John Vesey

John Vesey or Veysey (1462?–1554) was an English bishop.

Vesey was born John Harman, probably about 1462, the son of a yeoman farmer, in a farmhouse now the site of Moor Hall, Sutton Coldfield. He received his education at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he gained a doctorate in canon and civil law. After ordination he was appointed rector of St Mary's Church, Chester. He founded Bishop Vesey's Grammar School for boys in Sutton Coldfield in 1527, which is named after him to this day.

Vesey became a friend of Thomas Wolsey who was also educated at Magdalen College. From some unknown date until 1508 Vesey served as Archdeacon of Barnstaple. In 1509, Wolsey became a canon of Windsor and chaplain to Henry VIII of England. Vesey was appointed a canon of Exeter Cathedral. Vesey became the Bishop of Exeter in 1519 and the King awarded him the temporalities of the see, worth about £1,500 a year. The town of his birth benefited greatly from his wealth. In 1527 he obtained permission to enclose a large plot of land close to his birthplace and built a grand house (as of 2013^[update] the site of Moor Hall Hotel) where he occasionally lived.

The township of Sutton Coldfield had fallen on hard times and Vesey took it on himself to restore the fortunes of the town and its inhabitants. He prevailed upon the King to grant a Royal Charter of incorporation for the town in 1528; this entrusted the government of the town to a warden and to 24 local inhabitants known together as the Warden and Society of the Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield.

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