William Stone (mercer)

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

Career
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. 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.

In January 1605, Anne of Denmark's vice-chamberlain George Carew, was given £6,108 from the treasury to pay her debt to Stone. 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.

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.

Stone was Master of the Clothworker's Company, and welcomed King James to Clothworker's Hall on 12 June 1607. Stone was also a member of the Turkey Company. The Clothworker's Company has his portrait, showing a carpet on a table.

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.

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

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.