146 



Abridgement of the History of the 



Duke of Gloucester, in 1385-90, for the right to 

 bear a particular escutcheon, which has been already 

 adverted to. The depositions taken in this suit 

 from companions at arms of the two parties, Lords 

 Scrope and Grosvenor, and their ancestors, as 

 printed in the work of Sir Harris Mcolas, are full of 

 interest, reciting as they do in graphic language, 

 out of the mouths of the heroic warriors themselves, 

 the incidents of the campaigns of Crecy and Agin- 

 bannek of sce p . cour ^ p 0 ictiers, Najara, Halidon Hill, and other 

 glorious fields. Among the witnesses examined on the part of Lord 

 Scrope, and whose testimony is recorded from their own lips, are the 

 illustrious John of Gaunt, his son Henry Plantagenet, afterwards 

 King Henry IV., Sir Walter Blunt, Sir Thomas Erpingham, who 

 commanded the archers of England at the battle of Agincourt, Sir 

 John Sully, "then 105 years of age, and armed 80 years," Sir John 

 Thirlwall, "who speaks to what he heard his father relate, who 

 died at the age of 145 !" the Earl of Northumberland, his son Sir 

 Henry Percy, and Geoffrey Chaucer, Esquire, at that time knight 

 of the shire for Kent, together with dozens of nobles, knights, and 

 squires of lesser note, Backed by such testimony it is not surprising 

 that the claim of Scrope prevailed, after a protracted litigation, 

 however, of five years, and that, the disputed coat (azure a bend or) 

 was adjudged to his family, by whom it is still borne; while the 

 House of Grosvenor was prohibited to wear it, but consoled by the 

 substitution of another, azure a garb (wheatsheaf ) or, which the 

 Marquis of Westminster still bears. Strange instance this of the 

 weight attached in the age of Chivalry to heraldic blazonries ! 



The favour of King Richard II. to the Scropes was amply repaid 

 by the devotion of the entire family to his cause and person, even 

 in its worst extremity. Sir William Scrope, K. G., eldest son of 

 the Chancellor, who had been created Earl of Wiltshire in 1397, 

 and entrusted with the government of Marlborough Castle, was 

 one of the first sufferers on the landing of the Duke of Hereford 

 (Henry IV.), being beheaded at Bristol in 1399. He was Sovereign 

 of the Isle of Man, and in that capacity signed his assent in 1394 



