Manor and Ancient Barony of Castle Combe. 151 



of John Newburgh, of East Lulworth, Esquire, which marriage 

 was solemnized in due time ; and Stephen Scrope dying in 1472, 

 his son John, on his coming of age in 1482, had livery of his 

 estates. These, however, had been reduced, through the diffi- 

 culties occasioned by the long minority of his father to little 

 besides the manors of Castle Combe and Oxendon. The more valu- 

 able manors of Wighton, Bentley, and Hanithwayte, in Yorkshire, 

 which Stephen Scrope inherited from his mother had been alienated 

 by him, as a consideration probably for loans obtained at that 

 period of distress, to his cousin, Richard Scrope, younger son of 

 Henry Lord Scrope of Bolton, and were thenceforward dissevered 

 from the estates of the Wiltshire branch. 



John Scrope resided at Castle Combe, and served the office of 

 Sheriff of Wiltshire in the seventh year of Henry VIII. His mar- 

 riage with Isabel Newburgh does not appear to have been a happy 

 one, as perhaps might have been anticipated from its premature 

 arrangement when he was but seven years old. By will Sir John 

 Newborough his father-in-law bequeathed to her £20 a-year, for her 

 life, so long as she lived separate from her husband, but, it con- 

 tinues, " if John Scrope take his wyff my daughter and governe 

 her, and keep her lyke a gentylwoman, then he shall have xl.li. to 

 their welfare and household, and they to live yn love and chary te." 

 It does not appear whether this well-intended device was suc- 

 cessful. But the lady did not long survive her father ; and Sir 

 John Scrope married secondly, Margaret, daughter of Sir John 

 Wrottesley of Wrottesley, Staffordshire, by whom he had a nume- 

 rous family. He was made a Knight of the Bath at the marriage of 

 Prince Arthur, 17th Henry VII. and served the office of Sheriff of 

 Wilts in the 7th Henry VIII. He seems to have resided at 

 Castle Combe nearly to the time of his death in 1517. His latter 

 days were unhappily embittered by quarrels with the rector of the 

 parish, Sir Ingelram Bedyll (whom he had himself presented to the 

 church in 1508) and his curate, a Sir Thomas Kelly. Such differ- 

 ences between squire and parson have been not unfrequent at all 

 times. But some of the matters mentioned in the complaints of 

 Sir John to the bishop of the diocese against his clerical tormentors, 



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