William Stone (mercer)

Sir William Stone (died 1607) was a London mercer and alderman who sold fabrics to the British royal family.

Career

He was a son of Reginald Stone, a London fishmonger. He was based at Cheapside but seems also to have owned a house at Leyton.^[1]

He sent silks to Scotland worth £200 for the royal wedding in 1589.^[2]

He was knighted by King James I at Ruckholt, the house of Michael Hicks, on 16 June 1604.^[3] Hicks's brother, Baptist Hicks, was a mercer trading like Stone.

In January 1605, Anne of Denmark's vice-chamberlain George Carew was given £6,108 from the treasury to pay her debt to Stone.^[4] In February 1607, Carew received another amount to pay the queen's debts to Stone and others.^[5]

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.^[6]

Stone was Master of the Clothworkers' Company, and welcomed King James to Clothworkers' Hall on 12 June 1607.^[7] He was also a member of the Turkey Company. The Clothworkers' Company has his portrait, showing a carpet on a table.^[8]

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.^[9]

His wife was called Barbara. Arrangements were made to pay a royal debt of £1000 to her in 1608.^[10] 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.^[11]

Richard Johnson dedicated his 1607 work The Pleasant Conceits of Old Hobson, The Merry Londoner (London, 1607) to Stone.