The Royal Exchange became a place of recreation as well as of business. The citizens walked here on the evenings of Sundays and Holy days, where the City waits played from 7 P.M. till 8 P.M. up to the Feast of Pentecost, then they played from 8 P.M. till 9 P.M. until Michaelmas. In 1576 it was ordered that no games of football should be played within the Royal Exchange.
SIR THOMAS GRESHAM (1519(?)–1579)
The Exchange remained the property of Sir Thomas Gresham until his death, when he bequeathed the building together with his mansion in Broad Street, after the death of his wife, on certain conditions, to the City and the Mercers’ Company in trust, viz.:—
“The Citizens, for their Moiety of the said Edifice, are from Time to Time to appoint four Persons duly qualified to read Lectures of Divinity, Astronomy, Musick, and Geometry, in his Mansion-house [afterwards Gresham College], and to pay annually to each of the said Lecturers a Salary or Stipend of fifty Pounds. And also to pay yearly to his eight Alms-People in Broad-Street (whom the Mayor and Citizens have likewise the Power of chusing) the sum of six Pounds thirteen Shillings and four Pence each. And besides, to pay annually to the Prisons of Newgate, Ludgate, Kings-Bench, Marshalsey, and Wood-Street Compter, the Sum of ten Pounds each.
And the Mercers, for their Half, are, from Time to Time, to chuse three persons well accomplished, to read Lectures of Law, Physick, and Rhetorick, in the aforesaid Mansion-House called Gresham-College, with the same salaries to each of the Lecturers as to the above-mentioned. The said Company of Mercers are likewise obliged to pay the sum of one hundred Pounds per Ann. for four quarterly Dinners to be provided at their Hall, for the Entertainment of the whole Company; and also to pay to Christ’s, St. Bartholomews, the Spital, Bethlehem, and St. Thomas’s Hospitals, and the Poultry Compter, the Sum of ten Pounds per Ann. each.” (Maitland, vol. i. pp. 256–257.)
The reversion fell in on the death of Lady Gresham in 1596, when the City and the Company took steps to carry out the Trust. Gresham House became Gresham College, and so continued until the year 1767, when the Crown took over the building for an Excise office, giving the City £500 a year perpetual annuity. For some time the lectures ceased; when they were renewed they were delivered in the City of London School until the building of the present Gresham College in Basinghall Street.
We have become accustomed to consider the enterprise and restless spirit of adventure which makes the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries so full of interest, as finding their sole field in the New World and in voyages such as those of Drake and Cavendish; and in heroes such as Frobisher, Gilbert, and Raleigh. We forget the expeditions of Willoughby and Burroughs to find a north-east passage; the courage of Chancellor, who opened up trade with Russia; the travels of Jenkinson, who first crossed Russia and sailed over the Caspian Sea; the brave Captains of the Levant Company, who fought their way through the Barbary corsairs and the galleys of Spain; those faithful servants of the same Company, Newbery, Fitch, and Leedes, who discovered the long-forgotten overland route to India; the voyages of the first ships of the East India Company in seas unknown, among a people strange and suspicious; the persistent attempts to open up the African trade; we have forgotten—if we ever learned—how, all over the world, along the shores of the Baltic, in Arctic seas, round the Cape of Good Hope, in the Far East, in North-West America and in the West Indies, the sails of England carried the gallant adventurers whose very numbers make their names difficult to be remembered; across the unknown plains of Russia, across the Great Syrian desert, unvisited by Christians since the days of Bohemond and Baldwin, down the Great River, even the river Euphrates; in the Courts of the Great Mogul, in Malay land, among the Red Indians of North America,—everywhere, visible to all, were found the men of the Western Queen, as great a name to the Czar of Muscovy as to Philip of Spain.
Christ’s Hospital.