By G. Poulett Scrope, Esq., M.P. 



57 



law upon this point may have been obscure or undetermined until 

 a later period. Some of these reasons, or others, in their place, 

 will probably be suggested, to explain the silence of so many 

 generations of the claimant's ancestors as to their right to this 

 high dignity, which by his argument they have all along possessed. 



This, however, at all events, may be averred, that should the 

 claim of Mr. Scrope be admitted by the High Court to which it 

 has been referred by the Crown, it will afford one of the most re- 

 markable instances on record of the enduring vigour of our aris- 

 tocratic and Monarchical Institutions, that an honour of this high 

 grade, once conferred upon an individual by the sovereign of this 

 realm, although enjoyed by the original grantee for less than two 

 years, and having remained since that time unclaimed, unheard, 

 unthought of, for more than four centuries and a half, should still 

 enure, and be recognized as the indefeasible right of his descendant 

 in the nineteenth generation. Should the judgment of the court 

 result in the revival of the Earldom of Wiltes, it will take rank as 

 the premier Earldom, superseding the Earldom of Shrewsbury 

 which now holds that station, but the creation of which dates from 

 1442, nearly half a century later than that of the Earldom of 

 Wiltes. The claimant, Mr. Simon T. Scrope is a Roman Catholic, 

 as have been his progenitors from the earliest times. And there is 

 reason to suppose that the Catholic party who have been greatly 

 mortified by the recent transfer of the Earldom of Shrewsbury, so 

 long held by Catholics, to a Protestant Peer, are very desirous to 

 further the suit of Mr. Scrope, the success of which will replace a 

 Catholic at the head of the roll of English Earls. 



It may be noticed as a somewhat remarkable fact that while the 

 branch of the family of the first Earl of Wiltes, which settled in 

 Yorkshire at Bolton and Danby, and represents Sir Roger, his next 

 brother, has never since his time, that is, the close of the four- 

 teenth century, possessed any lands in the county of Wilts, the 

 descendants of his second brother, Sir Stephen Scrope, third son of 

 the first Lord Scrope, at that time owned, and have ever since held 

 and resided upon estates in this county. The late Mr. William 

 Scrope, of Castle Combe, occupied in fact precisely the same. 



