1. Sir John Gresham was an English merchant, courtier and financier who worked for King Henry VIII of England, Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell.
18 Facts About John Gresham
1. 2.
In 1519, he and his older brother William John Gresham were both elected to the livery of the company.
3.
Later, John Gresham was four times Master of the Mercers' Company.
4.
In partnership with his brother Richard John Gresham, John Gresham was in the business of exporting textiles overseas and importing grain from Germany and wine from Bordeaux.
5.
John Gresham traded in silks and spices from the Ottoman Empire and imported timber and skins from the Baltic.
6.
John Gresham was a founding member of the Muscovy Company, formed to trade with what is Russia.
7.
John Gresham invested his money in land, buying the manors of Titsey, Tatsfield, Westerham, and Lingfield, on the borders of Surrey and Kent, as well as estates in Norfolk and Buckinghamshire.
8.
John Gresham lived at a great house called Titsey Place at Oxted in Surrey from 1534 until his death.
9.
John Gresham was a member of the Royal household between 1527 and 1550, first as a gentleman pensioner and later as one of the esquires of the body of King Henry VIII.
10.
In 1541, John Gresham was one of the jurors who tried Thomas Culpepper and Francis Dereham for treason - that is, intimacy with Queen Catherine Howard.
11.
In 1546, John Gresham was one of the King's commissioners to survey the properties of the chantries to be dissolved in Surrey and Sussex.
12.
John Gresham endowed the school with land and money and placed these endowments in the care of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers, which has continued to carry out his trust to the present day.
13.
John Gresham's tomb was in the City of London church of St Michael Bassishaw.
14.
John Gresham's son John Gresham was born in 1390 and died in 1450.
15.
John Gresham married firstly, in 1521, Mary Ipswell, with whom he had twelve children between 1522 and 1538:.
16.
Nevertheless, the first Sir John Gresham's line continues in the descendants of his third son, another John Gresham, who was the ancestor of the Greshams of Fulham, Albury, and Haslemere.
17.
In 1555, shortly before his death, John Gresham founded John Gresham's School in his home town of Holt, Norfolk, placing its endowments under the stewardship of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers, which has continued to carry out the task entrusted to it until the present day.
18.
Sir Rowland Hill, publisher of the Geneva Bible, was a close friend of Sir John Gresham and was provided with a black gown to attend his funeral and served as his executor.