Richard Gresham

Sir Richard Gresham (1494–1549) was an English merchant, Lord Mayor of London, and member of parliament. He was the father of Sir Thomas Gresham.

Contents

Family

Gresham was born at Holt, Norfolk, a member of an ancient Norfolk family the Gresham Levieux (see the article on his brother John Gresham).

By his first wife, Audrey Lynn (who died 28 Dec. 1522), he was the father of two sons, including Sir Thomas Gresham,[1] and two daughters.

His daughter Christian married the first Sir John Thynne, steward of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, who built Longleat.[2] Gresham is thus an ancestor of Thomas Thynne, 1st Marquess of Bath.

The Gresham family motto is Fiat voluntas tua ('Thy will be done').[3]

Career

Gresham was admitted a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Mercers in 1507.[4] As a mercer, he was in partnership with his brother, John Gresham, in exporting textiles and importing grain from the continent. He supplied King Henry VIII with arras, velvets, and satins. Most of his trade was with the Low Countries, which were the most significant area for English overseas trade for most of the sixteenth century, and he amassed a large fortune. He became Sheriff of London and Middlesex in 1531[5] and was knighted the same year. On 19 May 1536, he was present at the execution of Anne Boleyn in the Tower of London. He was elected as Lord Mayor of London in 1537,[5] and on his death bed Cardinal Wolsey called him his "fast-friend". Gresham paid for the Cardinal's funeral.

He was elected as member of parliament for the City of London in 1539 and 1545.

Tapestry for Hampton Court

Gresham supplied tapestry to Cardinal Wolsey at Hampton Court. In October 1520 he measured 18 rooms and went to the mart in Flanders to order hangings to the value of 1000 marks or more. In part payment, in January 1521, Gresham asked Wolsey to obtain a licence for him to profit by international trade including a voyage to Turkey. Margaret, Duchess of Savoy, impounded one of his ships carrying wheat from Antwerp. Gresham asked Wolsey to sign a letter in his support in March 1521, and wrote that he had obtained eight cloths-of-gold for hanging the Cardinal's closet at Hampton Court.[6]

References

  1. ^ Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee (1890). Dictionary of National Biography. Macmillan, Vol. XXIII, pp. 141-42.
  2. ^ Stephen (1890), p. 142.
  3. ^ Granville William Gresham Leveson-Gower, Genealogy of the family of Gresham (1883) p. 27
  4. ^ Stephen (1890), p. 139.
  5. ^ a b Stephen (1890), p. 140.
  6. ^ Ellis, Henry, ed., Original Letters Illustrative of English History, 3rd Series, vol.1, Richard Bentley, London (1846), 232-238.