I felt his pulse: it
had ceased to beat. Thus, at the age of sixty, after having served the
State for nearly thirty years with unsullied honour and integrity, Sir
Thomas Gresham was taken to his rest. Surely the annals of the City of
London can boast of no more illustrious name. He greatly raised the
credit of the Crown in foreign parts by the skill with which he
contrived to manage the exchange with foreign countries. He laid the
foundation of England's commercial greatness. He elevated the character
of the English merchant, and dignified the pursuits of trade by showing
that they are far from being incompatible with the taste for learning;
while a large portion of the fortune he had acquired in the service of
the State he restored to it by numberless acts of public munificence and
private charity. The funeral was more splendid that that of any
nobleman I have ever seen. Could he have known what was going forward,
I think he would have been more pleased by seeing the tears shed by
several of the two hundred poor men and women, clothed in black gowns,
who, according to the directions given in his will, followed the body to
the grave.

England has had trying times since then. The Pope, not content with the
massacre of Saint Bartholomew in France, when tens of thousands of
Protestants were murdered by night, seemed resolved to take the life of
our Protestant Queen. A large body of Jesuits were introduced, under
various disguises, into England, hoping to re-convert its Protestant
inhabitants to the Romish faith. Their great object, however, was to
destroy the Queen. Of these plots, Sir John Leigh, as I have before
mentioned, gave me warning.

At length King Philip, finding that he could not succeed by treachery,
resolved to invade England with a mighty army in a vast fleet, which he
called his Invincible Armada. We were for a long time in expectation of
its coming, and all classes of her Majesty's subjects united for the
defence of her kingdom. Even the Roman Catholics, who had no desire to
have the Pope place his foot on their necks, as he had done on the
people of the Netherlands, willingly came forward for the protection of
the Queen. Philip boasted that in a few months he would bring back all
England to the Catholic faith, and several of his ships had large
quantities of books on board abusing the Queen, and full of the foulest
falsehoods. Besides this there was a large force of priests and friars,
a