“ The division of the merchants in their respective dignities is worth a passing reflection. Some are knights and baronets; some are aldermen; the mass are plain John or Thomas, with a considerable sprinkling of Misters—the master of olden times being an addition of worship. The Captains and Majors of the list were doubtless the officers of the train-bands, of no little historic fame in London, from King John and Magna Carta even to John Gilpin. ”

“ Hogsden, Bethnall Green, Kingsland, Moorfields, Spital-fields, and Mile End Green,—places now so many centres of crowded population, not the sweet rural retreats, which we are content to go for farther a-field, being, like our fathers, fully awake to the delights of forest life. ”

“ James Heriot has a stronger association with a Scottish worthy of finance, George Heriot, the goldsmith, and the munificent benefactor of Edinburgh, who came south with his patron, King James; and, as his biographer tells us, he prospered here as he had prospered in the north. Besides his bequests to his native town, he left ample legacies to his brothers-german, of whom one was James; and their wealth and name were assuredly represented [x] by the James Heriot the goldsmith of this list. ”

“ Some resided on “The Bridge,” the London Bridge for ages covered with dwellings, from one of which the daughter of a rich citizen fell into the Thames to be saved by the bold apprentice Osborne, who married her, and founded the ducal family of Leeds.
The painted portraits of the more distinguished of these fathers of our trade would deserve a special study. Sir John Houblon’s may be seen at the Bank of England; Benjamin Bathurst’s is assuredly piously preserved by his ennobled family ”

“ More down to the latest dates, may challenge comparison with them. The City and its halls are full of them; and Sir Thomas Gresham’s design of an university in London could not be better revived and realized than by annexing a fine gallery of merchants’ portraits to its other branches of instruction. It is a good suggestion, that the profit got by the Treasury from the sale of his estate in Broad Street to a Banking Company, should be pursued to its legitimate issue,—the establishment of that university.
The topic of Gresham’s University has some elucidation from the list of 1677. ”

“ These men may be presumed to have enriched their descendants who are still conspicuous among us. The rest of the Goldsmiths of 1677 seem to have been little remarkable in the next generation, when, after the revolution of 1688, joint-stock banking, and safe facilities in paper currency took the start which constitutes an era in finance. The capitalists of London in the reign of Charles II. were sorely damaged by his iniquitous shutting of the Exchequer against their legitimate claims. ”