Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/105

 messenger (Fœdera, iii. 387). In July 1359 he was again going abroad on the king's service (ib. iii. 439), and was one of the negotiators of the treaty of Bretigny in 1360 (ib. iii. 494), being afterwards ordered with two others to see to its faithful execution. In June 1361 he received an annuity of 100l. from the exchequer for his ‘unwearied labours and laudable services.’ In January 1364 he again obtained letters of attorney for three years, and went to France to support John de Montfort's candidature for the Breton succession. He died in December of the same year, possibly, as the family historian conjectures, of wounds received in the battle of Auray.

Stapleton is celebrated by Geoffrey le Baker (p. 139) as a good and experienced soldier, a man of great probity and singular devotion to the Blessed Virgin. He was twice married. By his first wife he had a son John, who died in 1355. He married his second wife in 1350. This lady was Joan, daughter and coheiress of Oliver de Ingham, baron of Ingham [q. v.] in Norfolk, and widow of Roger Lestrange of Knockin. Henceforward Stapleton is as often described as ‘of Ingham’ as of ‘Bedale,’ and became a considerable proprietor in Norfolk. In 1360 he obtained royal license to dispense with the statute of mortmain, and, in conjunction with his wife, began to found a college of Mathurins or Trinitarians at Ingham, an order of canons established to pray for and redeem Christian captives from the Turks. He rebuilt the parish church of Ingham on a grand scale, and obtained from Bishop Thomas Percy of Norwich an ordinance for a foundation for a prior (or warden), sacrist, and six canons (Monasticon, vi. 1458–9), in which the rectory of the parish was absorbed. At first only the warden and two chaplains were appointed. The building is still the parish church, and parts are of this date. Stapleton was buried at Ingham; a sumptuous brass placed over his tomb is engraved in Gough's ‘Sepulchral Monuments’ (vol. i. pt. ii. p. 120), and in Mr. Chetwynd-Stapylton's ‘Stapeltons of Yorkshire’ (p. 100), who also gives the inscription from Blomefield's ‘Norfolk’ (ix. 324, 8vo). The brass was dilapidated in Blomefield's time, and has since disappeared. Stapleton's eldest son John died before him, and he was succeeded at Ingham as well as Bedale by Miles, his son by the heiress of Ingham. Their only other issue was a daughter Joan, married to Sir John Plays. Another three generations in the male line succeeded Stapleton at Ingham, after which the property was divided among coheiresses. A remarkable series of brasses, also destroyed, preserved their memory in Ingham church.

[Rymer's Fœdera; Geoffrey le Baker, ed. E. M. Thompson; Dugdale's Monasticon, vol. vi.; Dugdale's Baronage, vol. ii.; Blomefield's Norfolk, ix. 320–9, 8vo; Norfolk Archæ logical Journal, 1878; Chetwynd-Stapylton's Stapeltons of Yorkshire, pp. 87–101, and for Miles of Hathelsay, pp. 71–3.]

 STAPLETON or STAPILTON, PHILIP (1603–1647), soldier, born in 1603, was the second son of Henry Stapleton of Wighill, Yorkshire, and Mary, daughter of Sir John Foster of Bamborough. Stapleton was admitted a fellow-commoner of Queens' College, Cambridge, on 16 May 1617. In 1627 he married the widow of John Gee of Bishop Burton (eldest daughter of Sir John Hotham), and shortly after bought the estate of Warter Priory in Yorkshire (, The Stapletons of Yorkshire, p. 253). He was knighted on 25 May 1630 (, Book of Knights, p. 190). Clarendon describes Stapleton as ‘a proper man of fair extraction; but being a branch of a younger family inherited but a moderate estate, about five hundred pounds the year in Yorkshire, and, according to the education of that country, spent his time in those delights which horses and dogs administer’ (Rebellion, iv. 19). In June 1640 Stapleton was one of the signatories of the petition of the Yorkshire gentlemen against free quarter (, iii. 1214). In November he was returned to the Long parliament as member for Boroughbridge, and joined Sir John Hotham [q. v.] and other ‘northern men’ in the prosecution of Strafford (ib.; Trial of Strafford, pp. 14, 33, 601, 604). The popular leaders noted him as ‘a man of vigour in body and mind,’ and he ‘quickly outgrew his friends and countrymen in the confidence of those who governed.’ On 20 Aug. 1641 he was selected as one of the two commissioners whom the House of Commons appointed to attend the king to Scotland, and was joined with John Hampden that he might be ‘initiated under so great a master’ (, iv. 19; Lords' Journals, iv. 372, 401, v. 398).

In the second session of the Long parliament Stapleton was one of the four persons selected by the commons to bear their answer to the king's demand for the arrest of the five members (3 Jan. 1642), and one of the committee of twenty-five appointed to sit in the Guildhall during the adjournment of the house (, Arrest of the Five Members, ed. 1860, pp. 126, 280; Notes and Queries, 9th ser. ii. 122–3). A week later he made a vigorous speech against Colonel Thomas Lunsford [q. v.], Lord Digby, and