The Stapleton Baronetcy, of The Leeward Islands, is a dormant title in the Baronetage of England. It was created on 20 December 1679 for William Stapleton, who followed Charles II into exile in France, and after the Restoration was appointed deputy-governor of Montserrat and captain-general of the Leeward Islands.
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The earlier background was well put by John Brooke, who wrote: The Stapletons, of Irish extraction, emigrated to the West Indies temp. Charles II, and settled in Oxfordshire in the early 18th century.
The fourth Baronet sat as Member of Parliament for Oxfordshire. The fifth Baronet represented Oxford in the House of Commons.
In 1788 the abeyance of the ancient barony of le Despencer was terminated in favour of the sixth Baronet, who became the sixteenth Baron de Despencer. On his death the barony passed to his granddaughter Frances Elizabeth (the daughter of his eldest son the Hon. Thomas Stapleton), wife of Evelyn Boscawen, 6th Viscount Falmouth (see Baron le Despencer for further history of this title). The baronetcy was inherited by the late Baronet's youngest son Francis Joseph, the seventh Baronet. The 1679 creation became extinct upon the death of Sir Henry Alfred Stapleton, 10th Baronet, in 1995.
Greys Court, Rotherfield Greys
James Paul, the son of William Paul the bishop of Oxford (1663–5), a Fishmonger and Linen Draper, of St. Michael Cornhill, London and Bray in Berkshire, bought Greys Court in 1688. By his second wife Martha, fourth daughter of Sir Thomas Duppa, usher of the black rod from 1683–1694, he had a son William, whose daughter Catherine married Sir William Stapleton, 4th Bt., to whom it passed in 1711 on her father's death. It then remained with the Stapletons until 1937.