[Illustration] William Roper, or Rosper, who lived in the reign of
Henry III, is the first recorded ancestor; his descendants were of
St. Dunstan's, near Canterbury, in the reigns of Edward III. and
Richard II. Edmund Roper was one of the Justices of the Peace for
this county in the time of Henry IV. and V.
The elder line of this family were seated at West-Hall, in Eltham,
and also at St. Dunstan's, and became extinct in 1725. The younger
and present branch at Linstead, which came from the heiress of
Fineux, in the reign of Henry VIII. King James I. conferred the
peerage on Sir John Roper in 1616.
For the origin of the family, see Dugdale's Warwickshire, 2nd ed. p.
316; Hasted's Kent, i. 55; ii. 687; iii. 589; and Brydges's Collins,
vii. 77.
ARMS.--_Per fess azure and or, a pale counterchanged, three buck's
heads erased of the second_.
Present Representative, George Henry Roper Curzon, 16th Baron
Teynham.