John Lyon

John Lyon memorial, St Mary's, Harrow on the HillJohn Lyon (c.1514 – 1592) was an English armigerous yeoman-landowner who was the founder of Harrow School and the John Lyon's Charity. The John Lyon School was named after him. The Harrow School house, Lyon's, is also named after him.

Family John Lyon, who was born c. 1514, and resided at the 15th-century Preston Hall, was a descendant of the Lyons family of Warkworth, Northamptonshire, He was the son of John Lyon (b. c. 1450), who descended from another John Lyon, who in 1370 received land at Kingsbury in the parish of Edgware. who was Lord Mayor of London from 1554 to 1555, who was a member of the Worshipful Company of Grocers.

The 19th century Dictionary of National Biography identifies his mother as a woman named Joan who married his father: and was in 1572 the founder, with a Royal Charter, of Harrow School, is named after him, but the Harrow School buildings that were built after his death were built by, and named after, a different John Lyon.

Lyon established a trust for the maintenance of Harrow Road and Edgware Road, from which the income from his estate is dispensed by John Lyon's Charity to charities and state-schools in nine London boroughs: Barnet, Brent, Camden, Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea, Harrow, and the Cities of London and Westminster. Lyon's family had a lion in its coat of arms that is represented as a supporter in the contemporary coat of arms of the London Borough of Brent, and as a crest in the contemporary coat of arms of the London Borough of Harrow.

Foundation of Harrow School Lyon spent twenty English marks every year on the education of poor children, as a consequence of which, on 13 February 1572, Queen Elizabeth I granted him a Royal Charter by Letters Patent to found a free grammar school for the education of boys at Harrow, and to incorporate his trustees as Governors of the "Free Grammar-School of John Lyon". He during 1590 stipulated statutes for his school that provided for a schoolmaster with the degree of M. A., and an usher with the degree of B. A., both to be unmarried; and that stipulated the curriculum and activities for its pupils (including top-driving, handball, running, and shooting) who were to learn the Protestant catechism and attend mass, and to be taught Greek in the two highest forms. He stipulated that the school could ‘receive so many foreigners over and above the youth of the parish as the whole number may be well taught and the place can contain'.

He also, with his wife and the Governors of his school, invested in property at Marylebone in 1571, the rents from which were used to the repair the high-road between Edgware and London, and the surplus from which were used to repair the road between Harrow and London. Subsequently, after the Clerk to the Signet proposed to raise from Lyon £50 as a loan to the state, the Attorney-General Sir Gilbert Gerard contended that Lyon ought not to be forced to sell lands that he had bought for the maintenance of his school.