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Details
ELIZABETH I (1533-1603), queen of England and Ireland. Document signed (at head, 'Elizabeth R'), Windsor, 26 August 1563, letters patent binding herself for the repayment of a loan of 30,008 florins ('florenorum carolinorum') delivered by the Antwerp merchant Jeronimus Relinger to her financial agent Sir Thomas Gresham, countersigned on the verso by eight members of the Privy Council including Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, Sir Francis Bacon and William Cecil, Lord Burghley, in Latin, on vellum, 24 lines on one membrane, 490 x 255mm, seal slits (three neat vertical incisions of c.100mm, perhaps from cancellation, one of them touching the signature, a few small losses, including to initial letter E, some staining and discolouration), paper mount. Provenance: from the collection of the Norfolk historian Charles John Palmer (1805-1888): a note on the mount probably in his hand records its purchase in 1839 for three guineas from Thorpe's catalogue 476 amongst 'A cluster of splendid & very rare autographs'.
Sir Thomas Gresham (c.1519-1579, the founder of the Royal Exchange and Gresham College) had been employed as royal financial agent at Antwerp since 1551, charged with rolling over the crown's debt on the Antwerp money markets, which on his entry into the position stood at the staggering level of £325,000. A favourable macroenomic situation, including a steep decline in interest rates after 1559, was to enable Gresham to achieve a sharp reduction in the crown's overseas borrowings, which he had all but eliminated by 1565.
Sir Thomas Gresham (c.1519-1579, the founder of the Royal Exchange and Gresham College) had been employed as royal financial agent at Antwerp since 1551, charged with rolling over the crown's debt on the Antwerp money markets, which on his entry into the position stood at the staggering level of £325,000. A favourable macroenomic situation, including a steep decline in interest rates after 1559, was to enable Gresham to achieve a sharp reduction in the crown's overseas borrowings, which he had all but eliminated by 1565.
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Eugenio Donadoni
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