John Stile

- 1505

• Name	John Stile  [1]
  Birth	of London, England   [2]
  Gender	Male
  Alternate birth	of Langley, Beckenham, Kent   [3]
  Death	28 Sep 1505  [4, 5, 6]
  Burial	St. Thomas of Acre, London, England   [7]
  Person ID	I41247	Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others
  Last Modified	12 Sep 2025

  
  

  Father	William Stile,   b. of Ipswich, Suffolk, England d. 11 Jun 1475
  Mother	Isabel Bolle   d. 16 Feb 1491
  Family ID	F25213	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Elizabeth Wolston   d. 18 Aug 1548
  Children	+ 1. Florence Stile
  Family ID	F24132	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	12 Sep 2025

  
  

• Notes

  He was a mercer of London. Apprenticed to John Shelly, he emerged from apprenticeship in 1478 and went into business with an inheritance from his father, and a larger one from his uncle by marriage, Henry Bolle of Ipswich. From 1490 he is recorded working for the Mercer's Company on domestic and "adventurer" matters. He was a warden in 1497. He spent time in Antwerp where he was helped by his apprentice and factor John Medrall. His children did well both due to their father's moderate success and also from their mother's second marriage, which was to Sir James Yarford, a childless mercer and stapler who was mayor of London in 1519-20 and who evidently took all the surviving Stile children as his own. The Stiles Family in America confuses this John Stile with the Sir John Stile who was the English ambassador to Spain in about 1505, among other ambassadorships. The brief Wikipedia page for this other John Stile corrects this.

  
  

• Sources

  [S6009] Pedigrees of Families in the County of Kent by William Berry. London: Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper, 1830. [S142] Royal Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families by Douglas Richardson. Salt Lake City, 2013. [S1415] The Visitation of London in the year 1568, taken by Robert Cooke, Clarenceux King of Arms ed. Joseph Jackson Howard and George John Armytage. London: The Harleian Society, 1869. [S8544] Will of Anne Sapcote (d. 14 Mar 1559), modern spelling transcript by Nina Green.. [S8537] Inquisitions Post Mortem, Henry VII, Entries 351-400 at British History Online. [S8538] Anne F. Sutton, "London Mercers from Suffolk c. 1200 to 1570: Benefactors, Pirates and Merchant Adventurers, Part II." Suffolk Archaeology & History 42:162, 2010., year only. [S8538] Anne F. Sutton, "London Mercers from Suffolk c. 1200 to 1570: Benefactors, Pirates and Merchant Adventurers, Part II." Suffolk Archaeology & History 42:162, 2010.