and landed at Dover on 2 March 1795. Soon afterwards Stapleton, in company with Bishop Douglass, waited upon the Duke of Portland and Mr. Pitt to solicit their approval of a plan for converting the school at Old Hall Green, near Ware, Hertfordshire, into a catholic college. The duke had previously known Stapleton, and he and Pitt gave them encouragement. Stapleton accordingly conducted his students to Old Hall Green, and on 19 Aug. 1795 the first stone was laid of the college of St. Edmund. Stapleton presided over it till the autumn of 1800, when, having accompanied the Rev. John Nassau to Rome on an important secret mission, he was raised to the episcopate. His appointment to be bishop of Hierocæsarea in partibus and vicar-apostolic of the Midland district, in succession to Dr. Charles Berington [q. v.], was approved by the pope on 29 May 1800, and he was consecrated on 8 March 1801. He took up his residence at Long Birch, near Wolverhampton, and employed Dr. John Milner [q. v.] as his secretary. He died at St. Omer on 23 May 1802, and was succeeded in his vicariate by Dr. Milner.
[Brady's Episcopal Succession; Evans's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, No. 21652; Husenbeth's Colleges on the Continent, pp. 15–16; Husenbeth's Life of Milner, p. 84; Michel, Les Écossais en France, ii. 330; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. x. 43; Smith's Brewood, 2nd edit. 1874, p. 49; Ward's Hist. of St. Edmund's College, Old Hall, 1893, p. 343, with portrait.]
STAPLETON, MILES de (d. 1314), baron, was the son of Nicholas de Stapleton (III) and his wife Margaret, daughter of Miles Basset. Nicholas belonged to a Richmondshire family that took its name from the township of Stapleton, on the south bank of the Tees, about two miles south-west of Darlington, in which it possessed a small estate. The first member of the family to attain any position was Nicholas de Stapleton I, who was custos of Middleham Castle in the reign of King John, and was the father of Nicholas de Stapleton II, the father of the first-mentioned Nicholas (III). Nicholas III served as a judge of the king's bench between 1272 and 1290, held sixteen carucates of land scattered throughout Yorkshire, besides some Berkshire lands that he obtained from his wife, and died in 1290.
Miles de Stapleton was the eldest surviving son, and at his father's death was already married to Sybil (also called Isabel), daughter and coheiress to John de Bellew. Through her mother Laderana, Sybil inherited a share of the possessions of the elder line of the Bruces, which were divided among four sisters and coheiresses at the death of her uncle, Peter de Bruce of Skelton, in 1271. In memory of this connection with a great house, Miles de Stapleton assumed the lion rampant of the Bruces as his arms. Miles served in the Gascon and Scottish wars of Edward I. In 1291 he was engaged on the king's business, under Roger de Mowbray, in Scotland (Cal. Patent Rolls, 1281–92, p. 434). In 1295 he was in Gascony. In 1298 he was in the Falkirk campaign, serving under his patron Henry de Lacy, third earl of Lincoln [q. v.] (Gough, Scotland in 1298, p. 43). In 1300 he was summoned to the siege of Carlaverock, but he was not mentioned in the famous French poem on the siege. In the same year he accompanied the Earl of Lincoln, on a mission to the court of Rome, receiving on 9 Oct. letters of protection for one year (Cal. Patent Rolls, 1292–1301, p. 538). He was entrusted by the king with the direction of the household of Edward, prince of Wales, served in the siege of Stirling, in attendance on the prince (Palgrave, Doc. illustrative of Scottish History, p. 271); and in October 1305, when the Earl of Lincoln wished to appoint Stapleton to manage his household during his absence at the papal court, the prince informed the earl that he had no power to give Stapleton leave to hold this post without the express command of the king (Deputy-Keeper Public Rec. 9th Rep. p. 249). Stapleton was one of the experienced men of affairs to whom Edward I entrusted the difficult task of bringing up his son in businesslike and soldierly ways. Meanwhile his estates and influence in Yorkshire were steadily increasing. The betrothal of his eldest son to a daughter of John of Brittany, earl of Richmond, and a grand-niece of the king, and his second son's betrothal to one of the daughters of Brian Fitzalan, lord of Bedale [q. v.], connected him with two branches of the greatest family of his district, and increased the importance of the house. After the death of Edmund of Cornwall had led to the lapse of his vast property to the crown, Edward I made Stapleton seneschal of Knaresborough Castle, and steward and joint constable of Knaresborough forest. In 1305 he was, jointly with John de Byron, appointed commissioner to suppress the clubmen or trail-bastons of Lancashire, but they were shortly afterwards superseded.
With Edward II's accession Stapleton's importance was for the moment increased. He became steward to the king's household, and went abroad in January 1308 on the occasion of the king's marriage at Boulogne. In a few months, however, he lost his
