William Stone (mercer)
Sir William Stone (died 1607) was a London mercer and Alderman who sold fabrics to the royal family.
Career
[edit]He was a son of Reginald Stone, a London fishmonger. Stone was knighted by King James I at Ruckholt, the house of Michael Hicks on 16 June 1604.[1] Hicks's brother, Baptist Hicks, was a mercer trading like Stone. Stone was based at Cheapside but seems also to have owned a house at Leyton.[2]
In January 1605, Anne of Denmark's vice-chamberlain George Carew, was given £6,108 from the treasury to pay her debt to Stone.[3] In February 1607, Carew received another amount to pay the queen's debts to William Stone, to the goldsmith George Heriot, to Elias Tillier a linen draper, and the silkman Thomas Henshawe.[4]
Stone supplied fabric used for masque costumes at court. With Thomas Henshawe, and the brewer Francis Snellinge, he petitioned the Earl of Salisbury for a debt of £300 for goods sold to the French ambassador, Christophe de Harlay, Count of Beaumont.[5]
Stone was Master of the Clothworker's Company, and welcomed King James to Clothworker's Hall on 12 June 1607.[6] Stone was also a member of the Turkey Company. The Clothworker's Company has his portrait, showing a carpet on a table.[7]
John Chamberlain wrote that Stone died at his house in Leyton on 14 September 1607 of a fever after drinking a quart of sack to toast King James' health. He was buried at St Mary Magdalen, Milk Street.[8]
His wife was called Barbara. Arrangements were made to pay a royal debt of £1000 to her in 1608.[9] His daughter Julian Stone married Nicholas Herrick, a London goldsmith, and was the mother of the poet Robert Herrick. Elizabeth Stone married Sir William Campion.[10]
The Pleasant Conceits of Old Hobson, The Merry Londoner (London, 1607), was dedicated by the writer Richard Johnson to William Stone, the queen's mercer.
References
[edit]- ^ John Nichols, Progresses of James I, 1 (London, 1828), 439.
- ^ Peter Edwards, Horses and the Aristocratic Lifestyle in Early Modern England (Boydell, 2018), 188.
- ^ Mary Anne Everett Green, Calendar Stone Papers Domestic, 1603–1610, 189.
- ^ Frederick Devon, Issue of the Exchequer (London, 1836), 55–57.
- ^ HMC Salisbury Hatfield, 19 (London, 1965), 249.
- ^ John Nichols, Progresses of James the First, 2 (London, 1828), 133–34.
- ^ 100 Objects: Clothworker's Company
- ^ Maurice Lee, Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, 1603–1624 (Rutgers UP, 1972), 101.
- ^ Mary Anne Everett Green, Calendar Stone Papers Domestic, 1603–1610, 449.
- ^ R. A. Houston, Punishing the Dead: Suicide, Lordship, and Community in Britain, 1500–1830 (Oxford, 2010), 126.