Financier, born in London, UK. He studied at Cambridge, passed into the Mercers' Company, and in 1551 was employed as king's merchant at Antwerp. He was knighted in 1559, and was for a time ambassador at Brussels. An observation in economics is attributed to him (Gresham's law): if there are two coins of equal legal exchange value, and one is suspected to be of lower intrinsic value, the bad coin will tend to drive the other out of circulation, as people will begin to hoard it. He built the Royal Exchange (15668), and founded Gresham College.
Family and Childhood
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 London merchant, who for some time held the office of Lord Mayor, and who for his services as agent of Henry VIII in negotiating loans with foreign merchants received the honour of knighthood. Either before or after this he became apprentice to his uncle Sir John Gresham, also a merchant, who founded Gresham's School in Holt, Norfolk in 1555: we have his own testimony that he served an apprenticeship of eight years.
Agent in the Low Countries
In 1543 the Mercers Company admitted the 24-year-old Gresham as a liveryman, and in the same year he went to the Low Countries, where, either on his own account or on that of his father or uncle, he both carried on business as a merchant and acted in various matters as an agent for King Henry VIII.
Financial Wizard
Rescue of the pound
When in 1551 the mismanagement of Sir William Dansell, king's merchant in the Low Countries, had brought the English government into great financial embarrassment, the authorities called in Gresham to give his advice, and then chose him to carry out his own proposals.
Indispensable services to the crown
On the accession of Queen Mary in 1553 Gresham went out of favour for a short time, and Alderman William Dauntsey displaced him in his post. Under Queen Elizabeth (reigned 1558 - 1603), besides continuing in his post as financial agent of the crown, Gresham acted temporarily as ambassador at the court of the duchess of Parma, receiving a knighthood in 1559 previous to his departure.
Queen Elizabeth also found Gresham useful in a great variety of other ways, including acting as jailer to Lady Mary Grey (sister of Lady Jane Grey), who, as a punishment for marrying Thomas Keys the sergeant porter, remained a prisoner in his house from June 1569 to the end of 1572.
Foundation of the Royal Exchange
In 1565 Gresham made a proposal to the court of aldermen of London to build at his own expense a bourse or exchange -- what became the Royal Exchange, modelled on the Antwerp bourse -- on condition that they purchased for this purpose a piece of suitable ground.
Death
Gresham died suddenly, apparently of apoplexy, on 21 November 1579.
Bequest for the foundation of Gresham College
With the exception of a number of small sums bequeathed to the support of various charities, Gresham bequeathed the bulk of his property -- consisting of estates in various parts of England of the annual value of more than 2300 pounds -- to his widow and her heirs, with the stipulation that after her decease his residence in Bishopsgate Street, as well as the rents arising from the Royal Exchange, should be vested in the hands of 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 -- on astronomy, geometry, physic, law, divinity, rhetoric and music.
Further reading
Notices of Gresham appear in Thomas Fuller's Worthies of England (1662) and Ward's Gresham Professors;
Gresham's Law
Gresham's law takes its name from him (although others, including the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, had recognized the concept for years) because he urged Queen Elizabeth to restore the debased currency of England.
The Gresham Grasshopper
The grasshopper is the crest above Gresham's coat of arms. It is used by Gresham College, which he founded, and can also be seen as the weathervane on the Royal Exchange in the City of London, which he also founded in 1565.
According to an ancient legend of the Greshams, the founder of the family was a foundling abandoned as a new-born baby in long grass in North Norfolk in about the 14th century and found there by a woman whose attention was drawn to the child by a grasshopper.
Trivia
Gresham appears as a background figure is a series of fictional mystery novels by the British author Valerie Anand writing under the pen-name of Fiona Buckley.
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