Born in Ireland to a family of Norman descent, William, as a Royalist during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, followed Charles II into exile in France.

Returning to England as part of the Stuart Restoration of 1660, William, as an English Army officer, travelled to the England's colonies in the West Indies, where he served as a prominent colonial official and married into a wealthy planter family, acquiring several slave plantations before dying in Paris in 1686.

The third son of Redmond Stapleton, William was born in Ireland as the youngest child of a family which claimed descent from a Norman knight which had settled there during the reign of King Henry II of England.

The "Figtree" plantation was granted by him to Charles Pim on behalf of the Crown in 1678, with William quickly repurchasing the estate for 400,000 pounds of muscovado sugar; the "Carleton" plantations were granted to his older brother, Redmond in 1679, though three years later William purchased them from him for 100,000 pounds of muscovado sugar.

He also left a daughter, Mary, who married Irish colonial administrator Sir James Fitz Edmond Cotter.