Born at Richmond, Yorkshire, Stapleton was a descendant of Lord Miles Stapleton, steward of the household under Edward II, who died at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314. In the late fifteenth century, the Stapletons, through marriage, became heirs to the barony of Beaumont, before its extinction upon the death of Sir Miles Stapleton in 1705, when the family estate at Carlton, Yorkshire, passed to his nephew, Nicholas Errington of Ponteland, Northumberland, who took the name of Stapleton. John Stapleton’s elder brother, Miles, however, succeeded to the title as 8th Lord Beaumont after successfully claiming the hitherto dormant barony in 1840.
Connected to the constituency through the ancient Border family of Errington, Stapleton offered for Berwick-upon-Tweed at the 1852 general election, and after a bitter campaign, was returned in second place for the Liberals. Upon taking his seat, he announced his support for ‘unrestricted free trade’, 25 Nov. 1852, voted for Villers’ motion on the subject, 26 Nov. 1852, and generally divided in the Liberal interest thereafter. He backed Spooner’s anti-Maynooth motion, 23 Feb. 1853, and later insisted that only the grant’s removal could ensure ‘a state of perfect religious equality in Ireland’, 2 Mar. 1853. An assiduous attender in his first months in the House, he made two interventions to press for reform of discipline in the merchant navy, framing the issue as ‘a high social question’, as ‘when we give the labouring classes a large share of the political power, we should not have to deal with a brutalised population’, 21 Feb. 1853. His solution was to ‘record … all cases in which punishment was inflicted on board merchant ships’, 7 Mar. 1853.
Following a petition against his return, 24 Nov. 1852, Stapleton’s first parliamentary session was terminated after he was found, by his agents, guilty of ‘gross, open and systematic bribery and corruption’, 23 Apr. 1853. He became a director of the Royal British Bank in 1855, and a deputy governor the following year, but the bank collapsed in 1858, and Stapleton was found guilty, along with his fellow directors, of conspiring to defraud shareholders, although his punishment of a one shilling fine, compared with his colleagues’ imprisonment, suggests that he played only a minor role in the affair.
Stapleton had meanwhile been returned for Berwick-upon-Tweed at the 1857 general election, where, after admitting he had made mistakes in his directorship of the Royal British bank, he was returned at the top of the poll.
Opposed by two strong Conservative candidates, Stapleton lost his seat at the 1859 general election following an extremely bitter and venal campaign, and without the support of the local Liberal election committee, he declined to offer in 1865. However, he was returned in second place for Berwick in 1868, and became a champion of improving the conditions of labour.