The John Temple of this list was probably of Lord Palmerston’s lineage. The Palmers of the list, too, doubtless belonged to the family which almost monopolises the Mercers’ Company—Gresham’s trustees; and so Sir Roundell Palmer, the Solicitor-General, must not desert his duty. Nor will he have forgotten his own labour of love in Gresham’s lecture-room, when he helped his relative, Professor Palmer, to do justice to his charge.
Earl Russell will not, on this occasion, refuse his powerful aid to the improvement of the citizens of London, so often the defenders of liberty, and the advocates of science. The City has indefeasible claims upon Earl Russell’s sympathies—if for nothing more—for the sad sacrifice of his great relative Lord William, led, from his prison in the Tower, through the heart of the city to his scaffold in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, in order to crush the spirit of a people deeply attached to the house of Bedford.
Finally, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Gladstone, will readily part with the large proceeds of the Gresham Charity-estate, which, by all the calls of conscience, and the kindred rules of equity, belong to an object which he, of all men, the most approves—the liberal instruction of our youth.
The Harveys of the list are of a honoured stock. They are near kinsmen to Dr. William Harvey, famous in medical history as the discoverer of the circulation of the blood. He passed many of the last years of his eventful life with his brother Eliab, the merchant of London, who possessed “noble feats, and at least 3000l. a year,” says Aubrey. In those days the physicians, with their College in Warwick Lane, may be held to have been citizens. It was at the Royal Exchange that Drs. Mead and Ratcliffe fought their well-known duel.
Three original copies of the list of 1677 are known. One is in the Bodleian library; one in the Manchester Free Library, bought for 5l., (from this, owing to the kindness of R. W. Smiles, Esq., the Librarian, the present reprint has been made); one was sold at the sale of the Rev. Mr. Hunter’s library for 9l., although imperfect.
The volume—here reproduced as almost a fac-simile—is a curious little precursor of the London Directory, grown from its first edition of 1732 in 300 pages, to the huge volume, the Post Office Directory of the present day.
In the Lambeth Library there is such a list in manuscript of thirty years earlier date. It is a list of all the inhabitants of London liable to pay tithes, with the amounts due from each.
During the progress of this little volume through the press a most interesting fact relative to the history of trade has come to light. It appears from an old pamphlet that an “Office of Addresses” was started as early as 1650, by Henry Robinson, a well known writer on matters of commerce and finance during the commonwealth period. The ideas of this worthy are so advanced and sound that it is more than probable that Sir William Petty, who soon after began to write upon these subjects, was indebted to him for some of his liberal views with regard to the extension of trade. Henry Robinson’s “Office in Threadneedle Street, over against the Castle Tavern, close to the Old Exchange in London,” comes out with a business-like precision in the very advertisement, that promises well for his work—the keeping particular registers of all manner of addresses. Then follows a catalogue of subjects of inquiry, so copious and so curious as to be a new proof that there is almost nothing new under the sun! Sixpence was the fee, and for this small sum answers to all sorts of questions connected with business could be obtained. The whereabouts of merchants, the arrivals or departures of ships, the current price of certain commodities, were all to be ascertained by visiting this ancient Inquiry Office—the crude off-shoot of a commerce struggling to develope itself, and answering for a time the purposes of a broker’s office, the Stock-Exchange, and the modern newspaper teeming with trade advertisements.