He founded the Royal Exchange in 1566 and served as the chief financial adviser to the Elizabethan government. He founded Gresham College in 1579 as a venue for public lectures and the Royal Society grew from these meetings at Gresham’s house. His fame rests on Gresham’s Law, wrongly attributed to him in the 19th century, which states that ‘bad money drives out good’. According to this law, if there are two coins in circulation with different ratios of face value to intrinsic value (in terms of the precious metal content of the coins), the coin with the higher intrinsic value will tend to be taken out of circulation for hoarding or melting down.