mn, crested with a grasshopper,
apparently stood outside the north entrance, overlooking the quadrangle.
The brick building was afterwards stuccoed over, to imitate stone. Each
corner of the building, and the peak of every dormer window, was crowned
by a grasshopper. Within Gresham's Bourse were piazzas for wet weather,
and the covered walks were adorned with statues of English kings. A
statue of Gresham stood near the north end of the western piazza. At the
Great Fire of 1666 this statue alone remained there uninjured, as Pepys
and Evelyn particularly record. The piazzas were supported by marble
pillars, and above were 100 small shops. The vaults dug below, for
merchandise, proved dark and damp, and were comparatively valueless.
Hentzner, a German traveller who visited England in the year 1598,
particularly mentions the stateliness of the building, the assemblage of
different nations, and the quantities of merchandise.

[Illustration: WREN'S PLAN FOR REBUILDING LONDON. (_See page 501._)]

Many of the shops in the Bourse remained unlet till Queen Elizabeth's
visit, in 1570, which gave them a lustre that tended to make the new
building fashionable. Gresham, anxious to have the Bourse worthy of such
a visitor, went round twice in one day to all the shopkeepers in "the
upper pawn," and offered them all the shops they would furnish and light
up with wax rent free for a whole year. The result of this liberality
was that in two years Gresham was able to raise the rent from 40s. a
year to four marks, and a short time after to L4 10s. The milliners'
shops at the Bourse, in Gresham's time, sold mousetraps, birdcages,
shoeing-horns, lanthorns, and Jews' trumps. There were also sellers of
armour, apothecaries, booksellers, goldsmiths, and glass-sellers; but
the shops soon grew richer and more fashionable, so that in 1631 the
editor of Stow says, "Unto which place, on January 23, 1570, Queen
Elizabeth came from Somerset House through Fleet Street past the north
side of the Bourse to Sir Thomas Gresham's house in Bishopsgate Street,
and there dined. After the banquet she entered the Bourse on the south
side, viewed every part; especially she caused the building, by herald's
trumpet, to be proclaimed 'the Royal Exchange,' so to be called from
henceforth, and not otherwise."

Such was the vulgar opinion of Gresham's wealth, that Thomas Heywood, in
his old play, _If You know not Me, You know Nobody_, makes Gresham crush
an invaluable