died probably in 1417, when his successor in that office was appointed (Le Neve, ed. Hardy, i. 534, ii. 427). Stone is said to have written 123 letters, some of which are extant in the collections of Sir Thomas Bodley and Richard James in the Bodleian Library (Bernard, Cat. MSS. Angliæ, p. 261). One addressed while he was chancellor of Worcester to Thomas Arundel [q. v.], archbishop of Canterbury, is extant in Cotton MS. Vitellius E. x. 121. Two others are in Harleian MS. 431, f. 25 a b.. Richard James, in his ‘Iter Lancastre’ (Chetham Soc. p. 6), says: ‘Gilbert Stone, being for ye time a trimme man of his penne, was sollicited by ye monks there [i.e. at Holywell] to write their founders or saints life; when he requested summe memories of him, they had none at all. Wherefore in a letter of his, he says “tis no matter, for he would write them notwithstanding a fine legend after ye manner of Thomas of Canterburye.”’
[Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib. pp. 693–4; Twyne's Antiquitatis Acad. Oxoniensis Apologia, 1620; authorities cited.]
STONE, JEROME (1727–1756), linguist and poet, was born in the parish of Scoonie, Fifeshire, in 1727. His father, a seaman, died abroad in 1730, and his mother was left in poverty. He commenced at an early age to earn his living, first as a chapman, and afterwards by selling books at fairs and travelling with them over the country. With no assistance but that of his books he acquired a knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, and, with the aid of a parish schoolmaster, he studied Latin. The professors of St. Andrews, hearing of his abilities, permitted him to attend their classes, and at the end of three years recommended him for the post of usher in the grammar school, Dunkeld. In two or three years afterwards the Duke of Atholl appointed him headmaster. While in his thirtieth year he was seized with fever, and died on 11 June 1756.
Stone's fame as a linguist was wide, but he did not live to complete any large literary work. While at St. Andrews he began to contribute to magazines, and at Dunkeld he studied Gaelic literature, both Scottish and Irish, with a view to translating. His contributions to the ‘Scots Magazine’ include poems, an allegory, and a preliminary welcome to Dr. Johnson's dictionary. At his death he was engaged on two works: (1) ‘An Enquiry into the Original of the Nation and Language of the Ancient Scots;’ and (2) ‘The Immortality of Authors,’ an allegory (New Statistical Abstract, ‘Fife,’ p. 267).
[Encyclopædia Perthensis, xxi. 440; Scots Magazine, June 1756.]
STONE, JOHN HURFORD (1763–1818), political refugee, was born at Taunton, Somerset, in 1763. Losing his father in childhood, he was sent to his uncle, William Hurford, coal merchant and common councilman in London, and, with his younger brother William, he appears to have succeeded to his uncle's business. Being a unitarian, he became intimate with Price and Priestley, and his radical opinions, coupled with his acquaintance with continental languages and literatures, attracted to his dinner table Fox, Sheridan, the poet Rogers, Talleyrand, and Madame de Genlis. A prominent member of the Society of the Friends of the Revolution (of 1688), he presided in London in October 1790 at the reception of a deputation from Nantes, at which the downfall of French despotism was celebrated. In September 1792 he was in Paris, and was chairman at a dinner of British residents and visitors held to commemorate the French victories in Belgium; Thomas Paine and Lord Edward Fitzgerald were present. Madame de Genlis, on quitting Paris, entrusted some manuscripts to Stone, which he confided to Helen Maria Williams [q. v.], who, apprehensive of a domiciliary search by Jacobin inspectors, destroyed them. He advanced twelve thousand francs for a scheme for procuring the escape of M. de Genlis from prison, a debt of honour which the widow afterwards refused to discharge. He returned to London in February 1793, but was again in Paris in the following May, when he was a witness in favour of General Miranda. On the arrest of British subjects in the autumn of 1793, in retaliation for the capture of Toulon, he was imprisoned for seventeen days at the Luxembourg. He was again arrested, with his wife, Rachel Coope, in April 1794, probably on account of his Girondin sympathies, but was released on condition of quitting France. He accordingly went to Switzerland, but was speedily allowed to return to Paris, and in June 1794 obtained a divorce. This presumably marks the date of his liaison or secret marriage with Miss Williams. Tone found them living together in 1796. In January of that year Stone's brother William was tried at the Old Bailey for ‘treacherously conspiring with John Hurford Stone, now in France, to destroy the life of the king and to raise a rebellion in his realms;’ but being shown to have acted entirely under his brother's influence in harbouring William Jackson (1737?–1795) [q. v.], he was acquitted, whereupon he retired to France and became steward to an Englishman named Parker at Villeneuve St. Georges. Stone himself, who published
