Portrait of Sir Thomas Gresham

In the early 1560s Antwerp was the money market of northern Europe, and Thomas Gresham was the English crown's agent there. A London mercer by trade, he had served Henry VIII and Edward VI and now Elizabeth I, raising loans for them on the city's bourse while trading on his own account. Mor shows him turned in a carved armchair, in a black cap and dark silk, a pair of soft gloves held loosely in one hand and a ring on the other. The clothes are costly and quiet, the dress of a wealthy merchant. His wife Anne sat for a matching portrait. Gresham later took the Antwerp model home. In 1565 he began building a trading hall in the City of London based on the bourse he knew, and when it opened in 1571, Elizabeth named it the Royal Exchange.