186 
offered to the public in Volume II. of the “ Wiltshire 
Archeological Magazine.” 
At the Conquest the owner of this manor and 26 others was 
Hunfridus de Insula, who in modern language would be called 
Humphrey de Il’Isle. His heiress, Adeliza, took them to the 
family of de Dunstanville, who built the castle and made it the 
“caput baronie.” In 1270 another heiress, Petronilla, conveyed 
the baronial castle and its 26 subordinate manors, held by knight 
service, to the family of de Montfort, who sold the reversion in 
1309 to Lord Badlesmere, of Leeds Castle, Kent. He lost his 
head at Canterbury in 1322 under Edward II., and for four years 
the King’s favourite, Despencer, held the seigneurie, which was 
restored to Giles Lord de Badlesmere on the deposition of the 
King in 1326. Dying childless in 1338, his immense wealth, 85 
manors, 76 Knight’s fees in England, and large Irish property, 
were divided between his four sisters, and Castle Combe and its 
subinfeudatories was the share of the youngest Margaret who wed 
John Lord de Tibetot, or Tiptoft. His son, Robert de Tibetot, 
was slain in Guscony in 1372 without heir male. His three 
daughters were young and they were granted for 1,000 marks as 
wards to the Lord Treasurer, Sir Richard Scrope, of Bolton, who, 
after the custom of the times, betrothed the infant co-heiresses 
to his own three younger sons, so as to secure their estates in 
his own family. In 1385, by a deed still preserved at Castle 
Combe, the property was divided, and of the Tibetot estates, 
Castle Combe and its manors passed to the second daughter, 
Milicent, who was married to Sir Stephen Scrope, Knight. Thus 
the Scropes obtained the property and retained it through 11 
generations averaging 44 years apiece, nearly 500 years, until on 
the decease of the last of this branch of the great family of Scrope, 
Emma Phipps, only daughter of William Scrope, esq., of Castle 
Combe, who died in 1851, and wife in 1821 of the late George 
Poulett Thomson, esq. (who took her name of Scrope by Royal 
license), the estates were sold in 1867 to the present owner, 
3 
7 
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