[Illustration] Few families were more important in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries than the noble house of Scrope; their
descent is unbroken from the Conquest. Few houses also have been
more distinguished by the number of great offices of honour held
both in Church and State. The Scropes were very early settled in
Yorkshire, Bolton being, from the period of the reign of Edward I.,
their principal seat and Barony. The present family is sprung from a
younger son of Henry, 6th Lord Scrope of Bolton; it was established
at Danby about the middle of the seventeenth century, by marriage
with the heiress of Conyers.
See Whitaker's Richmondshire, vol. i. p. 368; the Scrope and
Grosvenor Roll by Sir Harris Nicolas, 1832, vol. ii. p. 1, and
Poulett-Scrope's History of Castle-Combe; see also Blore's
Rutlandshire, (fol. 1811,) p. 5-8, for full pedigrees of the Scropes
of Bolton and Masham, (Yorkshire,) Cockerington, (Lincolnshire,)
Wormsleigh or Wormsley, (Oxfordshire,) and Castle-Combe,
(Wiltshire,) all now extinct; also the Topographer, vol. iii. p.
181, for Church Notes from Cockerington by Gervase Hollis. Adrian
Scrope the Regicide was of the Wormsley branch.
ARMS.--_Azure, a bend or_. These arms were confirmed by the Court of
Chivalry in 1390, on the celebrated dispute between the houses of
Scrope and Grosvenor, as to the right of bearing them. In the reign
of Edward III. M. William le Scroope bore the present coat, "en le
point de la bend une lyon rampant de purpure." In that of Richard
II., M. Henry le Skrop differenced his arms with a label of three
points argent, M. Thomas le Scrop at the same period charged his
label with an annulet sable, while other members of the family bore
the label ermine charged with bars gules, and lozenges and mullets
ermine. (Rolls of the dates.)
Present Representative, Simon Thomas Scrope, Esq.