Above the bridge, in Thames Street, was the territorium of the Hanse merchants, alluded to by Stow as "the merchants of Almaine," and by Camden as "the Easterlings or Dutch merchants of the Steelyard." Their position in the city was one of great importance: the export trade of the country in woollen goods was chiefly in their hands, and they had their own Guildhall in Upper Thames Street, called the _Gilda Teutonicorum_. The special privileges accorded to this foreign commercial community carried the obligation to maintain Bishopsgate in repair, and "to defend it at all times of danger and extremity." When the house of the Augustine Friars, Old Broad Street, was dissolved, and its extensive gardens became cut up and built upon, the Dutch colony settled there in residence, and the church of Austin Friars was specially assigned to them by Edward VI. Towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth the privileges of the Hanse merchants were revoked, and their guildhall was confiscated to the use of the navy. But the Dutch element continued as a part of the commercial life of the city, and the church of Austin Friars is still the "church of the Dutch nation in London." West of the Steelyard was the Vintry. Here the merchants of Bordeaux had been licensed to build their warehouses of stone, at the rear of a great wharf, on which were erected cranes for unloading the lighters and other boats which brought the casks from the ships below bridge. The trade of these foreign merchants gave the name of Vintry Ward to one of the divisions of the city. In Bishopsgate Ward, near the church of St. Botolph, was a French colony, their purlieus forming a quadrant, called Petty France. Elizabethan London was more cosmopolitan than many European capitals. In Lombard Street the merchants of Germany, France, and Italy were conspicuously differentiated by the varieties of costume. On the site of the present Royal Exchange, Sir Thomas Gresham laid the first stone of his great Bourse in 1566; the design was in imitation of the Bourse at Antwerp; the materials of its construction were imported from Flanders; the architect and builder was a Fleming, named Henryke. The opening of this building by Queen Elizabeth in state in January, 1571, when Her Majesty commanded it to be proclaimed by herald and trumpet that the Bourse should be called The Royal Exchange from that time henceforth, is a familiar story, because it is, in fact, one of the most striking and significant events in the history of London. The trumpet of that herald, on January 23rd, 1571, announced a new era.