He was born at Holt in Norfolk and was descended from an old Norfolk family. Gresham was apprenticed as a boy of 15 to John Middleton, a London mercer and in 1519 he and his brother William were both elected to the livery of the Worshipful Company of Mercers. Later, John was four times Master of the Mercers' Company. In partnership with his brother Richard, he exported textiles and imported grain from Germany and wine from Bordeaux, as well as trading in silks and spices from the Ottoman Empire and timber and skins from the Baltic. He would go on to found the Russia Company to trade with Russia as well. It was at this time that he acted as an agent for Cardinal Wolsey, Cardinal and Lord Chancellor under King Henry VIII.
Gresham invested greatly in land, buying the manors of Titsey, Tatsfield, Westerham and Lingfield on the borders of Surrey and Kent, as well as other properties in Norfolk and Buckinghamshire. He lived at a great house called Titsey Place at Oxted, Surrey from 1534 until his death.
Sir John was Sheriff of London and Middlesex in 1537-8 and was knighted. He was a member of the Royal household between 1527-1550, first as a "gentlemen pensioner" and later as one of the "esquires of the body" of King Henry VIII. In 1539, the king granted Gresham the manor of Sanderstead in Surrey (which had previously belonged to the Minster of Winchester since the year 962), following the dissolution of the Catholic monasteries.
He married Mary Ipswell in 1521 and they would have twelve children together (including our ancestor Sir William Gresham (1522-1578) between 1522 and 1538, when Mary died.
In 1541, Gresham was one of the jurors who tried Thomas Culpepper and Francis Dereham for treason, charged as intimacy with Queen Catherine Howard. Both were beheaded at Tyburn on December 10th, 1541. Queen Catherine herself was subsequently executed on February 13th, 1542.
In 1547, Sir John became Lord Mayor of London, and after the end of his term of office continued to serve as an alderman.
One year before his death, in 1555, he founded Gresham's School in his hometown, Holt in Norfolk. He endowed the school with land and money and placed these endowments in the care of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers, which has carried out his trust to this day. Today, the school is an independent, well respected boarding and day school for students aged 3-18. The school is profusely decorated with grasshoppers, which is the symbol for the Gresham family. The grasshopper can also be seen as the weathervane on the Royal Exchange in the City of London, founded in 1565 by Gresham's nephew Sir Thomas Gresham, who also founded Gresham College in the City of London.
According to family legend, the founder of the family, Roger de Gresham, was a foundling abandoned as a new born baby in long grass in North Norfolk in the 13th century and was found by a woman whose attention was drawn to the child by a grasshopper. It is perhaps also likely that the grasshopper is a heraldic reference to the name Gresham, with gres being a Middle English form of grass. In the English system of heraldry, the grasshopper is said to represent wisdom and nobility.
Gresham died on October 23rd, 1556 of "a malignant fever" and his tomb is in the City of London church of St. Michael Bassishaw.
The family motto is "Fiat voluntas tua" ("Thy will be done").
The Gresham School's Grasshopper
Sir John Gresham
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