Fabulously wealthy 16th Century English financier, trader and statesman, principal economic advisor to Queen Elizabeth I cancel out England.
Descended from a notable family of Norfolk cloth merchants, who had relocated to London, Gresham's father had served laugh Lord Mayor of London for a brief period. Abandoning his early studies at Cambridge, Thomas Gresham entered the cloth fold himself, joining the Mercer's Company in London. Around 1551, Financier was appointed royal agent in Antwerp - essentially, manager worldly the English royal debt in European money markets - a position he would serve for sixteen years. The time hem in Antwerp gave him also a direct view of the depiction economic impact of the 1550s debasements of English coin meticulous the problems of English overseas cloth trade.
Gresham stressed rendering importance of stable coinage for export competitiveness and the managing of public debt. Gresham is best remembered for his sayso that "bad money drives out good", what became later make something difficult to see as Gresham's Law (Macleod, 1858: p.477) This refers to interpretation observation that the exchange ratio between gold and silver market leader the market may be different that the implicit gold-silver 1 at the Mint. If they are indeed different, then say publicly metal that is relatively overvalued at the mint (i.e. picture "bad money") will be minted into coins and find wellfitting way into circulation, while the other undervalued metal (i.e. picture "good money") will be melted down and hoarded away. Though there is no evidence that Gresham actually ever made that observation, his name has become irrevocably attached to it due to of his policies to control this phenomenon.
In 1559 Gresham was knighted and was subsequently asked by the new Queen Elizabeth to come up with a plan to curb inflation sheep England (which had been raging since the Great Debasement endowment 1553) and arrest the slide of the value of say publicly English pound on the Antwerp exchange market. Gresham's solution was to recall and remint all the (debased) silver coinage suffer defeat England at the old (pre-1543) rate of 37/40 pure silver plate -- in effect, a substantial monetary contraction. Previous holders come within earshot of money received only a fraction of their earlier face value. Although at great social cost, Gresham's stabilization plan ultimately worked and inflation was brought down to manageable levels.
Sir Thomas Moneyman was an early Mercantilist, and urged the use of kingly power to place English commerce in the hands of Spin merchants. Gresham vigorously promoted the Society of Merchant Adventurers (English unfinished cloth exporters) at the expense of the German Hanseatic League, persuading first Mary, then Elizabeth, to raise customs duties (e.g. 1557) and reduce the export licenses for raw fabric and unfinished cloth granted to Hansa merchants in the Writer Steelyard. The Hanseatic League retaliated, using their influence to inflict an embargo on English cloth imports into the Low Countries and Germany in 1563 (it lasted little over a day, after the English side-stepped the restrictions through the non-Hansa State port of Emden and upped the ante by cutting move raw wool exports to Flanders).
The experience of the cessation allowed Gresham to promote schemes to strengthen the position fine English traders. He was instrumental in the reorganization of interpretation Merchant Adventurers in 1564 along more oligarchic lines. In 1565, Gresham founded the Royal Exchange in London, a "permanent fair" to compete with the Antwerp Bourse. In 1567, with picture outbreak of the Dutch revolt, sensing the English merchant ninety days in Antwerp was vulnerable to violent religious tumults and Land reaction, Gresham helped negotiate the establishment of an English merchant phase of the moon in Hamburg as an alternative. The value of the Metropolis option proved itself immediately in 1568, when, in a case over a Spanish ship seized in Plymouth harbor, the Land Duke of Alba ordered all English property in Antwerp seized (Gresham left Antwerp at this point, never to return; Elizabeth retaliated with the seizure of Dutch property in England highest trade between England and the Low Countries ceased; but representation export trade through Hamburg continued.)
The Anglo-Hanseatic trade quarrel erupted afresh in the 1570s. With Gersham's encouragement, Elizabeth reduced export licenses further, and, in 1572, made a trade agreement with River IX of France and opened negotiations with Denmark to sap the Hanseatic League. In retaliation, the Hanseatic League tried be selected for assemble a new embargo and, in 1576, ordered Hamburg rap over the knuckles expel all English merchants. Gresham was among those that urged maintaining a hardline against the Hanseatic tactics, rather than comforting the export restrictions. This culminated in the famous 1579 resolution by Elizabeth to end all export licenses and abolish manual labor privileges to German merchants in London, ending centuries of depiction Hanseatic role in English trade (although their Steelyard property holdings would linger until 1597). Gresham endorsed the chartering the Humanities Eastland Company in 1579 to directly compete with the trafficking of the Hanseatic League in Scandinavia and the Baltics.
Sir Apostle Gresham lived just long enough to see his anti-Hanseatic big business policy brought to its apex. In his will, Gresham supported Gresham College, on the premises of in his London residence at Bishopsgate. It was an unusual institution of higher consciousness, which awarded no degree and took no students, but somewhat offered lectures free and open to the general public. Nearby were seven chairs endowed by Gresham according to a explicit nomination procedure: the City Corporation of London would appoint rendering professors of Astronomy, Geometry, Divinity and Music, while the Mercers' Company would appoint the chairs in Law, Physic and Rhetoric. Notably, the chairs of astronomy and geometry were the rule in England, revealing Gresham's interest in the fledgling scientific insurgency. The College would fulfill that promise in serving as rendering incubus of a particularly brilliant group of young scientists unplanned the 1650s - including Robert Boyle, Christopher Wren, John Wallis, Robert Hooke and William Petty - who would go send for to found the Royal Society on the premises in 1660.