The name of this illustrious Yorkshire house does not appear among the first great feudatories of the Earls of Richmond. The earliest mention of the Scropes is in Gloucestershire, where Robert Le Scrope held three knight’s fees in 1165. His grandson William, in 1239, obtained a charter of free warren in all his lands of East and West Boulton, Fencotes, and Yarwick in the North Riding; and “this appears to be the first footing which a family, afterwards so powerful, obtained in Yorkshire; but whether it was acquired by marriage, purchase, or grant, does not appear.” - Whitaker's Richmondshire. This Sir William, reported to have been “the best knight of the whole country at jousts and tournaments,” was the father of two sons; Henry, ancestor of the Lords Scrope of Bolton, and Geoffrey, ancestor of the Lords Scrope of Masham, of whom it was said that “the older line of the Scropes had the bones, and the other the fat of Wensleydale.” Henry, who was bred to the law, laid the foundation of the greatness of the family in the time of Edward I. He was first one of the Justices of the Common Pleas, and then for seven years Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, continuing in high favour throughout the whole of that reign. Edward II. re-appointed him Lord Chief Justice, and subsequently Chief Baron of the Exchequer. He died in 1336, leaving a very large estate in Wensleydale and Swaledale, besides the great fee that he had purchased from the Constables of the Earls of Richmond, which gave him a feudal superiority over many adjoining manors. His eldest son only survived him six years, dying of a wound received at the siege of Morlaix; and the second, Richard, became his heir, and in 1371 the first Lord Scrope of Bolton. Sir Richard was knighted by Edward III. at the battle of Durham; and from that time till 1385 - a period of nearly forty years - there was scarcely a battle of note fought in England, Scotland, France, or Spain, in which his sword was not drawn with honour. Yet he was chiefly esteemed as a statesman, “having,” says Walsingham, “not his Fellow (in Degree) in the whole Realme for Prudence and Integrity.” He was Lord High Treasurer to Edward III.; and Lord Keeper to Richard II.: - the bold Chancellor who refused to affix the Great Seal to the grants extorted from the weak King by his crew of minions; and when summoned to surrender his trust, stoutly declared he would deliver what the Sovereign had confided to him to none other than the Sovereign himself. In 1379 he obtained “license to castellate” at Bolton, his caput baroniæ; and there built the grand square pile with flanking towers - imposing even in its fallen fortunes - that was dismantled by order of the Parliament after standing a siege in the Civil War. “This Castell,” says Leland, “standethe on a Roke Syde, and al the substance of the Logginges in ytt be yncludyd in 4. principall Towres. Yt was a-makynge 18. Yeres, and the Chargys of the Buyldinge cam by Yere to 1000 marks. Yt was finichid or Kynge Richard the 2. dyed. Moste parte of the Tymber that was occupied in buildyng of this Castell was fett owte of the Foreste of Engleby” (Inglewood) “yn Cumberland; and Richarde Lorde Scrope for Conveyaunce of yt, had layde by the way dyvers Draughts of Oxen, to cary it from Place to Place till it came to Bolton.” From its “high, bleak, and barren situation,” it could only be reached by a toilsome ascent that crossed the bed of “an outrageous torrent,” which, during the winter months, “must often have rendered it inaccessible. Yet, such was the desire of apparent safety, or such the aversion to change, that a great family who had at their command all the warm and fertile plain beneath, chose for three centuries to take up their abode exposed to storms and tempests without, and darkness and discomfort within.” - Dr. Whitaker. In 1389 Lord Scrope challenged the right of Sir Robert Grosvenor to bear the coat, Azure a bend Or, which, as he contended, his ancestors had “continually borne since the Conquest;”and after a long struggle, it was awarded to him by a Court Military, presided over by Thomas Duke of Gloucester, then Constable of England, a former sentence in favour of Sir Robert being reversed. He “dyed in Honour,” at a great age, four years after the accession of Henry IV., leaving by his wife, Blanche de la Pole, three surviving sons, the two eldest each married to one of the wealthy heiresses of Lord Tibetot. Roger succeeded as second Lord Scrope; Stephen was ancestor of the Scropes of Castle Combe, now extinct; and Richard was Archbishop of York - the unhappy prelate who “Enforc’d from his most quiet sphere By the rough torrent of occasion,”

took up arms against Henry IV. in concert with the Earl of Northumberland, Thomas Mowbray, Earl Marshal, Lord Hastings, and others. It might have proved a formidable insurrection, had it not been nipped in the bud by Ralph Nevill, Earl of Westmorland, who by fair words and deceptive promises induced the leaders to disband their forces, and then arrested them for high treason. The betrayed Archbishop, through a priest “whose beard the silver hand of peace had touched,” was, despite “the gravity of his age, the integrity of his life, and his incomparable learning,” sentenced to a traitor’s doom, and beheaded the year after his father’s death.

His eldest brother, Sir William, had suffered a similar fate some six years before. He was one of the obnoxious favourites of Richard II., on whom wealth and honours were lavished with undiscerning profusion. In his case the Royal bounty knew neither stint nor measure, and Shakespeare simply epitomizes the feeling of the time when he makes Lord Ros declare - “The Earl of Wiltshire hath the realm in farm.”

He was a Knight of the Garter, Seneschal of Acquitaine, Governor of Cherbourg, Lord Chamberlain of the Household, Constable of the Castles of Guines, Queensborough, Beaumaris, and Knaresborough, Chamberlain of Ireland, Justiciar of North Wales, Chester, and Flint, Captain of Calais, and Treasurer of the King’s Exchequer, with the title of Earl of Wiltes, and vast grants of confiscated estates. A great part of the princely inheritance of the Earls of Arundel and Warwick fell to his share; and it would be tedious to reckon up the various territories, towns, and castles, of which he enjoyed a brief tenure. “It is said,” writes Dugdale, “that this William was a Person of a very malevolent and wicked disposition;”and we may judge him to have been haughty and over bearing, as, in virtue of the sovereignty of the Isle of Man, which he had purchased from William de Montacute Earl of Salisbury, he arrogantly termed himself the King’s “ally.” In 1349, when the truce was confirmed with France, “Guillim le Scrope” is recorded to have assented to it “pour la seigneurie de Man” as one of the “allies” of the King of England.” - Sir Bernard Burke. His fall was as precipitate as had been his rise. He had attempted to raise levies to oppose the Duke of Hereford’s landing, but, failing in this, and “discerning a dangerous Cloud,” he threw himself into Bristol Castle, to hold it for the King. The victorious invader, carrying all before him, captured the castle and its defenders, and “though some escaped death, this Earl had no favour, being beheaded there the next day, and attainted 1 Henry IV.” He left no posterity.

Roger le Scrope, the next brother, who succeeded his father in the barony, died soon after him, but the title was long carried on by his descendants. There were altogether eleven Lords Scrope of Bolton; most of them martial men well approved in arms at home and abroad, but principally engaged in Border warfare. The seventh Lord married his kinswoman Alice, sole heiress of Thomas, sixth Lord Scrope of Masham, but she bore him only a daughter, Elizabeth, the wife of Sir Richard Talbot (Leland states that she had no children at all): and his son and heir was by his second marriage with Margaret Dacre. This heir he endeavoured to marry to Katherine Parr, and with this object entered into negotiation with her mother through Lord Dacre; but his offers for jointure, &c., were “so litell and so farre from the custom of the countrie, and his demaund so grete,” that Dame Parr broke off the match, little dreaming that the girl’s future husband was to be the King himself. It was this Lord Scrope who mustered his dalesmen for Flodden Field: “Lord Scrope of Bolton, stern and stout, On horseback who had not his peer: No Englishman Scots more did doubt: With him did wend all Wensadale From Morton unto Moisdale Moor: All they that dwelt by the banks of Swale With him were bent in harness stour.

* * * * * With lusty lads and large of limb Which dwelt at Seimer-water side, All Richmondshire its total strength The lusty Scrope did lead and guide.”

His grandson Henry, ninth Baron, was appointed, as March-Warden Who has not read the stirring Scottish ballad that tells how the Laird of Buccleuch, with forty of his Marchmen, concerted a raid upon Carlisle Castle, where Kinmont Willie was kept in durance by the Warden of the West Marches, the “keen Lord Scrope.” How they crossed the Border in four different bands: “Five and five before them a’, With hunting horns and bugles bright; Five and five came wi’ Buccleuch, Like warden’s men, array’d for fight: Five and five, like a mason gang, That carried the ladders lang and hie; And five and five, like broken men:”

how they scaled the castle wall, cut their way to the dungeon, and carried off their comrade in triumph on the night before he was to die. How they hoisted him in his irons on the shoulders of Red Rowan, “the starkest man in Teviotdale,” complaining that in all his life he had “never worn such cumbrous spurs:”and how he bade them tarry a moment under the Warden’s window while he shouted out his parting words: “‘Farewell, farewell, my good Lord Scrope! My good Lord Scrope, farewell!’ he cried: ‘I’ll pay you for my lodging-maill When next we meet on Border side!’” and Constable of Carlisle, to receive Mary Queen of Scots at Carlisle, the first place to which she was conveyed on her flight to England. Lady Scrope also came to attend upon her. It was the commencement of her life-long captivity; for on July 13th, 1568, she arrived in his custody at Bolton Castle, where she remained six months. A pane of glass out of the window of the room she occupied, on which she had written “Marie R.” with her diamond ring, used to be shown at Bolton Hall. She was not kept a close prisoner, being allowed to go out on horseback, and range at will over the surrounding moors - riding always so fast as to leave her attendants far behind; and there is a local tradition that once she succeeded in getting away unobserved, and galloped as far as Leyborne Shawl, where, after much hard spurring, her guards managed to come up with her. The place is now called the Queen’s Gap. Her intrigue with the Duke of Norfolk (which eventually cost him his head) was begun and carried on at Bolton, for Lady Scrope was his sister, and by her means letters and love-tokens were freely exchanged between them. There is a picturesque description of a scene in the great hall of the Castle given in the confession of poor young Christopher Norton, who, “bewitched by the fair eyes of Mary Stuart,” had caused himself to be enrolled in Lord Scrope’s guard. “One day when the Queen of Scots, in winter, had been sitting at the window side knitting of a work, and after the board was covered, she rose and went to the fire side, and making haste to have the work finished, would not lay it away, but worked of it the time she was warming herself. She looked for one of her servants, which indeed were all gone to fetch up her meat; and seeing none of her own folk there, called me to hold her work, who was looking at my Lord Scrope and Sir Francis Knollys” (Elizabeth’s vice-chamberlain, appointed to watch the poor prisoner) “playing of chess. I went, thinking I had deserved no blame, and that it should not have become me to have refused to do it, my Lady Scrope standing there, and many gentlemen in the chamber, that saw she spake not to me. I think Sir Francis saw not nor heard when she called of me. But when he had played his mate, he, seeing me standing by the Queen holding her work, called my captain to him, and asked him if I watched. He answered, Sometimes. Then he gave him commandment that I should watch no more, and said the Queen would make me a fool.” Poor Christopher paid the penalty of his devotion at Tyburn, where he was put to death in the following year with the usual cruelties, for having taken part in the fatal Rising of the North.

The last and eleventh Lord Scrope, Emmanuel, Emmanuel’s mother had been Lord Hunsdon’s daughter, and the sister of Robert Carey, afterwards Earl of Monmouth, who although a near kinsman of Oueen Elizabeth’s, owed his advancement to the speed and alacrity with which he conveyed the news of her death to her successor. When he perceived her recovery to be hopeless, he straightway turned to the rising sun, and entered into corre­spondence with King James, who sent him, by Sir James Fullerton, a sapphire ring, which was to be returned by a trusty messenger as soon as the breath was out of the Queen’s body. Lady Scrope, who was in attendance upon her, took charge of it. “She had no opportunity of delivering it to her brother whilst he was in the palace of Richmond; but, waiting at the window till she saw him outside the gate, she threw it out to him, and he well knew for what purpose he received it.” - Banks. He rode post haste Northwards, and appeared before James, with the blue ring in his hand, as the harbinger of the welcome tidings that he had succeeded to the English throne. President of the King’s Council in the North, was created Earl of Sunderland by Charles I. in 1627, and died without legitimate issue three years afterwards. The Earldom thus became extinct, and the old barony fell into abeyance between the representatives of his great aunt, Mary Bowes; while a base-born daughter carried the great Bolton estate to Charles Paulet, sixth Marquess of Winchester, who took the title of Bolton on receiving a Dukedom in 1689. Little more than a century later, another illegitimate heiress (the child of Charles, fifth Duke of Bolton) brought it, on the extinction of the Dukedom in 1794, Harry, sixth and last Duke, left two legitimate daughters, Lady Mary, Countess of Sandwich, and Lady Katherine, Countess of Darlington. But his elder brother prevailed upon him (it is said as the condition of paying his debts) to join in cutting off the entail; and “thus,” writes the indignant county historian, “that wretched disgrace to his strawberry leaves, the fifth Duke, was enabled to give away to the daughter of a worthless woman the lands he had inherited through a long line of ancestors.” He did, however, make an attempt to marry this daughter to the rightful heir of his house. He sent for Mr. Paulet of Amport St. Mary’s, the future Marquess of Winchester, and offered to settle upon him every acre that had ever been owned by the Paulets, including Basing, with all its glorious memories, on condition of his becoming his son-in-law. But Mr. Paulet refused. to the Ordes, now Barons Bolton. Thus, as King James said of a weightier heritage, the old Scrope lands “came wi’ a lass and went wi’ a lass.”

The Lords Scrope of Masham fairly rivalled their kinsmen of the elder line in riches and distinction. Their ancestor Geoffrey was Lord Chief Justice, as his brother had been, both under Edward II. and Edward III.; then “sent beyond sea on the King’s affairs” in 1313, he was employed in negotiating several treaties, as well as on active service in the field. For his valour in Flanders he received the rank of a Banneret. He held lands in five different counties, and received from Edward II. license to castellate his house at Clifton-upon-Yore in Yorkshire, with a market and fair at Burton-Constable, and the grant of Lord Clifford’s forfeited barony of Skipton in Craven. His son Henry, a baron by writ in 1342, spent most of his life under arms, and had the custody of eight Royal castles, with the Wardenship of the county of Guisnes. The next heir, Stephen, “a martial man betimes,” followed the same honourable traditions; but in the ensuing generation the fortunes of the family were eclipsed by a foul act of treachery. Henry, third Lord Scrope, was sent by Henry V. to treat of peace with the French: “but this great Trust he shamefully abused; for, being a Person in whom the King had so great confidence that nothing of Publick or Private Concernment was done without him; his gravity of Countenance, modesty in his Deportment and Religious Discourse being always such, that whatsoever he advised was held an Oracle; upon this his Solemn Embassy to France (which none was thought so fit to manage as himself), he treated privily with the King’s Enemies (being in his Heart totally theirs), and conspired the King’s Destruction upon promise of Reward from the French: His Confederates in this Design being Richard, Earl of Cambridge and Sir Thomas Grey, a Northern Knight. But before this mischievous Plot could be effected (which was to have killed the King, “It does not appear very certain that their design was to murder the King: at least the confession of the Earl of Cambridge (still extant) contains nothing like it. They had in view to set the Earl of March at their head, and by making the people believe that Richard II. was still alive, remove Henry V., raise an army, and then publish a manifesto inviting the nation to restore that prince to his rights, which had been usurped by the House of Lancaster.” - Banks. and all his Brethren ere he went to Sea, five Ships being ready at Southampton to waft the King over into France), it was discovered. Whereupon he had a speedy Trial for it at Southampton, and being found guilty there lost his Head.” - Dugdale. Not only had he been the confidential counsellor of his betrayed sovereign, but his near kinsman by marriage; for his second wife, Joan, sister and co-heir of Edmund Holland, Earl of Kent, was the widowed Duchess of York.

“But O! What shall I say to thee, Lord Scrope: thou cruel Ingrateful, savage, and inhuman creature! Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels, That knew’st the very bottom of my soul, That almost might’st have coined me into gold, Would’st thou have practised on me for thy use? May it be possible, that foreign hire Could out of thee extract one spark of evil That might annoy my finger?’Tis so strange That though the truth of it stands off as gross As black from white, my eye will scarcely see it.” - Henry V.

The lands and honours he had so justly forfeited were restored by Henry VI. to his brother John, summoned to parliament in 1425 as Baron of Masham and Upsal, who “grew into such esteem with the King that he was advanced to that Great Office of Treasurer of the King’s Exchequer.” With his four grandsons, successively sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth Lords Scrope of Masham and Upsal, the line terminated. The three last all died s.p., but Thomas, the elder brother, whose wife was one of the five heiresses of John Nevill, Marquess of Montagu, left a daughter married to Lord Scrope of Bolton, on whom the barony devolved, only reverting to her uncles after her death. When the last of them died in 1517, it fell into abeyance between their three sisters; Alice, married to Thomas Strangways; Mary, married to Sir Christopher Danby; and Elizabeth, married to Sir Ralph Fitz Randolph; now represented by numerous descendants. Banks remark's that “the co-heirs of this barony are now of very extensive ramification.”

But the illustrious house of Scrope still boasts of a representative in the direct male line. The sixth Baron of Bolton had a younger son named John, who held Spennithorne in Yorkshire, and Hambledon in Buckinghamshire, and was the father of Henry le Scrope, endowed by his wife Margaret, the daughter and heiress of Simon Constable, with the “fair and fertile domain”of Danby-upon- Yore. Here, in a house whose “air of ancientry is becoming to the lineage of its inhabitants,” his descendants have continued to the present day, and the old name still lives in honour after so many hundred years! Not very long ago, Simon Scrope of Danby claimed the ancient Earldom of Wiltes (which would have given him precedence of the Talbots, Premier Earls of England), and though the decision of the House of Lords was against him, successfully established his long and splendid pedigree.

"One of king Edward the Confessor's foreign attendants named Richard, to whom the Anglo-Saxons gave the derisory name of Screope, or ' the Scrub,' either on accouut of some inferior office which he held in the royal household, or perhaps as a merely satirical appellation, and who was one of the few Normans permitted to remain at court after the rest of the foreign favourites had been driven away, was enriched by his royal master with considerable possessions in this part of the border [near Ludlow]; and, introducing there the fashion of his own countrymen, he built a strong castle between Ludlow and Leominster, which has preserved its founder's name in that of Richard's Castle. The name by which the builder was known became afterwards softened into that of Scroop." Wright's Ludlow, p. 23. The elder branch of the family afterwards became eminent in Yorkshire. The Scropes of Castle-Comb (co. Wilts,) have been there ever since the time of King Richard the Second. "The Lord Chancellor Scrope gave this mannour to his third son; they have continued there ever since, and enjoy the old land, (about 800 li. per annum); and the estate is neither augmented nor diminished all this time, neither doth the family spread." Aubrey's Nat. Hist. Wiltshire, p. 119.