John Tame

Rubbing of monumental brass of John Tame, St. Mary's Church, Fairford. He is shown wearing full armour, as an esquire and member of the gentry, not as a merchant dressed in fur-trimmed robes

Chest tomb, "Founder's Tomb", of John Tame (d.1500) and his wife, St. Mary's Church, Fairford. Viewed from within the Tame Chapel John Tame (c. 1430

Origins According to his near contemporary the antiquary John Leland (d.1552), John Tame "came out of the house of Tame of Stowel" and "The elder house of the Tames is at Stowell, by Northleche in Gloucestershire". The Tames of Stowell were wool merchants and cloth dealers, already well established in the early 15th century.

Career John Tame was a merchant of the City of London, and according to the Gloucestershire historian Ralph Bigland (d.1784), served as Sheriff of the City of London. In 1492, soon after the siege of Boulogne (1491), Tame, presumably It is stated by Neale (1846) that the captured ship was carrying a beautiful set of twenty-eight stained-glass windows, intended for a present to the Pope and that Tame brought the glass, and the workmen who were accompanying it, to England, and in order to display it fittingly, decided to rebuild the parish church at Fairford "on a plan of costly magnificence, suited to the beautiful windows which he intended thus to consecrate to God." John Tame (or his son) memorialised these noble families which had been connected with the manor of Fairford (de Clare, Despencer, Beauchamp) by the inclusion of their armorials (together with those of Tame) on the tower of Fairford Church.

Tame also acquired the manor of Rendcomb, Gloucestershire, by grant from the Crown, to which it had reverted after the attainder of the Earl of Warwick. His son Sir Edmund Tame rebuilt Rendcomb Church. In 1497 John and his son Edmund Tame levied a fine of land in Hatherop, an adjacent village. and his great wealth derived from the production and sale of wool, which came from his vast flocks of sheep for the grazing of which he secured large tracts of land. a daughter of John Twynyho (d.1485), a lawyer and cloth merchant of Cirencester who had acquired the lease of Fairford in partnership with John Tame, whose monumental brass survives in Lechlade Church, Gloucestershire. By his wife he had progeny as follows: William Tame, eldest son, disinherited by his father; Sir Edmund I Tame (d.1534) of Rayton, second son and heir, a courtier and Knight of the Body of King Henry VIII, knighted by King Henry VIII in 1516, Sheriff of Gloucestershire in 1505 and 1513, and father of Edmund II Tame. He was Steward of Cirencester Abbey and lived in a large mansion house in the market place of Cirencester. He married twice: firstly to Agnes Greville (d.1506) (by whom he had four children) a daughter of John Greville of Milcote, Warwickshire and a sister of Sir Edward Greville and a descendant of William Greville (d.1401) of Chipping Campden, "the flower of the wool merchants of all England"; secondly to Elizabeth Tyringham, a member of the Tyringham family of Tyringham in Buckinghamshire, without progeny; He completed the rebuilding of Fairford Church and also rebuilt Rendcombe Church. He is commemorated by two different monumental brasses in Fairford Church, which duplication is unique in the county of Gloucestershire. in Wiltshire, in which parish the Tames held land. Eleanor Tame, who married and survived her husband;

Death and legacy John Tame died in the year 1500, seised of Fairford and Rendcombe.

Monument John Tame is buried in Fairford Church in a chest tomb on the north side of the chancel (the most usual burial-place for a founder). On the ledger stone on top of the chest tomb are various monumental brasses, set into the slab, the main ones showing John Tame and his wife standing facing each other.