Richard Stapleton-Cotton

Richard Greville Arthur Wellington Stapleton-Cotton was born at Wellington Barracks, London, on 7 November 1873, the second son of Colonel the Honourable Richard Southwell George Stapleton-Cotton (1849–1925), of Plas Llwynon, Anglesey, and his wife, the Honourable Jane Charlotte Methuen, daughter of Frederick Henry Paul Methuen, second Baron Methuen.^[1][2] His father was the younger son of the second Viscount Combermere and had been the Inspector-General of Police in Guiana from 1889 to 1891, was an officer in the Wiltshire Regiment, having served in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 and in Bechuanaland in 1885, and served as a Justice of the Peace for Shropshire and Cheshire.^[3]

In 1910, he married Olive Harriet Cotton-Jodrell,^[4] a daughter of Sir Edward Thomas Davenant Cotton-Jodrell, of Reaseheath and Yeardsley, Cheshire, Member of Parliament for Wirral, and his wife Mary Rennell Coleridge.^[5]

Stapleton-Cotton and his dog Tinker are the only two males ever to be accepted as fully paid-up members of the Women's Institute: he played a major part in setting up the first WI meeting in the UK, held in Anglesey in 1915.^[6]

Stapleton-Cotton entered the Royal Navy as a cadet in 1887. He was promoted to midshipman two years later and then became a Sub-Lieutenant in 1893, lieutenant two years later, commander in 1905 and captain in 1913. He was the Commander at^[14] the Royal Naval College at Osborne from 1906 to 1910.^[1] Promoted to rear-admiral in 1923^[15] and then to vice-admiral in 1928, he was placed on the retired list by 1931.^[16] In 1932, he was promoted to the rank of admiral in the retired list.^[17]

In 1905, he was appointed a Member of the Royal Victorian Order (MVO).^[1] He was also appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB).^[18] From 1928 to 1932, Stapleton-Cotton served as Gentleman Usher of the Scarlet Rod, and then as Registrar and Secretary of the Order of the Bath from 1932 to 1948; in the latter capacity, he attended the Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1937 and took part in the procession into the Abbey.^[19]

Admiral Stapleton-Cotton died on 5 January 1953, aged 79, in Merionethshire. He left an estate worth over £24,000.^[20]