Sir John Morden (1623-6 September 1708) was a successful English merchant and philanthropist who also served briefly as an MP. He established Morden College in Blackheath, south-east London as a home for retired merchants; as a charity, it continues to provide residential care over 300 years later.

Born in London, the son of a goldsmith, Morden was apprenticed to Sir William Soame, a wealthy London merchant and member of the British East India Company, in 1643. After a posting in Aleppo in Turkey, Morden returned to London in 1660 having amassed a substantial fortune and become a member of the East India company himself.

It is said that, having decided to return to England, Morden loaded his complete fortune into three ships, none of which arrived at the expected time, prompting his deep despair. However, their eventual arrival after difficult voyages led him to rejoice and made him determined to help merchants who had fallen on hard times.

In 1669, he purchased (for £4,200) Wricklemarsh Manor (now part of Lee) in south-east London, an estate of over 250 acres with a mansion house.

Created a baronet in 1688 by King James II, in 1691 he became Commissioner of Excise under King William III, and was briefly the Member of Parliament for Colchester.

In 1695, after serving two years as Treasurer of Bromley College, a home for clergy widows, he resigned to establish - at a cost of £10,000 - his own hospice or almshouse for 'poor Merchants...and such as have lost their Estates by accidents, dangers and perils of the seas or by any other accidents ways of means in their honest endeavours to get their living by means of Merchandizing'.

Morden College was built (to a design sometimes attributed to Sir Christopher Wren, but largely carried out by Edward Strong, his master mason) on the north-east corner of the Wricklemarsh estate and was intended to house 40 single or widowed men. College trustees were drawn from the East India Company and Turkey Company.

Morden died in 1708, aged 86, and was buried in the College chapel, but the college he founded has since expanded several times and continues its charitable work. Apart from the college, Sir John's name lives on in the name of a public house in Campshill Road in nearby Lewisham.