Sir William Stapleton, 1st Baronet

Sir William Stapleton, 1st Baronet (died 3 August 1686) was an Anglo-Irish landowner in the English West Indies who became Governor of the Leeward Islands.

The third son of Redmond Stapleton, he had older brothers called Redmond and Edmond. The family claimed descent from a Norman knight who had settled in Ireland during the reign of King Henry II.[1] Stapleton was among the Royalists who followed King Charles II into exile in France, and after the Restoration of 1660 he was given new opportunities in the West Indies.[2]

In 1667, Stapleton sailed with Sir Tobias Bridge and his regiment to Barbados, where he was given the rank of lieutenant colonel, and Lord Willoughby, the new Governor of Barbados, sent him to the Leeward Islands. In 1668, he was appointed Deputy Governor of Montserrat, and then in 1671 Governor of the Leeward Islands. In the same year, he married Anne Russell, the daughter of Colonel Randolph Russell, of Nevis, bringing him into a network of locally established planter families. He acquired the Waterwork plantation on Montserrat, and in 1674 received the Cayon Quarter property on St Kitts as a gift from Philip de Nogle. In 1678, on behalf of the Crown, he granted the Figtree plantation on Nevis to Charles Pim and speedily bought that from him for 400,000 pounds of muscovado sugar. In 1679, he granted the Carleton plantations on Antigua to his older brother, Redmond Stapleton, then in 1682 bought them from his brother for 100,000 pounds of muscovado sugar. He died in Paris in 1686, leaving complicated financial affairs behind him.[1]

On 20 December 1679 Stapleton was created a baronet.[2]

Stapleton's surviving sons were James (1672–1690), who succeeded him as second Baronet, but died young; William (1674–1699), who became the third Baronet; and Miles. He also left a daughter, Mary, who married Sir James FitzEdmond Cotter.[1]

Notes

1. Donald H. Akenson, If the Irish Ran the World: Montserrat, 1630-1730 (1997), p. 96
2. "Stapleton Family" in Vere Langford Oliver, History of Antigua, Vol. III, pp. 102-103