At his death he left it to his widow for life, and at her decease in trust to the Corporation of London and the Mercers' Company, to be converted into a College of Professors, with salaries of £50 per annum, to lecture weekly on divinity, astronomy, music, law, geometry, medicine, and rhetoric, for the gratuitous instruction of the young citizens of London, which were commenced in 1597. Amongst the professors were several eminent men, one of whom was Sir Christopher Wren, who, in conjunction with others, there laid the foundation of the Royal Society. The trustees allotted two rooms to the Society, one for their meetings, the other for their books and philosophical instruments. Pepys tells of King Charles making merry over the people of Gresham House, and Boyle in particular, amusing themselves with the child's play of weighing air. The society met at Gresham House until 1710, when they removed to Crane Court. After the Great Fire of 1666, when nearly all the public buildings were destroyed, Gresham House became the Mansion House and residence of the Lord Mayor, the Law Courts, and the Exchange, the merchants assembling in the quadrangle, where they remained until their establishments were rebuilt. The collegiate lectures were not properly appreciated, and became almost sinecures to the professors, until in 1768-70 the Government, wanting an excise office in the City, agreed with the trustees to take a perpetual lease of the site, at the absurdly low rental of £500 per annum, the trustees to take down the buildings, to do which cost them £1,800. The lectures were then removed to a dull, upper room in the Exchange, where they were delivered until the destruction of the Exchange by fire, in 1838, when they were given in the City of London School, until the opening of the New Gresham Lecture Hall, in Basinghall Street, in 1843. Dashwood House stood westward of St. Botolph's Churchyard, and was the City mansion of the Dashwood family; afterwards it is supposed to have been the residence of Lady Jane Grey. It was subsequently converted into the Ottoman Bank, and Consular and Mercantile Offices; has recently been taken down, and a colossal block constructed for suites of offices. There are many other fine old houses in the ward, dating from before the Fire, whose fronts have been modernised by building up the space beneath the overhanging upper floors and removing the gables, but which retain many of their olden time features at their backs, and are still adorned in their interiors with fine balustraded staircases, carved chimney pieces, and timber-work ceilings.