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Excerpt from Tales of the Bank of England: With Anecdotes of London Bankers; Illustrated by Portraits and Engravings Such a name as Child, the banker, which claims from the reign of Elizabeth, will rather serve our turn; but we may go further and beyond three centuries, and take the Gres hams, and their representatives, the Martins. In the City the Grasshopper glitters aloft, and is reverentially regarded; but how little is there at first thought, and yet how much by thinking of it, that remains to us of a time so clear in tradi tion and so remote in time! The East India Company, like a jewel dissolved in a royal cup, has lost its existence in the birth of an immense empire, having for its subjects one-fourth of the human race; the Muscovy Company is a name; the Levant Company not even that; the Virginia Company loses its history in that of another empire of the English race. True, there are buildings and institutions, as there are others far older, which remained in Elizabeth's time, and remain now. The Royal Exchange and Gresham College, Gresham founded for us. Sir Thomas Gresham undoubtedly had this ensign of his, the Grasshopper, placed on the banking - house in Lombard Street, where it still holds place. How far back beyond him the title is to be traced is not known. Undoubtedly the banking history goes back beyond Sir Thomas Gresham, although it may not attach to 68, Lombard Street, but to some other house there or elsewhere. Sir Richard Gresham, the father, held that office of the King's Exchanger for Henry VIII., to which Sir Thomas succeeded. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
