Thomas Gresham left London a free college, and Parliament sold the building for a tax office in 1768

Sir Thomas Gresham built the Royal Exchange in London at his own cost; it opened in 1567. His only legitimate son, Richard, died in 1564, and his natural daughter Anne also died before him. His will of 1575 gave his widow, Dame Anne, the Exchange income of about £750 a year for life. After her it went to the City of London Corporation and the Mercers' Company. They were to pay seven professors £50 a year each to give free lectures in Latin and English in his Bishopsgate house; the professors were not to marry. After his death in 1579 Sir Henry Neville, his nearest male heir, challenged the will. A private Act of Parliament settled the dispute in 1581. Dame Anne died in 1596. Queen Elizabeth wrote at once to put her own choice in as music professor, and lectures began in 1597. In the Great Fire of 1666 Gresham's statue was the only one at the Exchange to survive. The trustees borrowed heavily to rebuild. In 1768 an Act sold the college mansion to the Crown for an Excise Office, and the college had no building for more than 50 years. The professors still received £100 each, the 1768 sum, in the 1890s. The college moved into Barnard's Inn in 1991. The City and the Mercers' Company still run it jointly, and it gives more than 130 free lectures a year.