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William le Scrope, 1st Earl of Wiltshire (1350-1399) was a close supporter of King Richard II of England.
Life
He was a soldier-adventurer in Lithuania[1], Italy and France, where he served with John of Gaunt. Gaunt made him seneschal of Aquitaine in 1383.[2] He then joined the household of Richard II, as chamberlain[3]. In 1394 he became a Knight of the Garter.
He was closely involved in Richard's second marriage to Isabella of Valois[4]; and was Isabelle's guardian at Wallingford Castle[5], of which he was castellan[6], when the King went to Ireland.
He was made Earl of Wiltshire in 1397. He became Lord High Treasurer in 1398[7]. He became effective head of the government in Richard's absence[8]. He benefitted from the confiscated estates of Thomas de Beauchamp, 12th Earl of Warwick, kept for a time under his hand in the Isle of Man, and of John of Gaunt; he also accumulated control of a number of strategic castles[9].
He was executed by Henry IV on his successful invasion.
Family
He was the son of Richard le Scrope, 1st Baron Scrope of Bolton. His father purchased for him the title King of Mann, in 1392.
Earldom
An attempt was made to reclaim the Earldom by a collateral descendant, over 500 years later. Although he was proven to be the senior heir male general, the claim failed on other grounds.
In 1869, the Committee for Privileges of the House of Lords, after a series of hearings beginning in 1862 under the title of Wiltes Claim of Peerage 4 HL 126, rejected the claim of Simon Thomas Scrope, of Danby, to the Earldom of Wiltes (Wiltshire) granted to William le Scrope, above. It was proved that Simon Thomas Scrope was the senior heir male of the Earl of Wiltes, but the Committee for Privileges decided that as a matter of law an English peerage could not descend to heirs male general who were not directly descended from the original grantee; they also rejected arguments based on the irregularity of the original sentence by Henry IV before he had become King. The Committee declined to follows its own earlier decision in the Devon Peerage Claim (1831) 5 English Reports 293, in which a grant to "heirs male" had been allowed to pass to heirs male collateral.
Notes
- ^ Christopher Tyerman, England and the Crusades, 1095-1588 (1996), p. 270.
- ^ SCROPE
- ^ The Scropes and the Isle of Man
- ^ Michael Bennett, Richard II and the Revolution of 1399 (1999), p. 79.
- ^ Wallingford Characters
- ^ Wallingford Characters
- ^ E. B. Fryde, Handbook of British Chronology (1996), p. 106.
- ^ John Smith Roskell, Parliament and Politics in Late Medieval England II (1981), p. 61.
- ^ Anthony Emery, Greater Medieval Houses of England and Wales, 1300-1500 (1996), p. 497.
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