Gresham remembered the attempt made by his father in 1538 and its failure; he resolved to take up the matter again, and in some way introduced it to the Court of Aldermen, who asked him, through one of their body, what he proposed to give himself towards the undertaking. This was in 1563, two years after Clough wrote his letter. Gresham took time to consider. In 1565 he sent in the offer. He would himself erect a “comely burse” if the City would provide a suitable site. The site was found on the north side of Cornhill. Two alleys, Swan Alley and New St. Christopher’s, were purchased for £3532: the materials of the houses sold for £478. Subscriptions were invited and came in readily. On the 7th of June 1566 Sir Thomas was able to lay the foundation stone. Every one of the aldermen laid his stone or brick, with a piece of gold for the workmen. The architect and the design came from Flanders. The Clerk of the Work, Henryk, was a Fleming, and most of the workmen were foreigners, special permission being granted for their employment. The City gave 100,000 bricks; the stone-work came from abroad, and “to this day” (Sharpe) “the Royal Exchange is paved with small blocks of Turkish hone-stones, believed to have been imported by Sir Thomas Gresham and to have been relaid after the fires of 1666 and 1838.” Observe, therefore, that to the City belonged the site, but that the Exchange itself was the property of Gresham. By the 22nd of December 1568 the Burse was so far complete as to allow of merchants meeting within its walls; but it was not till the 23rd of January 1571 that the Queen herself visited it in state, and gave it the name of the Royal Exchange. From the beginning a part of the Exchange was set aside for Marine Insurance, not a new thing, because it had long been the practice of the Lombard merchants in the thirteenth century to give such insurances. 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. [Illustration: 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.:—