Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/247

Rh railed Somerset Place, and entered the city of London by Temple Bar, Fleet-street, Cheap, and so, by the north side of the Burse, to Sir Thomas Gresham's in Bishopsgate-street, where she dined: after dinner her grace returned through Cornhill, entered the Burse on the south side, and, after her highness had viewed every part thereof aboveground, especially the Pawn, which was richly furnished with all sorts of the finest wares in the city, she caused the same Burse, by an herald and a trumpet, to be proclaimed the Royal Exchange, so to be called from thenceforth, and not otherwise." Gresham, by his will, devised the Exchange which he had thus erected in equal shares to the corporation of London and to the Mercers' Company, and so the property continues to be held to the present day. The original building, a quadrangular arcade surrounding an open court, with galleries above containing shops, &c., perished in the great fire of 1666; after which the stone buildng on a more extensive scale, that was a few years ago burnt down, was erected by the city and the Mercers' Company, at a cost of 80,000l. Sir Thomas Gresham, who died in 1579, and who, as we have seen, was a scholar as well as a merchant, is also illustrious as the founder of the civic college known by his name, originally established in his house in Bishopsgate-street, which stood where the Excise Office now stands.

In 1567 the series of voyages of discovery, chiefly undertaken in pursuit of a new passage to India, which illustrates the reign of Elizabeth, commenced with the first voyage of Martin Frobisher, who entered upon his adventurous expedition with two barks of only twenty-five tons each, and a pinnace of ten tons; in the fitting out of which he was assisted by several persons of rank, and especially by Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick (elder brother of Leicester). The government, however, and Queen Elizabeth herself, also took a warm interest in the expedition, upon which the sanguine and intrepid commander is said to have set out with a determination either to discover the north-west passage, or to perish in the attempt. Frobisher and his companions