Stephen Soame

Sir Stephen Soame (c. 1540 – 23 May 1619) was an English merchant, landowner and politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1601. He served as Lord Mayor of London for the year 1598 to 1599. Career Soame was the second son of Thomas Soame, of Betely alias Beetley, Norfolk (Launditch Hundred), and his first wife Anne, sister and heir of Francis Knighton of Little Bradley, Suffolk, and widow of Richard Le Hunt of Little Bradley. His elder brother was Thomas Soame, gent. (died 1606, aged 64), of Little Bradley, Suffolk, where he has a memorial brass. One of his younger brothers, Robert Soame (1542-1609), became Master of Peterhouse and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. Their father Thomas died at Beetley in April 1569, and by his inquisition post mortem held in the following August he was found to be seised of lands in Little Bradley and Little Thurlow, in Suffolk, and at Beetley, North Elmham, Bilney, Great Bittering and Gressingham in Norfolk: his eldest son and heir Thomas was (according to the inquisition) then aged twenty-six. Stephen Soame was originally a member of the Worshipful Company of Girdlers, into which he was apprenticed in the ward of Cheap in the City of London. He married, during the 1570s, Anne (1555-1622), daughter of the London Haberdasher William Stone and his wife Marye Gray, daughter of John Gray of Barley, Hertfordshire. Their eldest son, William Soame, was born about 1580. His business in the cloth trade lay largely with the Eastland Company from its charter in 1579, but was suffering losses in his trade with the Netherlands when in 1589 the Privy Council sought to obtain his temporary admission to the Merchant Adventurers to stabilize his affairs. He served as Sheriff of London in 1589, becoming alderman for Cheap ward in the same year (which he continued to represent until his death in 1619). In 1598 he was elected Master of the Girdlers' Company: however, in the same year he was chosen to be Lord Mayor of London, but was found to be ineligible to that office "on accounte of belongyng to an inferior Companie and not one of the twelve greate Companies." He therefore petitioned to be admitted to the Worshipful Company of Grocers, and transferred to them: so he proceeded to the Mayoralty. This caused great offence to the Girdlers, who had his heraldic arms (gules, a chevron between three mallets or) removed from their hall.