On the death of his father in 1839, he succeeded to landed property near Richmond, Yorkshire.
[1] Stapleton's major work was the prefatory exposition of the rolls of the Norman exchequer, printed at the expense of the Society of Antiquaries as Magni Rotuli Scaccarii Normanniæ sub Regibus Angliæ,’ 2 vols.
At the meeting of the Archæological Institute at York in 1846, he read a long memoir of 230 pages.
[3][1] Stapleton was also one of the founders of the Camden Society and edited one of its first publications, The Plumpton Correspondence (1839), a collection of 15th-century letters.
He also edited for the society the chronicle of London, extending from 1178 to 1274 De Antiquis Legibus Liber (1846).