fleet in the Downs, at once dismissed them (Rushworth, vii. 785), and they landed at Calais on 17 Aug. Stapleton was ill, and the hardships of the journey increased his fever to such an extent that he died on the following day, at an inn called the Three Silver Lions, and, as his illness was suspected to be the plague, he was buried immediately in the protestant burying-ground at Calais (A True Relation of Captain Batten, &c., 1647, 4to; A Short and True Narrative of the Sickness and Death of Sir Philip Stapleton, 1647, 4to).
A friendly biographer, supposed to be Denzil Holles, describes Stapleton as a man ‘of a thin body and a weak constitution, but full of spirit,’ adding that he was ‘quick of apprehension, sound of judgment, of clear and good elocution’ (ib. pp. 3, 5). Robert Baillie styles him, ‘after Holles, the second gentleman for all gallantry in England’ (Letters, iii. 19). The Sutherland Clarendon in the Bodleian Library contains four engraved portraits of Stapleton.
Stapleton married twice: first, the widow of John Gee, of Bishop Burton, Yorkshire, 1627. By her he left four children: (1) John Stapleton of Warter; (2) Robert Stapleton of Wighill (d. 1675); (3) Katherine, married George Leeson of Dublin; (4) Mary, married first one Bigges of Gray's Inn; secondly, Thomas, fourth viscount Fitzwilliam, of Merrion in Ireland. By his second wife, Barbara, daughter of Henry Lennard, twelfth lord Dacre of Hurstmonceaux, whom he married at St. Anne's, Blackfriars, 6 Feb. 1638 (Malcolm, Londinium Redivivum, ii. 376), he had two sons—Henry and Philip—and a daughter Frances, who married Sir Nathaniel Powell of Ewhurst Place, Sussex, besides other children who died young.
[The only biography of Stapleton is contained in a series of articles by H. E. Chetwynd-Stapylton, printed in the Journal of the Yorkshire Archæological Society, 1883–4, vol. viii., and reprinted in 1896 under the title of The Stapeltons of Yorkshire.]
STAPLETON or STAPYLTON, Sir ROBERT (d. 1669), dramatic poet and translator, was the third son of Richard Stapleton of Carlton by Snaith, Yorkshire, by Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Henry Pierrepoint of Holm Pierrepoint (Dugdale, Visitation of Yorkshire, ed. Davies, p. 265). He was educated in the Benedictine convent of St. Gregory at Douay, where he became a professed monk of the order on 30 March 1625 (Weldon, Chronicle, Appendix, p. 9). But being, as Wood observes, ‘too gay and poetical to be confined within a cloyster,’ he left the Benedictines, turned protestant, and was appointed one of the gentlemen in ordinary of the privy chamber to Prince Charles. He followed the king when his majesty left London, and was knighted at Nottingham on 13 Sept. 1642 (Metcalfe, Book of Knights, p. 199). After the battle of Edgehill he accompanied the king to Oxford, where he was created D.C.L. in November 1642. He remained at Oxford until its surrender to Fairfax in May 1645. Under the Commonwealth he lived a studious life, and at the Restoration he was made one of the gentlemen ushers to the privy chamber.
Stapleton died on 10 or 11 July 1669, and was buried on the 15th near the vestry door of Westminster Abbey (Chester, Registers of Westminster Abbey, p. 170). His will, dated 11 June 1669, was proved on 29 July by Elizabeth Simpson of Westminster, widow, to whom he left the bulk of his estate (although he had a wife living, whom he barely mentioned) in consideration, as he alleged, of the great care she had taken of him during his long illness. His wife was a Mrs. Hammond, widow (born Mainwaring).
For the stage he wrote:
- ‘The Royal Choice,’ a play entered in the register of the Stationers' Company, 29 Nov. 1653. No copy of this appears to have been preserved.
- ‘The Slighted Maid,’ London, 1663, 4to, a comedy, in five acts and in verse, which Pepys saw acted at the Duke's House, Lincoln's Inn Fields, on coronation day, 20 May 1603. The cast included the Bettertons, Cave Underhill [q. v.], and other well-known actors. Genest styles it ‘a pretty good comedy’ (History of the Stage, i. 46).
- ‘The Step-Mother,’ London, 1664, a tragi-comedy, in five acts and in verse, acted at Lincoln's Inn Fields by the Duke of York's servants on 28 May 1663. The cast was much the same as for the preceding play, but Genest says ‘the serious scenes of it are bad’ (ib. i. 46–7).
- ‘The Tragedie of Hero and Leander,’ London, 1669, 8vo, in five acts and in verse. ‘This is an indifferent tragedy—it is founded on the poem of Musæus—the original story being very simple, Stapylton was obliged to make large additions to it in order to form 5 acts—he has not been happy in these additions’ (ib. x. 142). It was never acted.
Stapleton published the following translations:
- ‘Pliny's Panegyricke: a Speech in the Senate, wherein publick Thanks are presented to the Emperor Trajan,’ Oxford, 1644, 4to, from the Latin of Pliny the younger, illustrated with annotations.
- ‘The first Six Satyrs of Juvenal … with annotations clearing the obscure places out of History, Laws, and Ceremonies of the Romans,’
