Skip navigation

Col. Adrian Scroope

If you would like to write a summary for this topic, email phil [at] gyford [dot] com

Wikipedia

Portrait of Adrian Scope by (or after) Robert Walker

Colonel Adrian Scrope (c. 1601 – 17 October 1660) was the twenty seventh of the fifty nine Commissioners who signed the Death Warrant of King Charles I. He was hanged, drawn and quartered at Charing Cross after the restoration of Charles II.

[edit] Early life

Scrope matriculated at Hart Hall, Oxford, on 7 November 1617, and became a student of the Middle Temple in 1619.[1] In November 1624 he married Mary, daughter of Robert Waller of Beaconsfield, a cousin of the poet Waller.[2]

[edit] First Civil War

At the opening of the civil war he raised a troop of horse for the parliament,[3] and in 1646 was major in the regiment of horse commanded by Colonel Richard Graves. When the army and parliament quarrelled Scrope took part with the soldiers, and possibly helped Joyce to carry off Charles I from Holdenby to Newmarket.[4] He succeeded to the command of the regiment about July 1647[5]

[edit] Second English Civil War

In June 1648, at the outbreak of the Second English Civil War, Scrope was ordered to join Colonel Whalley in the pursuit of the Earl of Norwich and the Kentish royalists, and he took part in the siege of Colchester.[6] At the beginning of July he was detached from Colchester to pursue the Earl of Holland, whom he defeated and took prisoner at St. Neots on 10 July.[7] He was then sent to suppress some disturbances at Yarmouth;[8] caused by the threatened landing of the Prince of Wales.

Scrope took part in the deliberations of the council of the army which resulted in the rupture of the treaty of Newport; was appointed one of the king's judges, and attended the meetings of the court with exemplary regularity. His name appears twenty-seventh among fifty nine judges who signed the death warrant.[9]

[edit] Interregnum

Scrope's regiment was one of those selected by lot for the expedition for the reconquest of Ireland (20 April 1649); but early in May 1649 they mutinied, refused to go to Ireland, and demanded the re-establishment of the representative council of agitators which had existed in 1647.[10] On 15 May Cromwell and Fairfax surprised the mutineers at Burford, and the ringleaders were tried by court-martial and shot.[11]

Scrope's regiment henceforth disappears from the army lists, and the soldiers composing it were probably drafted into other regiments. Scrope himself was made governor of Bristol (October 1649), a post which he held till 1655.[12] In 1655 Bristol Castle and other forts there were ordered to be demolished, in pursuance of a general scheme for diminishing the number of garrisons in England, though Ludlow asserts that Bristol was selected because Cromwell did not dare to "trust a person of so much honour and worth with a place of that importance".[13]

In May 1655 Scrope was appointed a member of the council established by the Protector for the government of Scotland, at a salary of £600. a year.[14] He did not distinguish himself as an administrator, and appears to have spent as much time as he could out of Scotland.[15] During the political revolutions of 1659–60 he apparently remained neutral.[16]

[edit] Restoration

Because Scrope had not opposed the restoration he had some prospect of escape when the Restoration took place. He surrendered himself in obedience to the proclamation issued by King Charles II on 4 June 1660, and on 9 June the House of Commons voted that he should have the benefit of the act of indemnity on payment of a fine of one year's rent of his estates.[17] On 20 June he was accordingly discharged upon parole (ib. viii. 70). The House of Lords, however, ordered all the king's judges to be arrested, and excepted Scrope absolutely from pardon.[18] The commons on 13 August reiterated their vote in Scrope's favour, but, as the lords remained firm, they finally (28 August) yielded the point.[19] This was an inexcusable breach of faith, as Scroope had surrendered in reliance upon the king's proclamation.

At Scrope's trial (12 October 1660) Richard Browne, late major-general for the parliament, and now lord mayor elect of London, deposed that in a private conversation held since the Restoration Scrope had used words apparently justifying the king's execution, and had refused to pronounce it murder. Scrope, who defended himself with dignity and moderation, pleaded that he acted by the authority of parliament, and that he "never went to the work with a malicious heart". Sir Orlando Bridgeman, the presiding judge, treated Scroope with great civility. "Mr. Scrope", he said, "to give him his due, is not such a person as some of the rest"; but Browne's evidence, which had led to Scrope's abandonment by the Commons, sealed his fate, and he was condemned to death.[20]

Scrope was hanged, drawn and quartered at Charing Cross on 17 October 1660. An account of his behaviour in prison and at the gallows describes him as "a comely ancient gentleman", and dwells on his cheerfulness and courage.[21]

[edit] Family

Adrian Scrope was born at Wormsley Hall in Oxfordshire and was baptised at Lewknor on 12 January 1601.[22] He was son of Robert Scrope of Wormsley and Margaret, daughter of Richard Cornwall of London. His family were a younger branch of the Scropes of Bolton.[22][23]

Scrope's eldest son, Edmund, was made fellow of All Souls' on 4 July 1649 by the parliamentary visitors, was subsequently keeper of the privy seal in Scotland, and died in 1658.[24] His brother Robert was about the same time made fellow of Lincoln College, and created by the visitors B.A. on 19 May 1649.[25] Scroope also left two daughters, Margaret and Anne.

[edit] Portrait

Adrian's portrait was painted by (or after) Robert Walker and is displayed in the U.K. National Portrait Gallery.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Firth 1897, p. 132 Cites: Foster, Alumni Oxon.
  2. ^ Firth 1897, p. 132. Cites: Chester, London Marriage Licenses, 1198.
  3. ^ Firth 1897, p. 132. Cites: Peacock, Army Lists, 2nd ed., pp. 54, 108
  4. ^ Firth 1897, p. 132. Cites: Clarke Papers, i. 59, 119.
  5. ^ Firth 1897, p. 132. Cites: Clarke Papers, i. p. 151.
  6. ^ Firth 1897, p. 132. Cites: Clarke Papers, ii. 27; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1648–9, pp. 111, 116.
  7. ^ Firth 1897, p. 132. Cites: State Papers, Dom. 1648–9, pp. 176–186; Report on the Duke of Portland's MSS. i. 478; Rushworth, vii. 1187.
  8. ^ Firth 1897, p. 132. Cites: Rushworth vii. 1216; Old Parliamentary History, xvii. 338.
  9. ^ Firth 1897, p. 132. Cites: Clarke Papers, ii. 54, 278; Nalson, Trial of the Regicides, 1682.
  10. ^ "The Resolutions of the Private Soldiery of Col. Scroope's Regiment of Horse, now quartering at Salisbury, concerning their present Expedition for the Service of Ireland, 1649, folio; A Declaration from his Excellency, etc., concerning the present Distempers of part of Commissary-Gen. Ireton's and of Col. Scroope's Regiments, 1649, 4to" (Firth 1897, p. 132).
  11. ^ Firth 1897, p. 132. Cites: Gardiner, Commonwealth and Protectorate, i. 54–60.
  12. ^ Firth 1897, p. 132. Cites: Whitelocke, Memorials, ed. 1853, iii. 113.
  13. ^ Firth 1897, p. 132. Cites: Ludlow, Memoirs, ed. 1894, i. 394.
  14. ^ Firth 1897, p. 132. Cites: Thurloe, iii. 423, iv. 127, 526.
  15. ^ Firth 1897, p. 132. Cites: Thurloe, vi. 92, 156; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1658–9, p. 101.
  16. ^ Firth 1897, p. 132
  17. ^ Firth 1897, p. 132. Cites: Commons' Journals, viii. 60.
  18. ^ Firth 1897, p. 132. Cites: Lords' Journals, xi. 102, 114, 133.
  19. ^ Firth 1897, p. 132. Cites: Commons' Journals, viii. 118, 139; Masson, Life of Milton, vi. 49, 85.
  20. ^ Firth 1897, pp. 132,132. Cites: Trial of the Regicides, pp. 57–72, ed. 1660.
  21. ^ Firth 1897, p. 133. Cites: The Speeches and Prayers of some of the late King's Judges, 4to, 1660, pp, 73, 80.
  22. ^ a b Wroughton 2008.
  23. ^ Firth 1897, p. 132. Cites: Blore, Rutland, pp. 7, 9; Turner, Visitations of Oxfordshire, p. 327.
  24. ^ Firth 1897, p. 133. Cites: Foster, Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Wood, Fasti, ii. 146; Burrows, Register of the Visitors of the University of Oxford, p. 476.
  25. ^ Firth 1897, p. 133. Cites: Wood, Fasti, ii. 128.

[edit] References

Attribution

[edit] External links

Persondata
Name Scrope, Adrian
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth
Place of birth
Date of death 1660
Place of death

This text was last fetched from this Wikipedia page (where you can edit it) on
10 Feb 2012, 6:02pm under the terms of the GFDL.

1893 text

Colonel Adrian Scroope, one of the persons who sat in judgment upon Charles I.

This text was written as a footnote in the 1893 Wheatley transcription of the diary, the same one that is used for the diary entries on this site.

Annotations

  • - vincent on Fri 29 Aug 2003, 03:15am. Flag this

    He was born about 12 January, 1600-01. He was a direct descendant of the family of Buckinghamshire, the head of which was ennobled. He himself occupied the Scrope mansion at Wormsley, Oxfordshire, England.
    He married Mary Waller (born 1605; died 1660 in Charing Cross, London, England) on 29 November, 1624 in Southwark, Surrey, England. They had children:
    11 children 5 boys( 2 died in 58 2 not known maybe at bbirth ) 6 girls not known.
    http://www.scroope.net/ancestors/cockerington/coladrianscrope1600.htm
    about the rest of the gang including Downing, regicides from
    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/STUregicides.htm
    William Throope son maybe this one
    William Scrope - born 19 March, 1636 in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England; possible alias as a Throope who died 4 December, 1704 and was buried in East Burial Ground Cem, Bristol, Rhode Island

Post an annotation

Before posting an annotation please read the annotation guidelines.
If your comment isn't directly relevant to this page, try the discussion group for other Pepys-related topics or the social group for general chat.

(required)

(required)

(optional)


No HTML in annotations. URLs will be turned into links. About copyright

(required)

References in the diary

A graph of all the references in the diary

1660
Aug: 28