STAPLES, Alexander (d. 1673), of Faughanvale, co. Londonderry.

Alexander Staples’s father, Sir Thomas Staples, had come to Ulster from Gloucestershire in the reign of James I.14CB ii. 251; T.W. Moody, The Londonderry Plantation (Belfast, 1939), 328. Soon after his arrival in the province, Sir Thomas had married into a prominent Londonderry family and had built up a substantial landed interest in the new plantation in cos. Londonderry and Tyrone. He was created a baronet by Charles I in 1628.15CB ii. 251; CSP Ire. 1625-32, p. 345. During the 1630s Sir Thomas crossed swords with John Bramhall, the Laudian bishop of Derry, over church lands in Ulster, and the dispute was not settled until a few months before the Irish rebellion broke out in October 1641.16The Bishopric of Derry ed. T.W. Moody and J.G. Simms, (2 vols. Dublin, 1968), i. 183-5, 237-8, 343-4. In the spring of 1642 Sir Thomas was engaged to raise a company of foot as part of the Londonderry garrison, and he was active in the city’s defence at least until the end of 1646.17SP28/255, unfol.; SP28/139/9; Bodl. Tanner 60, ff. 1-3; CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 569, 580, 587, 598. Under Sir Charles Coote*, who was acting governor of Londonderry from 1647, Sir Thomas served as commissary of the musters in Ulster, and he continued to work for the Cromwellian regime, signing pay warrants for Parliament’s forces in the province.18SP28/70, f. 710; SP28/71, f. 198; SP28/72, f. 52; SP28/75, ff. 45-59. On his death in 1653, Sir Thomas was succeeded by his eldest son, Sir Baptist Staples.

Alexander Staples, Sir Thomas’s younger son, seems to have benefited from his father’s reputation in northern Ulster. As a young man in the mid-1640s he had been involved in the defence of Londonderry, and he was later described as ‘having always served among us from the beginning of the war’, but the details of his military activities in the late 1640s and early 1650s are uncertain.19Bodl. Tanner 60, ff.1-3; TSP vii. 143. He may have been the Captain Alexander Staples who served Colonel Gorge Cooke’s regiment in the Cromwellian army in Ireland from 1649 until the mid-1650s, by which time the unit had come under the command of Colonel Thomas Sadleir.20Wanklyn, New Model Army, i. 160-1; ii. 181, 202, 208, 232. These dates fit with what is known of the MP in the same period: he inherited various lands in co. Londonderry from his father in 1653, but was not resident in ‘these parts’ when the land-surveyors investigated his holdings in 1654.21Civil Survey, iii. 242n. In January 1655 he was appointed to the assessment commissions for cos. Antrim, Down, Londonderry, Donegal and Tyrone.22An Assessment for Ire. By 1658 Staples had caught the eye of the lord deputy, Henry Cromwell*, who promoted him to be major of Thomas Cooper II’s Ulster regiment, and recommended him to Oliver Cromwell* as ‘a good officer, a very sober well-affected person, and of good interest to his country’.23TSP vii. 143, 203. Henry Cromwell’s favour to Staples may have been at the behest of his brother-in-law, John Claypoole*, whose sister seems to have been (by his own account) Staples’s wife.24TSP vii. 489. It would thus appear to have been Henry Cromwell’s influence, rather than any local interest of his own, that lay behind Staples’s election as MP for cos. Londonderry, Donegal and Tyrone in 1659, an impression reinforced by the fact that his fellow MP was another of the lord deputy’s protégés, John Gorges*. There is no record of Staples having attended the Commons, and later in the year he was living in retirement at the family seat at Faughanvale, co. Londonderry.25Irish Census, 1659, 126.

According to later accounts, during the early months of 1660 Staples was active in support of the restoration of the Stuarts, and was party to the designs of Sir Charles Coote* and other Irish Protestants, who made approaches to the court in exile. Staples’s involvement with such schemes might explain how, despite his close links with the Cromwells, he survived the Restoration with his local position intact.26CSP Ire. 1663-5, pp. 289-90, 399; 1669-70, pp. 476-7. He continued to serve as lieutenant-colonel in the royal army in Ireland, commanding a company at Londonderry.27CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 289. He worked as poll-money commissioner for Londonderry in 1660 and 1661, from 1661 sat as MP for Strabane in the Irish Parliament, and in the same year was appointed sheriff of co. Tyrone.28Irish Census, 1659, 626, 645; CJI i. 592; CB. Staples’s election was timely, for he had fallen into debt, and had become embroiled in a dispute with the bishop of Derry over various leases of church lands arranged by his father before 1641, in September 1661 successfully claiming privilege of Parliament to stop a legal challenge by the bishop.29Irish Statute Staple Bks. 291; Bishopric of Derry ed. Moody and Simms, i. 328, 337, 339, 344-5.

Despite his involvement with the Restoration regime, Staples apparently came to share the dissatisfaction of many Old Protestants at their treatment by Charles II’s government, and in the spring of 1663 he was drawn into a plot to seize Dublin Castle, oust the duke of Ormond, and (by some accounts) to bring back Henry Cromwell as lord lieutenant.30CSP Ire. 1663-5, pp. 111-12. While Thomas Blood, Robert Shapcote* and other plotters led the rising in Dublin, Staples was to capture Londonderry with the help of his company, many of whom had served with him under the protectorate.31CSP Ire. 1663-5, pp. 267-8. Before the plan could be put into action, however, Staples was arrested, and after an investigation, indicted for treason in October 1663.32CSP Ire. 1663-5, p. 268. That Staples was not attainted and executed for his part in this conspiracy was to a large extent due to his position in Ulster. Such prominent landowners as Lord Ranelagh (Arthur Jones*), Lord Kingston, Lord Dillon, Sir Arthur Forbes and Sir Theophilus Jones* begged the king and the lord lieutenant to show mercy, as Staples who had supported the Restoration and, it was claimed, done his best to alleviate the suffering of royalists during the interregnum.33CSP Ire. 1663-5, pp. 289-90, 399; 1669-70, pp. 476-7. Staples petitioned Charles II, who referred to matter back to Ormond in July 1664, and on the duke’s recommendation he was pardoned on 18 August.34Bodl. Carte 145, ff. 22-24; CSP Ire. 1663-5, p. 428. After his release from Dublin Castle, Staples took no further part in public affairs. He succeeded to the baronetcy on the death of his brother in 1672, but enjoyed it for only a few months, before he himself died childless in early 1673. He was succeeded by his brother, Sir Robert Staples.35CB ii. 251.