questions of foreign policy. In spite of his multifarious duties at the foreign office Grenville continued to take a lively interest in domestic matters, which he showed by introducing various bills into the House of Lords. In February 1801 he resigned office with Pitt because George III. would not consent to the introduction of any measure of Roman Catholic relief, and in opposition he gradually separated himself from his former leader. When Pitt returned to power in 1804 Grenville refused to join the ministry unless his political ally, Fox, was also admitted thereto; this was impossible and he remained out of office until February 1806, when just after Pitt’s death he became the nominal head of a coalition government. This ministry was very unfortunate in its conduct of foreign affairs, but it deserves to be remembered with honour on account of the act passed in 1807 for the abolition of the slave trade. Its influence, however, was weakened by the death of Fox, and in consequence of a minute drawn up by Grenville and some of his colleagues the king demanded from his ministers an assurance that in future they would not urge upon him any measures for the relief of Roman Catholics. They refused to give this assurance and in March 1807 they resigned. Grenville’s attitude in this matter was somewhat aggressive; his colleagues were not unanimous in supporting him, and Sheridan, one of them, said “he had known many men knock their heads against a wall, but he had never before heard of any man who collected the bricks and built the very wall with an intention to knock out his own brains against it.”
Lord Grenville never held office again, although he was requested to do so on several occasions. He continued, however, to take part in public life, being one of the chief supporters of Roman Catholic emancipation, and during the remaining years of his active political career, which ended in 1823, he generally voted with the Whigs, although in 1815 he separated himself from his colleague, Charles Grey, and supported the warlike policy of Lord Liverpool. In 1819, when the marquess of Lansdowne brought forward his motion for an inquiry into the causes of the distress and discontent in the manufacturing districts, Grenville delivered an alarmist speech advocating repressive measures. His concluding years were spent at Dropmore, Buckinghamshire, where he died on the 12th of January 1834. His wife, whom he married in 1792, was Anne (1772–1864), daughter of Thomas Pitt, 1st Baron Camelford, but he had no issue and his title became extinct. In 1809 he was elected chancellor of Oxford university.
Though Grenville’s talents were not of the highest order his straightforwardness and industry, together with his knowledge of politics and the moderation of his opinions, secured for him considerable political influence. He may be enrolled among the band of English statesmen who have distinguished themselves in literature. He edited Lord Chatham’s letters to his nephew, Thomas Pitt, afterwards Lord Camelford (London, 1804, and other editions); he wrote a small volume, Nugae Metricae (1824), being translations into Latin from English, Greek and Italian, and an Essay on the Supposed Advantages of a Sinking Fund (1828).
The Dropmore MSS. contain much of Grenville’s correspondence, and on this the Historical Manuscripts Commission has published a report.
GRESHAM, SIR THOMAS (1519–1579), London merchant,
the founder of the Royal Exchange and of Gresham College,
London, was descended from an old Norfolk family; he was the
only son of Sir Richard Gresham, a leading London merchant,
who for some time held the office of lord mayor, and for his
services as agent of Henry VIII. in negotiating loans with foreign
merchants received the honour of knighthood. Though his father
intended him to follow his own profession, he nevertheless sent
him for some time to Caius College, Cambridge, but there is no
information as to the duration of his residence. It is uncertain
also whether it was before or after this that he was apprenticed
to his uncle Sir John Gresham, who was also a merchant, but
we have his own testimony that he served an apprenticeship of
eight years. In 1543, at the age of twenty-four, he was admitted
a member of the Mercers’ Company, and in the same year he
went to the Low Countries, where, either on his own account or
on that of his father or uncle, he both carried on business as a
merchant and acted in various matters as an agent for Henry
VIII. In 1544 he married the widow of William Read, a London
merchant, but he still continued to reside principally in the Low
Countries, having his headquarters at Antwerp. When in 1551
the mismanagement of Sir William Dansell, “king’s merchant”
in the Low Countries, had brought the English government into
great financial embarrassment, Gresham was called in to give
his advice, and chosen to carry out his own proposals. Their
leading feature was the adoption of various methods—highly
ingenious, but quite arbitrary and unfair—for raising the value
of the pound sterling on the “bourse” of Antwerp, and it was
so successful that in a few years nearly all King Edward’s debts
were discharged. The advice of Gresham was likewise sought
by the government in all their money difficulties, and he was
also frequently employed in various diplomatic missions. He
had no stated salary, but in reward of his services received from
Edward various grants of lands, the annual value of which at that
time was ultimately about £400 a year. On the accession of
Mary he was for a short time in disfavour, and was displaced
in his post by Alderman William Dauntsey. But Dauntsey’s
financial operations were not very successful and Gresham was
soon reinstated; and as he professed his zealous desire to serve
the queen, and manifested great adroitness both in negotiating
loans and in smuggling money, arms and foreign goods, not only
were his services retained throughout her reign, but besides his
salary of twenty shillings per diem he received grants of church
lands to the yearly value of £200. Under Queen Elizabeth,
besides continuing in his post as financial agent of the crown,
he acted temporarily as ambassador at the court of the duchess of
Parma, being knighted in 1559 previous to his departure. By
the outbreak of the war in the Low Countries he was compelled
to leave Antwerp on the 19th of March 1567; but, though he
spent the remainder of his life in London, he continued his
business as merchant and financial agent of the government
in much the same way as formerly. Elizabeth also found him
useful in a great variety of other ways, among which was that
of acting as jailer, to Lady Mary Grey, who, as a punishment for
marrying Thomas Keys the sergeant porter, remained a prisoner
in his house from June 1569 to the end of 1572. In 1565 Gresham
made a proposal to the court of aldermen of London to build
at his own expense a bourse or exchange, on condition that they
purchased for this purpose a piece of suitable ground. In this
proposal he seems to have had an eye to his own interest as well
as to the general good of the merchants, for by a yearly rental
of £700 obtained for the shops in the upper part of the building
he received a sufficient return for his trouble and expense.
Gresham died suddenly, apparently of apoplexy, on the 21st
of November 1579. His only son predeceased him, and his
illegitimate daughter Anne he married to Sir Nathaniel Bacon,
brother of the great Lord Bacon. With the exception of a
number of small sums bequeathed to the support of various
charities, the bulk of his property, consisting of estates in various
parts of England of the annual value of more than £2300, was
bequeathed to his widow and her heirs with the stipulation that
after her decease his residence in Bishopsgate Street, as well as
the rents arising from the Royal Exchange, should be vested
in the hands of the corporation of London and the Mercers’
Company, for the purpose of instituting a college in which seven
professors should read lectures—one each day of the week—on
astronomy, geometry, physic, law, divinity, rhetoric and music.
The lectures were begun in 1597, and were delivered in the original
building until 1768, when, on the ground that the trustees were
losers by the gift, it was made over to the crown for a yearly rent
of £500, and converted into an excise office. From that time
a room in the Royal Exchange was used for the lectures until in
1843 the present building was erected at a cost of £7000.
A notice of Gresham is contained in Fuller’s Worthies and Ward’s Gresham Professors; but the fullest account of him, as well as of the history of the Exchange and Gresham College is that by J. M. Burgon in his Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham (2 vols., 1839). See also a Brief Memoir of Sir Thomas Gresham (1833); and The Life of Sir Thomas Gresham, Founder of the Royal Exchange (1845).
