Note e — Chapter VIII · (continued 3)

These descended from two persons, each named Geoffrey le Scrope, chief justices of K.B. and C.B. at the beginning of Edward III.'s reign. The name of one of them is once found among the barons, but I presume this to have been an accident, or mistake in the roll; as he is frequently mentioned afterwards among the judges. Scrope, chief justice of K.B., was made a banneret in 14 E. III. He was the father of Henry Scrope of Masham, a considerable person in Edward III. and Richard II.'s government, whose grandson, Lord Scrope of Masham, was beheaded for a conspiracy against Henry V. There was a family of Scrupe as old as the reign of Henry II.; but it is not clear, notwithstanding Dugdale's assertion, that the Scropes descended from them, or at least that they held the same lands: nor were the Scrupes barons, as appears by their paying a relief of only sixty marks for three knights' fees. Dugdale's Baronage, p. 654.

The want of consistency in old records throws much additional difficulty over this intricate subject. Thus Scrope of Masham, though certainly a baron, and tried next year by the peers, is called chevalier in an instrument of 1 H. V. Rymer, t. ix. p. 13. So in the indictment against Sir John Oldcastle he is constantly styled knight, though he had been summoned several times as lord Cobham, in right of his wife, who inherited that barony. Rot. Parl. vol. iv. p. 107.