STAPYLTON, Robert (c.1618-aft. 1678), of Charing Cross, St Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster.

Stapylton was the son of Brian Stapylton, the ‘recruiter’ MP for Aldborough in the Long Parliament and should not be confused with his uncle and namesake, who had been appointed vicar of Lacock, in Wiltshire, in 1616.9Laurence, Army Chaplains, 177-8; Al. Ox.; H. E. Chetwynd-Stapylton, ‘The Stapletons of Yorks.’, YAJ viii. 423. Little is known about Stapylton before 1648. His academic record and later career suggest that he would probably have followed his uncle into the ministry had it not been for the civil war. But there is no record that he was ever ordained. It is possible that he was the ‘Mr Stapleton’ whom the parliamentarian peer Basil Feilding, 2nd earl of Denbigh had removed from the vicarage of ‘Kirkby’ (Monks Kirby, in Warwickshire) in 1644 for having allegedly obtained the living through improper use of the earl’s name.10HMC 4th Rep. 271. He may also have been the ‘Mr Stapleton’ who was admitted to preach at Radipole church, near Weymouth, after the war and whom the Dorset county committee banned from preaching in January 1647 on the grounds that his sermons attracted large numbers of soldiers, thereby endangering the security of local garrisons.11Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 130. However, the first clear reference to Stapylton is in a letter sent by Oliver Cromwell* (who was then commanding the forces in pursuit of the retreating Scottish Engager army) to the marquess of Argyll and his followers in Scotland on 16 September 1648. Cromwell sent Stapylton, Colonel John Bright* and another officer to Argyll to explain why it had been necessary to advance to the Scottish border.12TSP i. 100. It is not clear precisely when Stapylton had joined the New Model army, but it was presumably as an army preacher that he had come to Cromwell’s attention.

Stapylton’s sudden emergence from obscurity late in 1648 can almost certainly be attributed to Cromwell’s influence. By December, Stapylton had gained sufficiently in standing to take part in the army council debate at Whitehall on whether the magistrate should have any compulsive power in matters of religion.13Clarke Pprs. ii. 72. The same month he was one of four men chosen by the ‘honest’ inhabitants of Bristol to present their petition demanding justice against the king to Sir Thomas Fairfax* and the council.14The Moderate no. 23 (12-19 Dec. 1648), 210-11, (E.477.4). Stapylton appears to have entered Cromwell’s service (probably as one of his chaplains) by early 1649 and, in February, acted as his marriage broker in the negotiations over the match between Richard Cromwell* and Dorothy Maijor.15Add. 24861, f. 22; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 21, 27, 29. Stapylton subsequently signed the marriage settlement.16Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 61. In May 1649, he was appointed to receive Cromwell’s pay as commander of the forces designated for Ireland and was commissioned as one of the chaplains to Cromwell and the general officers in Ireland on 25 June 1649.17SP28/60, f. 660; SP28/62, ff. 41, 42. He probably returned to England with Cromwell in June 1650 and then served as chaplain to Major-general Deane’s regiment of foot during the campaign in Scotland (retaining his post as chaplain to the general officers).18SP28/63, f. 32; SP28/64, ff. 297, 319; SP28/67, f. 317; SP28/68, f. 13; SP28/76, f. 24; SP28/94, f. 98; Laurence, Army Chaplains, 177-8. On 29 September 1650, he preached before Cromwell and his officers in the church of St Giles in Edinburgh, where it was said that many of the Scots who heard the sermon ‘expressed much affection at the doctrine preached by Mr Stapylton in their usual way of groans’.19Mercurius Politicus no. 18 (3-10 Oct. 1650), 308 (E.614.7). He had the opportunity to hear Scottish groans of a different kind in August 1651, when he witnessed the defeat of the Scots at the battle of Worcester. Several of his letters describing the battle and its aftermath were read in the House.20CJ vii. 8a, 9a, 10b, 12a; Whitelocke, Mems. iii. 345-6. He continued to draw pay as chaplain to the general officers until June 1652 and again between April 1653 and August 1655.21SP28/60, f. 660; SP28/62, ff. 41, 42; SP28/93, ff. 17, 464; SP28/100, ff. 583, 685; SP28/107, f. 296.

In 1652, Stapylton and his cousin Slingisby Bethell* purchased the sequestered estate of their royalist uncle, Sir Henry Slingesby*, from the treason trustees, which they then held in trust for his family. Most of the money that was needed, £7,000 in all, appears to have been raised by Bethell, who was a London merchant.22Supra, ‘Slingisby Bethell’; Slingsby Diary ed. D. Parsons, 344-7, 349-52. Their title to Slingesby’s estate was challenged late in 1655 after Slingesby had been imprisoned for suspected involvement in the Yorkshire royalist uprising of that year. Writing to Major-general Robert Lilburne* and the Yorkshire militia commissioners in January 1656, Bethell and Stapylton expressed their astonishment that having ‘hazzarded our estates, our lives, our all that was dear to us with the forwardest in contesting against the malignant interest, [we] should now find ourselves aggrieved and attempted to be wronged by that power which ought to maintain us in our rights’.23Slingsby Diary ed. D. Parsons, 352-4.

Stapylton accompanied Bulstrode Whitelocke* on his embassy to Sweden late in 1653, as did another of Cromwell’s chaplains, Hugh Peters.24SP46/120, f. 14; Whitelocke, Diary, 293; CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 198, 510. Whitelocke chose Stapylton as his ‘gentleman of horse’ on 26 October 1653, describing him as ‘an ingenious, civil person, very sober and discreet, a good scholar and able to pray and preach well. He had the Latin tongue very well and was good at governing those under his charge and the rest of the family [i.e. Whitelocke’s household]’.25Add. 4995, f. 11v. It was Stapylton’s responsibility to look after Whitelocke’s horses and to supervise the travel arrangements in Sweden.26R. Spalding, Contemporaries of Bulstrode Whitelocke, 338-9. In December, Stapylton wrote a long letter to Cromwell from Uppsala, in which he claimed that friends of the Dutch at Whitehall were trying to hamper Whitelocke’s mission.27TSP i. 644-5. The familiar tone of this letter, with its several pious exhortations, is further evidence that he was the same man who had served as Cromwell’s chaplain. After Whitelocke’s return to England in the spring of 1654, Stapylton, Peters and George Downing* were among those preached at a thanksgiving service held at Whitelocke’s Chelsea residence.28Whitelocke, Diary, 389. Stapylton subsequently wrote an elegy on Whitelocke’s daughter Frances, who died in December 1654.29Spalding, Contemporaries of Whitelocke, 340.

Stapylton remained on the army payroll as chaplain to the general officers until August 1655, at about which time he was either discharged or retired – and in December he was referred to as Cromwell’s former chaplain.30SP28/107, f. 296; TSP iv. 243. He was living at Charing Cross by March 1657, when he wrote a letter of introduction to Henry Cromwell* in Ireland on behalf of two unnamed suitors.31Henry Cromwell Corresp. 244. In 1658, he and Bethell helped to negotiate a match between Sir Henry Slingesby’s eldest son, (Sir) Thomas Slingsby†, and a daughter of the royalist Sir Orlando Bridgeman*.32Leeds. Univ. Lib. DD149/82-3, 85. Stapylton’s letters to Slingesby, who had been imprisoned in Yorkshire since 1655, suggest that he had come to share some of his uncle’s distaste for the Cromwellian regime he had once served.

Your way of living for these six years last past has been in a riddle; you have had nothing that you may have all, for if you had had all, you would have had nothing. I may say, riddle me the riddle, what means this? But you have by experience unriddled it; and I trust you shall do so whilst things stand upon the same foot as they do now … I am exceeding sorry that you receive such hard measure … Were it in my power, I should quickly make it manifest that I do truly sympathise with you and am so far from approving the troubles you have met with that I should willingly take them upon myself to save you.33Leeds. Univ. Lib. DD149/82-3.

His loyalty to his uncle, which persisted even after Slingesby was charged with treason early in 1658, did not go unnoticed by the protectoral government. Indeed, Whitehall was informed that Stapylton had been encouraging his uncle to escape.34CSP Dom. 1658-9, pp. 16, 22; TSP vii. 65, 112, 127. As Stapylton admitted to Slingesby, ‘I am already frowned upon by some great ones for my faithfulness to your family’.35Leeds. Univ. Lib. DD149/83. Slingesby’s execution in June 1658, which was widely regarded as an act of Cromwellian injustice, probably confirmed Stapylton in his opposition to the protectorate and may also have informed his decision to enter Parliament. In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, he was returned for Boroughbridge – almost certainly on the strength of his family’s interest as owners of the manor of Myton and other property adjacent to the constituency.36Supra, ‘Boroughbridge’.

Stapylton was named to a maximum of four committees in this Parliament – the exact figure is impossible to determine because the clerks of the House appear to have referred to both Stapylton and his kinsman John Stapylton, MP for Cockermouth in Cumberland, simply as ‘Mr Stapleton’.37CJ vii. 595a, 600b, 622b, 637a. As a former army preacher, he was probably the Member who was appointed to a committee set up on 5 February 1659 to draft bills for the redress of grievances arising from the lack of a pious ministry in the northern counties.38CJ vii. 600b. The only known occasion on which he spoke in the House was on 14 February, during a debate on the bill of recognition (to recognise Richard Cromwell’s title as lord protector), when he sided with the opponents of the protectorate in their attempt to impede the bill’s passage. Like the commonwealthsmen (republican MPs), he also evinced a strong concern for the defence of the ‘liberties of the people’.39Burton’s Diary, iii. 266-7. Half way through his speech he was interrupted by the Presbyterian Member, Francis Gerard.

We have heard a long sermon. It is late to have another. I am informed he is not capable to sit in this House. He has been chaplain to a regiment and in arms too, as I am informed.40Burton’s Diary, iii. 268.

But being allowed to continue, Stapylton declared that the sword had determined the form of government for the people ‘to be theirs by right of conquest’ and that any proposal to allow the protector a negative voice in the legislative process would bring in the old, ‘corrupt’ ways. In what was probably a swipe at the Cromwellian court party, he referred to the ‘great danger of evil counsel [which] arises from favourites and sycophants’. ‘If we overlook the great concerns of the people that we represent’, he concluded, ‘it is a question whether they will recognise us [as opposed to Parliament recognising the protector]’.41Burton Diary’s, iii. 268-9. Given his evident hostility towards the government, he was probably the ‘Mr Stapleton’ who was named on 12 April to a committee for drawing up an impeachment against the Cromwellian officer William Boteler*, who had been accused of abusing his power as a major-general.42CJ vii. 637a.

Very little is known about Stapylton after the army’s dissolution of Parliament in April 1659. He was possibly the ‘Stapleton’ whom the restored Rump’s council of state wished to question in August 1659 concerning certain objections that had been raised against him.43CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 567. He may also have been the Stapleton whom the government ordered to be arrested in June 1664.44CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 621. According to several sources, he settled at Stapleford in Leicestershire after the Restoration and died in 1691, but this may well be erroneous on both counts.45Al. Ox.; Forster, Yorks. Peds. He was still living in Charing Cross in March 1666, when he wrote to his brother Miles Stapylton, who was then secretary to John Cosin, bishop of Durham, claiming to be ‘so totally ruined by my brother [-in-law] Vavasour’s debts, for which I have already sunk myself and of which there is no end, that I shall shortly be as low as the lowest’.46Durham Chapter Lib. Hunter ms 7, f. 51. Most of the family’s financial and legal affairs in London appear to have been transacted through Stapylton, at least during the second half of the 1660’s. The last known letter between Stapylton and his brother Miles was in January 1675.47Durham Chapter Lib. Hunter ms 7, ff. 52, 53, 54, 56; Hunter ms 10, f. 109; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Ga 12760; Northumbrian Docs. of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries ed. J.C. Hodgson (Surt. Soc. cxxxi), 256. Stapylton was still alive in 1678, when his elder brother Henry Stapylton* bequeathed him an annuity of £40 in his will.48PROB11/359, f. 495v. His place and date of burial are not known. No will is recorded.