Manor and Ancient Barony of Castle Combe. 155 



daughters ; most of whom, however, died young, and all unmarried, 

 except Charles, the second son, who indeed predeceased his father, 

 but left a son, Gorges, by his wife Agnes, daughter of Robert 

 Codrington, Esquire, which Gorges on the death of his grandfather 

 John, 1714, inherited the Manor of Castle Combe. Gorges Scrope 

 married in 1734, Mary, daughter of Emanuel Hobbs of Bath, and 

 dying ten years later, without issue, bequeathed the estate for life, 

 to his widow, who held it till her death in 1774, when it reverted 

 by force of the entail created in the will of her husband, to the 

 eldest surviving male heir of his grandfather, the Rev. John 

 Scrope, D.D., then Rector of Castle Combe, and Yicar of Kington 

 St. Michael's, a scholar and author of some works on divinity. 

 This gentleman, dying in 1777 unmarried, was succeeded in both 

 the living and the estate by his brother, the Rev. Richard 

 Scrope, D.D., who was likewise favourably known for his literary 

 attainments, having been entrusted by the University of Oxford, 

 in which he held a fellowship of Magdalen and served the office of 

 Proctor, with the task of editing the Clarendon State Papers in 

 the Bodleian Library — a delicate business requiring firmness and 

 freedom from party bias no less than judgment and discrimination. 

 Dr. Scrope married in 1767, Anne, daughter of Edmund Lambert, 

 Esquire, of Boyton, by whom, he had two sons, John, who died 

 young, and William, the late owner of Castle Combe (1851) ; and 

 one daughter, Harriett, married to Walsh Porter, Esquire, by 

 whom she had a family of several children. 



William Scrope, who succeeded to the estate of Castle Combe on 

 the death of his father in 1787, inherited likewise a year or two 

 later considerable estates in Lincolnshire, which had been entailed 

 on him by the last male descendant of a distant collateral branch 

 of the line of the Scropes of Bolton. This gentleman, who died in 

 1851, was well known in the world as an accomplished artist and 

 sportsman, and as the writer of two popular volumes on deer- 

 stalking and salmon-fishing. In earlier days, before the close of 

 the last century, he was also known upon the turf, and kept for 

 some years a pack of harriers at Castle Combe, hunting the county 

 north of that place in conjunction with Mr. Parry Hodges of 

 Easton Grey. Mr. Scrope married in 1794, Emma, daughter and 



