it
necessary to go round to the shopkeepers, and beseech them "to furnish
and adorne it with wares and wax lights, in as many shoppes as they
either could or woulde, and they should have all those so furnished
rent-free for that yeare."--_Stowe_.

Her Majesty on the day fixed (Jan. 23, 1570), having dined with the
founder, at his house in Bishopsgate-street, returned by the way of
Cornhill, and entered on the south side; and having viewed it, she
expressed herself much pleased; and, with the national spirit which so
eminently distinguished her, commanded that, instead of the foreign name
_Bourse_, by which the citizens had begun to call it, it should be
styled, in plain English--The Royal Exchange--which was proclaimed by
sound of trumpet:--

"Proclaim through every high street of the city,
This place be no longer called a Burse;
But since the building's stately, fair, and strange,
Be it for ever called--The Royal Exchange!"[2]

[2] Second part of "Queen Elizabeth's Troubles"--a Play, by
T. Heywood, 1609.

The building could not have been very substantial, for by an entry in
the Wardbook of Cornhill ward, we find that in 1581, not fourteen years
after its completion, some of the arches of the arcade were in an unsafe
condition, and the lives of the merchants passing under were in danger.
And further--in 1603 another entry states, that the east and north walls
were also unsafe; and thus it continued wanting still greater repairs,
in which the Mercers' Company expended vast sums of money, till it was
entirely destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666.

Sir Thomas Gresham, by his will, bequeathed this building, with his
house in Bishopsgate-street, to the Mercers' Company and the Corporation
of London, in joint trust: the house as a college, and the produce of
the Exchange for the payment, in the first place, of the salaries of the
lecturers and the other expenses of the college; and secondly, of
certain annual sums to different hospitals, prisons, and almshouses.

Such was the origin of the Royal Exchange. After its destruction, in
1666, the funds in the hands of Sir Thomas Gresham's trustees amounted
to no more than L234. 8s. 2d.; but, with a spirit beyond all praise,
they contributed from their own resources the necessary sum for
rebuilding the Exchange, which was completed and opened September 28,
1669, the total cost being L58,962, which the City Corporation and the
Mercers' Company defrayed eq