“It was built,” answered Mr. Wilmot, “by Thomas Gresham, a merchant. Born of a family at once enlightened, commercial, and wealthy, he had not only imbibed their spirit and their virtues; but, fortunately for himself, neither the advantages of the education he had received at Cambridge, nor his own superior attainments, tempted him to quit the walk of life for which he was intended, and in which he afterwards so eminently distinguished himself. “His father, Sir Richard Gresham, had been agent to Henry the Eighth, for negotiations of loans with the merchants of Antwerp; and the abilities of young Gresham were soon discovered, by the eminent services he rendered, when in a similar capacity to Edward the Sixth, by redeeming the credit of the king, then sunk to the lowest ebb by the mismanagement of his father’s immediate successor. Under Elizabeth he enjoyed the same appointment, to which was added that of queen’s merchant; and it appears, by the official letters of the times, that he was occasionally consulted in political as well as pecuniary affairs. He was a spirited promoter of the infant manufactures of his country, several of which owed their origin to him. “By his assiduity and commercial talents, he rendered himself one of the most opulent merchants in the kingdom; and the queen showed her sense of his merit, by bestowing on him the office of knighthood. “Gresham had been always liberal and patriotic; but the death of his only son, in 1564, determined him to render his country his principal heir. “Hitherto the citizens of London had been unprovided with any building in the shape of a Burse, or an Exchange, such as Gresham had been accustomed to see abroad, in the commercial cities of Flanders; and he now munificently offered, if the city would give him a piece of ground, to build one at his own expence.