DURGON'S LIFE AND TIMES OF SIR THOMAS GRESHAM.

BULKY and ambitious in flirts', and elaborate in illustration, this work is about one of the most twaddling, and, although not with- out a kind of feeble elegance, one of the most fatiguingly tiresome, we ever read.

Its history is this. My Lord Mayor COPELAND offered a reward for the best essay " on the Life and Character of Sir Thomas Gresham ;" stipulating, with a more than Aldermanie acumen, that no production should be admitted to compete which occupied beyond half an hour in the reading. Our author was the success- ful competitor ; having had to keep or cut down his lucubrations to the prescribed limits. Visions of publication had floated. through Mr. Butwox's brain ; but the Procrustean bed of the Mansionhouse made him drop the idea; till the Royal Exchange was burnt, when he conceived " that a more auspicious moment had arrived for the appearance of the Life of its founder." Having heard in the interim, however, that the Gresham Corre- spondence existed in the State Paper Office, he procured permis- sion to inspect it ; and, finding a mass of letters from GRESHAM and his agents, in reference to finance and foreign news, chiefly written during GRESHAM'S residence at Antwerp as King's Factor or financial agent, he has added large selections from them to his previous materials, swelling to some thous:Lod octavo pages a sub- ject whose just length had been settled by Mr. COPELAND with an instinctive critical perception we shall always esteem.

This error iu Mr. &Roux is the more to be regretted, as the public will turn from a remarkable life and remarkable times. Sir THOMAS GRESHAM, albeit a knight, and a sort of Chancellor of the Exche- quer so far as negotiating loans and raising supplies went, might be said to embody in his person the great trader, at a time when pure trade had reached its apex, to be soon superseded by "mer- cantile" or "commercial pursuits." Unless very eminent indeed, in which case he sent his factor or alter idem, the merchant of those days accompanied his wares, and was only a pedlar upon a large scale. The banker not only kept a nominal but a real shop ; and instead of the flimsy " promises to pay" of modern times, for tens of thousands, he took more solid securities in the shape of plate or bonds for the trivial loan (as it seems to us) of a few pounds. Instead of the almost bald absence of any display of wealth, which characterizes the moderns, the shops of the Lombard • Street bankers exhibited—as a Genitals traveller, who visited Eng- ' land in 1:;9:3, tells us—" all sorts of gold and silver vessels ex- , posed to sale, as well as ancient and modern coins, in such quanti- ties as must surprise a nsitn the first time he sees and con- siders them ;" the last remains of which practice may now be seen in the windows of a fbw dealers in coin and bullion. The proudest merchant displayed it sign over his shop-door—that of GRESHAM being his tinnily crest of the grasshopper; a practice which annoyed the walkers of London streets during the greater part of the last century, and is not yet worn out in some particu- larly celebrated cases, though we believe the only banker who hangs out it sign is the highly respectable and somewhat exclusive house of IloAne, which retains the " leather bottle." Yet though shopkeepers, or rather perhaps storekeepers—to borrow a word from countries where the class is existing in something like its pristine state, and where it is "no degradation for a gentle- man to stand behind a counter --the shopkeepers were powerful, for they had ready money. The necessities ofroyalty and nobility brought them into frequent and conndential communion with the great traders of that day, both as possessors of cash and heads of armed municipalities; and, though the manners of the age drew a marked line of distinction in points of form between the different classes of society, the intercourse between the City and the Court was not only fin' closer than it is now, but closer than we can well conceive without examining the evidence. The ignorance of the aristocracy in all that concerned finance or trade, also drew the two parties closer together. There were then no means by which "promising young gentlemen " could get a theo- retical stnattering of commercial matters sufficient to talk about them in the I louse or write about in state papers : whatever was known of trade, had to be learned by trading ; and money was so scarce, and the security of the regal Governments of Europe so very indifferent, that only a man of large connexions and great skill could raise even the trifling loans of ELIZABETH and her predecessors. Hence, the modern Ministerial offices, under another name and with a much lower standing, were filled by traders. Of these, King's Agent or Factor was the chief: anti his functions were to borrow nioney—to pay interest when he could, or soothe the lenders with promises of payment—to give his advice in negotiations upon mat- ters of trade—and sometimes, it would seem, to negotiate, or be- come by turns a sort of charge d'affaires and consul. It was also his business to purchase and transmit rarities of all kinds for the sovereign-and the leading courtiers, as well as such commodities as either were better purchased abroad or were deemed to be so. Another part of his office seemed to be to advise the Crown in its acts of extortion : at all events, GRESHAM volunteers minute direc- tions as to the proper time forseizing all the goods shipped, in or- der to extort a forced loan from the Londoners.

The direct payment of King's Factor, under the Tenons, was 20s. a day and 1 per cent. on the loans he negotiated; the indirect gains, by perquisites or opportunities of office, were limited, we suspect, only by his conscience. His function, however, required no mean worldly skill, and was often exercised at no small peril. The theory of the " balance of trade" was then in full vogue ; and national wealth being held to consist in gold and silver, all ex- portation of coin or bullion was rigidly prohibited, and those de- tected in the crime were within the peril of the law. Hence, the money which GRESHAM managed to raise at Antwerp, was sent home in small parcels, and by various contrivances. As occasion offered, he availed himself of the Ambassador, whose baggage passed without examination, or he sent by the circuitous route of Calais : he proposed to buy pepper, " loading four bags in every ship which left Antwerp, and secreting in each bag two hundred pounds ;" but his mind changing, he thought it better to buy demi-lances harness, and pack it in " great dry fatts."

" Also I doo now requyre (for that the Queene's stuffe shall be packed in harness, in great dry fatts ) I request to have comyssion that I may° put in

every dry fiat iij [30001.] ; and to layd upon every waggon iij dry fiats, for Slit avoyding of the great charge of waggon-here and eliarges of men, En ,thaid send no more than iij Si II. in a waggon at a tyme. Whiche matter it may please you to have in consideracyon, as to you shall [seem] best. But to 'courage your honnors, after this sorte I conveyed the like for the vallew of one hundred thousand markes in one yere, in my own name, and was never touched."

A still greater risk attended the conveyance of munitions of war, when, some years later, the political horizon began to lower. It does not appear that GRESHAM wrote in cipher, but he used various cant terms in his letters to the Council, to disguise his real mean- ing in case the correspondence miscarried,—calling gunpowder, velvet, &c. He also strongly enforced the necessity of secrecy at home, in unpacking the commodities in the Tower itself ; urging the peril to which he and others would be exposed if the transac- tion were bruited abroad. But the mainstay of all his proceedings seems to have been the bribery of the revenue-officers " well flues that pent' gyven," writes he to the Council, " that saves one hun- dred." He had previously, in the matter of the treasure, sent the " Capitayne of Gravelyn xii ells • of fvne black velvett ; and every customer, and sercher, viii ells of black cloth, for their New Year's gifte ;" " for that at all tvnies of nyght, the gates of the town were open to my servants." When the law against the exportation of arms, &c. was ordered by the Flemish Government to be rigidly en- forced, lie seems to have corrupted the whole posse of officers. " I have secreat advertisements," he writes, " by one of the serchers, how the Court here bathe geven order to the customers, that all such ships as lade for England should be searchid; whych is only to tacke me in a trip, as I am credibly infbrined." This was in May 1560; but by the following month he was at business again ; for he says- " According as I have written your honour, I have corrupted the chief sercher, whom is all my doer, and [who] hath right honestly desired a worthy reward: sot, by him, and through his advice, I am doing daily, as by my proceedings to you may appere. If it is discovered, there is nothing short 4A' death with the searcher, and with him who enters it at the customhouse. So that there shall no ship depart, but I shall give the adventure of 3 or 4 pieces of velvets in a ship."

Some one, however, discovered the unladings at the Tower ; and the intelligence soon reached Antwerp, to his hindrance and trouble : which gave rise to these edifying consultations on the part of the revenue-officers- " For as the xiiijth dale [of June 1560] at vij of the clocke at nyght, the cheitle sercher, (whome vs all my woreker, and conveyer of all my velvets,) gave me to understand that there had bonne a Inglish man wyth the customer, and Ladd informyd bym that, of late, I Ladd menu velvets arvvyd at London of all sortes ; and that yf he maid a general serche now, he shulld fvnde a great bootyc. Wyche matter, the costomer oppenyd to the sercher, (my frynde,) and comandyd Irvin to be wvthe lrym as the xvo■ daye, very erely in the morn- yng ; whereas all the costumers and he was together in conssaylle. And the matter being lunge debattyd, they conch:10.yd nut to macke no serch; for if they shulde screhe and fynde nothing, it well redowen moehe to there dison- nestves; and [they] sayde amonges themselltfes that I colds tint tacky it in good parte at there handes, conside'ryng how benelyciall I have allways hymn! unto them. The sercher allegyde they had resson ; and that from tyme to tynne, as the goodes was ladynne, be tocke a vow of all the shipes lading. With that, seld the undvr costomer,—' This Inglishinan mace doo this of mallyse ; for that I knows that Mr. Gresham ys not best belovyic amonges the merchants, for the service a loth to the prince;' and [sot at this instant [they have] concluded that nothing should be done.—Sir, if 'anything should be searched and found, the parties that shipped this gear for nne must flyc the country till their end be maid; for it ruins their goods and all their lives upon. 1 ant pro- mes[cd] by the sercher to have the Inglich man's name."

Beyond the official life of Sir TnomAs GRESHAM, now fully de- veloped for the first time, very little is known, and to that little Mr. Ikanox has made no addition. His family was distinguished amongst the City aristocracy of the day : his uncle, Sir Joust GRESHAM, had been conspicuous in the Levant trade, and knighted whilst Sheriff: his father, Sir RICHARD GRESHAM, had filled the office of Lord Mayor, acted as the King's financial agent, and served as an instrument, perhaps a tool, of' lleany the Eighth during the Reformation • for which he was rewarded with certain spoils of the Church. He appears, however, to have been a man of large views and public-spirit ; for he projected the plan of

a Bourse or Exchange, which his son, falling upon apter• times, lived to finish.

This son, THOMAS GRESHAM, the pride of London city, was supposed to have been born there, in 1510 ; • but of his youth nothing is known, except that he lost his mother when three years

old, and—a rare occurrence in those days for a trader—was sent to Cambridge, where he was admitted a Pensioner of Gonsille Hall.

Having finished his education, he was apprenticed to his uncle Sir JOHN; and in 1543 was admitted a member of the Mercers Corn.

pany. About this time, he was employed in Flanders in purchasing gunpowder fbr I1r icr the Eighth—most probably as an agent of his father or uncle; and between 1543 and 154.5 he married. In 1551-2, he was appointed Royal Agent or Factor to EDWARD the Sixth, for the purpose of getting the youthful monarch out of debt " wythe the leaste charge ;" and this office he held (with a brief interval or two during MArzy's reign) till the civil wars of Flanders put an end to all chance of raising money there. GRESHAM then turned his influence to account in the City, and, by succeeding in borrowing amongst the merchants of London, may be said in some sense to be the first founder of our National Debt. In 1559, THOMAS GRESHAM was knighted by ELizAttrior ; in 1564 he lost his only

son ; at the same period he projected the Bourse, the first stone of which was laid in 1566 ; in two years time it was finished for the reception of the merchants ; and in 1570 Queen Er.iz.en:'ra, attended by her nobility, " came from her house at the Strand

called Somerset House," to Sir THOMAS GRESHAM'S in Bishopsgate Street, where she dined.

4' After dinner, her Majestic returning through Cornitill, entered the Burro on the south side; and after that she had viewed every part thereof above the grOlD111, especially the panne, which was richly furnished with all sorts of the tiniest wares in the city, she caused the same Bums by an herralde and a trom- pet to be proclaimed the Royal Exchange, and so to be called from thenceforth, and not otherwise."

Sir Tnomks died in 1579, of apoplexy, the euthanasia of the intellectual. "On Saturday the '21st November 1579," says HomNsunn, " between° six and seven of the clocke in the evening, eoming front the Exchange to his house (which he had sumptuouslie buildal) in Bishopsgate Street, he suddenly fell down in his kitchen ; and being taken up, was found speechlesse, and presently dead." After giving many legacies, Sir THOMAS left the residue of his property to his widow for her life; designing at her death

to have founded a munificent university in his native city, for the gratuitous instruction of students in divinity, astronomy, music, geometry, law, medicine, and rhetoric. But having upon a late occasion noticed the subject at length, and the jobs by which the munificent intentions of GatEstwd have been defeated, we need not now recur to it.

The volumes from which we have gleaned the greater part of the materials of this notice are a memorable example of failure, arising from a desire to swell a subject beyond its natural dimensions,. and from a notion that interest can be imparted to a principal figure by surrounding him with a crowd. Had our author stuck to the

canon of Lord Mayor COPELAND, and distilled the essence of his research and enthusiasm into a small volume, dealing only with realities and Sir TnomAs GRESHAM, he would have produced a pleasant and interesting work ; for Iris subject is not deficient in matter or curiosity, and the biographer possesses a ;rather plea- sant style. By overlabouring, he has delivered himself of two great volumes, containing less a life of GRESHAM than a partial and confused history of the Netherlands; long and tedious notices of Sir THOMAS'S contemporaries, clerks, and servants, not omitting a chronicle of post-boys ; interspersed with extracts from correspond- ence, which, it' somethnes curious, are out of place. Even the matter which more immediately relates to GRESHAM is marred by the fhult of over-minuteness : the reader does not want to know all the hero did, or any thing he did unless it marks his character, or his age, or had an influence on his career ; and at last there is a strange omission, for we learn nothing of GRESHAM as a merchant. Mr. BURGON is also an adept in the use of the truly modern figure of conjecture : it is wonderful how much he fills by " there is good reason for be- lieving," or " it may well be supposed," and such-like introduc- tions to a fancy-piece.

As Mr. Btaciox has been so miscellaneous in his book, we must follow his example in our extracts ; taking passages which are curious in themselves or throw some light upon the manners of the times.

A CAPITAL MERCHANT'S FUNERAL uswnn THE Tunotts.

Strype has given us a lkt of several worthies, who, in a short spfv..e, fell victims to the same pestilential malady ; and he does not omit to mention Sir John Gresham among the number. The day of his interment hal:pt.:Meg to be a fast day, he say,: an ea t ralirdinury fish-dinner was provided on the occasion, at which were admitted all that cone; mid the funeral sermon was preached by the celebrated Dr. Harpsfeld. To judge from the ceremonial of los inter- ment, he must have been a person ago of great consideration. "He was buried," says litmve, "with a standard and memoir of arms, and a coat armour of da- mask, [Damascus steel,] and four pinions of arms; besides a helmet, a target and a sword, mantles and the crest, a goodly hearse of wax, ten dozens of pensils, and twelve dozen of escutcheons. lle had four dozen of great staff torches, and a dozen of great long torches The church and the streets were all hung with black, and arms in great store ,• and on the morrow three goodly masses were sung; one of the Trinity, another of our Lady, and the third of Requiem."

THE ORIGIN OF "A RICH OLD FOGY."

" Elle aveit amassf des Tresors prodigioux parson commerce dans lee lades Occidentales ensorte qu'Antoine Fugger, Chef (le cctte Fatnille, : omme d'or- dinaire Fokker, et qui mourut dans sa Patric, dispose par Testament de plus de time millions d'ecus d'or. Sesrieliesses immenses ont donne lieu it une fitcon deparley qui est encore usitee dans CC3 provinces, oh Fon donne le nom de riche liAker tl urn homme d'une opulence pen commune."

with reasoning or repetition, as well as for the speedy notice and comfortably. Fare ye well redress of small grievances, there is nothing to compare with a 1561. newspaper : yet the ingenuity of man is great, and malicious wit Your lovying frond and M, epigram; whilst the meanness of the instruments ust have added

Cardinal GRANVELLE was more biting than the most pungent never wants a mode of satire. Perhaps the following sarcasm upon W a smart to his mortification, if any thing could mortify the case- me in the season of the ycre, thyngs mete for my orchard or garden, help me ;

THE SATIRE OF THE LIVERIES.

His luxurious and extravagant mode of life was one of the circumstances W. CECILL."

which gave particular offence to his enemies. On a certain occasion, when a The following letter from the same pen, is in a less painful straiu. distinguished party of Flemish nobles and gentlemen were nssembled at dinner " Wynebank, at the house of our old friend Jasper Schutz, Lord of Grobbendonc, the con- " 1 pray you lett me know the pricecs of these kynds of books following, versation happening to turn on this subject, and especially on the had example to be well and thvre bound. set by the expensive liveries worn by the servants of the unpopular ecclesiastic, The course of the (weal lame, in small volumes and in greate. Count Egmont declared that his own servants should appear in future clad iu The works of Tullye, in small volumes. a plain livery oi a common grey cloth. The whim was so well relished, not The courss of the cannon law, with the comments in the volume of 4a. only by the assembled guests, but by the other inhabitants of the town, that I have already the cannon law in the smallest volume. all the tailors in Brussels were scarcely able to produce solemn coloured suits I well also understand what fayre biblees there be in Lattyn, of a great with sufficient celerity to meet the sudden demand. But the offensive circuits- lettre: and some also in French. Which ij I weld have to lye in me chappell. stance connected with this &shim was, that on the loose sleeve then worn by If there be any particular charts of contrees or provincees, whereon yow servants, fool's caps were embroidered, and more frequently still, a cardinal s thynke I have none, send me word. hat ; which made it clear to the vulgar that Granvelle was satirized by the Of these abovesaved, I meant first to understand the chargees, before that

grotesque attire which had so suddenly come into iltshion. To put the question you shall provide any for me. still more completely out of doubt, pasquinades were circulated, and satirical verses reflecting on the Cardinal held him up to patpular obloquy and derision. Some of these pasquinades Gresham seems to have scut over, hr a specimen is

it] was sayd the nobellmen woilde gees, and that their hedass sbuld be Twits'

hedds ; and nowe, as I understamle by i vsrs that come Isom Brussells, most

and with the Queen's Majesty's leve, 1 duo intend to bring Lit] home myselfe." order in which she is to become " the spouse of Christ."

hi:IA buttons you stoke to me for, which costes you 4!.zs, the dozen."

and the exclusive devotion to herself which Islizamerit required in " Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

all her subjects. Each prayer accepted, and each wish resign'd;

" Syr, 1559. Labour and rest, that equal periods keep ; " At 7 of the clocke yn the mornyng, thys day y came unto Ilarwyche : ' Obedient slumbers, that can wake and weep;' '

and at 9 of the clocks, after v had tarved together with Sir Thomas Desires composed, affections ever even ;

Smythe yn the Duke's hall more than half tin howre, y was islinytted unto the ''cuts that delight, and sighs that waft to heaven ; Duke's preset's; who, setting yn a chayre without inovyng hyinsellf, offered Grace shines around her with serenest beams,

me hys laude,—as yt seined by the manse or the holdyng therolf, to kysse. And whispering angels prompt her golden dreams;

But y that had bens otherwyse brought up then to kysse the halide of ony For her the turfading rose of Eden blooms, subject, other than of the ;melange of me natural[ prynee, after y had with And wings of seraphs

of his faults. I know some of his old faults were to belslo;vtlYtfu'll in keping

an unordynat lover of unmete playes, as dyes and cards; in study, sous From Hertford Castle, the 10th of September, ). " I pray you Wvnebank, if ye thynk that ye can pleasur me with sendying m The following also is a curious touch for Cacies biography.

. CECILL."

First send me word. and the char,gees. You know my garden is new, and must be now applyed.