Description

Thomas Gresham was the central player in financial affairs at the court of three very different English rulers in the turbulent sixteenth century: King Edward VI and Queens Mary I and Elizabeth I.

Power struggles between Catholics and Protestants, the Inquisition, conflicts with Spain and France, unrequited love, smuggling and espionage - this was the background against which Thomas Gresham acted as the first modern investment banker, raising billions in government loans for the English crown in Antwerp, the financial capital of the time.

He was one of the richest men of his time, so rich that he was able to have the first London stock exchange built at his own expense, the Royal Exchange. But the early death of his only son, a serious accident that crippled him, and increasing self-doubt overshadowed his success.

Against the historical background, based on extensive research, Thomas Gresham appears as a Renaissance man between the Middle Ages and modernity, but also as a private man, a husband and a family man.

This book is a biographical novel, not a historical or economic history textbook. The historical context and Gresham's official activities are based on well-documented facts., mostly are written in sixteenth-century English, which today is difficult to understand today.