recreation, and the parishioners of St. Bartholomew could not hear the sermon. In 1590 we find certain women prosecuted for selling apples and oranges at the Exchange gate in Cornhill, and "amusing themselves in cursing and swearing, to the great annoyance and grief of the inhabitants and passers-by." In 1592 a tavern-keeper,

time. It was also seriously complained of that | pamphlet, and ranks with the moneyless loungers the bear-wards, Shakespeare's noisy neighbours in of St. Paul's :— Southwark, before special bull or bear baitings, used to parade before the Exchange, generally in business hours, and there make proclamation of their entertainments, which caused tumult, and drew together mobs. It was usual on these occasions to have a monkey riding on the bear's back, and several discordant minstrels fiddling, to give additional publicity to the coming festival.

No person frequenting the Bourse was allowed to wear any weapon, and in 1579 it was ordered that no one should walk in the Exchange after ten

"Though little coin thy purseless pockets line, Yet with great company thou'rt taken up; For often with Duke Humfrey thou dost dine, And often with Sir Thomas Gresham sup." Here, too, above all, the monarch of English poetry must have often paced, watching the Antonios and Shylocks of his day, the anxious wistful faces of the debtors or the embarrassed, and the greedy anger of the creditors. In the Bourse he may first have thought over to himself the beautiful lines in the "Merchant of Venice" (act i.), where