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Currently only Chalmers’ Biographical Dictionary is indexed, terms are not stemmed, and diacritical marks are retained.

descended of an ancient family distinguished by many honourable persons,

, descended of an ancient family distinguished by many honourable persons, which took its name from a town so called in Norfolk, was the younger son of sir Richard Gresham, knight, alderman, sheriff, and lord mayor of London, an opulent merchant, and a man of great public spirit, who died in February 1548. His brother, sir John Gresham, was also an opulent merchant, and had served the offices of alderman, sheriff, and lord mayor. He died of a pestilential fever in 1556, after, among other acts of munificence, endowing the free school of Holt in Norfolk, and bestowing the government of it on the fishmongers’ company in London. Thomas, the son of the preceding sir Richard, was born in 1519 at London, and bound apprentice to a mercer there while he was young: but, to enlarge his mind by an education suitable to his birth and fortune, was sent to Caius college, then Gonvil-hall, in Cambridge; where he remained a considerable time, and made such improvements in learning, that Caius the founder of the college styles him “doctissimus mercator,” the very learned merchant. However, the profits of trade were then so great, and such large estates had been raised by it in his own family, that he afterwards engaged in it, and was admitted a member of the Mercers’ company in 1543. About this time he warned Anne, the daughter of William Femley, esq. of West Creting, in Suffolk, und widow of William Heade, of Fulham, in Middlesex, esq., by whom he had a son named Richard, who not long after succeeded his father in the office of agent to king Edward for taking up money of the merchants at Antwerp, and removed to that city with his family in 1551.