SCROPE, Adrian (1601-60), of Wormsley, Oxon.

Adrian Scrope was rightly described as ‘descended of an ancient family and possessed of a considerable estate’, as the Scropes of Wormsley were a cadet branch of the Scropes of Masham and Bolton in Yorkshire.31Ludlow, Mems. ii. 316; CP. His connections improved further with his marriage, in 1624, to Mary Waller of Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire, a member of the extensive Waller clan whose mother was a Hampden (and thus a distant relative of Oliver Cromwell*). Scrope’s upbringing was conventional enough – education at Oxford and the Middle Temple, followed by a prestigious marriage – and he presumably returned to his father’s estates in Oxfordshire during the 1630s. The first sign of his opposition to the Caroline regime came in the elections for the Short Parliament in April 1640, when he was unsuccessfully put forward as a candidate by inhabitants of Chipping Wycombe.32Mems. of the Verney Family, i. 196. The following year saw his first known service in local administration as a commissioner for Wychwood forest.33C181/5, f. 210.

In the summer of 1642 Scrope was one of the first to take up arms in the parliamentarian cause: he was commissioned as captain of horse on 30 July, and mustered his own, privately-raised, troop on 25 August.34SP28/3b, f. 343. He served under Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, and fought at Edgehill, but in the spring or early summer of 1643 he was taken prisoner by the royalists and incarcerated at Oxford.35Peacock, Army Lists, 54; SP28/8, f. 211; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 316. Scrope was soon released, and became captain in Sir Robert Pye I’s regiment of horse.36BHO, Cromwell Assoc. database; Wanklyn, New Model Army, i. 53. In the spring of 1644 Scrope accompanied Essex on his march into the west country, and was later commended for his bravery when the parliamentarian cavalry escaped from Lostwithiel in August.37SP28/12, f. 211; SP28/15, f. 145; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 503. When the New Model Army was formed in April 1645, Scrope was promoted to be major of Colonel Richard Graves’s regiment. He served with the regiment in the relief of Taunton and, as a result, did not fight at Naseby; but he was with the main field army at the siege of Bristol in September 1645 and at the siege of Oxford in 1646.38Peacock, Army Lists, 108; Firth and Davis, Regimental Hist. i. 102-4.

With the end of the first civil war, Scrope became involved in the army politics. His regiment was one of those chosen to escort the king from Newcastle to Holdenby in January 1647.39Firth and Davis, Regimental Hist. i. 104-5. In May, Scrope took part in the debates at Saffron Walden, and foiled an attempt by his colonel to misrepresent the mood of the regiment. Scrope protested that the soldiers met in ignorance of the army’s former votes, and that they, with most of their officers, supported the New Model’s hostility to Parliament.40Clarke Pprs. i. 59, 61, 68, 71. It seems unlikely that Scrope was a conspirator in Cornet Joyce’s seizure of the king in early June 1647; but there is no doubt that he approved of the army’s direct intervention in politics, and was trusted by the senior officers.41Clarke Pprs. i. 119-20; Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, 113. When Colonel Graves was cashiered for supporting Parliament against the army in June 1647, Scrope was a natural choice as his successor.42Firth and Davis, Regimental Hist. i. 107. The new colonel was one of those appointed by Sir Thomas Fairfax* to draw up the charges against the Eleven Members on 5 July 1647, and later in the month Scrope was present at the army council at Reading and was appointed as one of six members of the officers’ committee.43The Heads of the Charge… Against the Eleven Impeached Members (1647), unpaginated (E.397.11); Clarke Pprs. i. 151, 176, 183, 217. Scrope was also present at the Putney debates, and on 28 October he was named to the committee to confer with the agitators about the Agreement of the People.44Clarke Pprs. i. 279.

Scrope was ubiquitous during the second civil war in 1648. He first took part of his regiment to south Wales, where it served under Oliver Cromwell at the siege of Pembroke.45Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1134. He then saw service in Dorset, Windsor and Reading, before marching to join Colonel Edward Whalley* in his advance into Essex.46‘Adrian Scrope’, Oxford DNB; CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 111-112, 175-7, 185, 188. En route, on 10 July, Scrope intercepted Henry Rich, 1st earl of Holland, and George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, at St Neots in Huntingdonshire, capturing the earl with 30 officers and 120 troopers, and forcing the remainder to disperse.47HMC Portland, i. 478. Buckingham narrowly escaped capture, but amongst the booty listed by a parliamentarian pamphleteer was ‘The earl of Holland’s blue ribbon and his George’.48A Great Victory Obtained by Collonell Scroope (1648), 4 (E.452.15). At the end of July, Scrope was in Norfolk, and he prevented Great Yarmouth from becoming a base for the prince of Wales’s fleet.49CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 201; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1216. He then marched north to rejoin Cromwell, who reported to Speaker William Lenthall* on 20 August that he had sent ‘Colonel Scrope with five troops of horse and two troops of dragoons’ against the Scottish horse who had regrouped north of Preston.50Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 637.

Once the Scots had been cleared from the north, and royalist resistance had crumbled in the south, Scrope became involved in the army’s search for justice against those who had caused the uprising. In November he was a member of the council of officers at St Albans, and was one of those appointed to peruse the army’s Remonstrance, presented to Parliament on 20 November.51Clarke Pprs. ii. 54. Twice in December Scrope’s regiment made its own demands for retribution, ‘that justice might take place upon all, from the highest to the lowest, from the king to the meanest subject’.52The Declarations … of the Officers and Soldiers in Colonel Scroops, Col. Sanders, Col. Wautons Regiment (1648), 2-3 (E.475.24). The soldiers also asserted their right to try the king and his advisers, suggesting that two men from each county and two men from each regiment should form a commission to examine all those deemed guilty of causing the second civil war.53A Moderate and Cleer Relation of the Private Souldierie of Colonell Scroops and Col. Sanders Regiments (1648), sig. A2v-4r (E.476.25). Scrope may have been behind these December declarations: he certainly agreed with the soldiers’ arguments. In the same month, he was present at most of the meetings of the councils and committees of the army; and in January he was equally diligent as a commissioner of the high court of justice convened to try the king, attending 22 times, and signing the death warrant on 29 January 1649.54Clarke Pprs. ii. 278-9; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 728, 742; Muddiman, Trial, 195-228.

Although Scrope and his regiment seem to have seen eye-to-eye on the need to bring the king to justice, the colonel, with his links to the army grandees, could not support the far-reaching radical reforms soon demanded by his subordinates. The difference between them only became apparent when, on 20 April 1649, the regiment was selected by lot to go to Ireland with Cromwell’s expeditionary force.55Clarke Pprs. ii. 209. When Scrope rode to Salisbury to tell his men of the decision, they refused to go, instead seizing the regimental colours and marching towards Bristol, joining what became a widespread Leveller revolt against the army high command.56Gentles, New Model Army, 331-40. Scrope was once again sent by Fairfax to satisfy their complaints, but the soldiers’ declaration, drawn up at a meeting in Wiltshire on 11 May, showed their loss of faith in their colonel, who had refused to compromise in earlier discussions, and ‘being demanded what propositions he had to deliver to those that would not, or could not go for Ireland, his answer was, he had nothing for them’. Resolving to secure ‘the restitution of our shaking freedom, and redeeming ourselves out of the hands of tyrants’, the regiment remained obdurate, and joined the main Leveller mutiny which was crushed at Burford on the night of 14-15 May.57Declaration of Colonel Scroope’s… Regiment (1649), 4-5 (E.555.4). As a result, the regiment was disbanded in June 1649, and Scrope lost his field command, being appointed instead as governor of Bristol Castle in the following October.58Firth and Davis, Regimental Hist. i. 111, 114; Whitelocke, Mems. iii. 113.

Scrope served as governor of Bristol until 1655. Much of his time there was spent repairing the fortifications, and trying to persuade the government to release funds for maintaining the garrison.59CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 497, 574; 1650, pp. 162, 219, 580. Despite periodic fears of royalist attempts to seize the city, including the very real threat that Charles Stuart’s army was headed there in August 1651, in 1652 the council of state resolved to strip Bristol of its guns and disband the garrison – a scheme which was suddenly reversed in January 1653.60CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 363, 365, 387; 1651-2, p. 183; 1652-3, pp. 89, 95. Under Scrope’s rule, the city became notorious as a hot-bed of sectarianism, with such radicals as Morgan Llwyd and William Erbury preaching there, and growing support for the Quakers, especially among the garrison officers. Scrope seems to have been tolerant of the sects – even intervening on behalf of the notorious Quaker, James Naylor, later in the decade – and he himself was a member of the strict Independent congregation led by Dennis Hollister, which was said to have behaved ‘proudly and censoriously, looking upon all others as without, and scarcely Christians’.61Gentles, New Model Army, 113-4; R. Farmer, Sathan Intron’d in his Chair of Pestilence (1656), 46-7; The Throne of Truth Exalted (1657), 106 (E.907.2); Rabshekah’s Outrage Reproved (1658), 19.

The alliance between the religious radicals and the garrison was bitterly resisted by the citizens of Bristol, who made their feelings plain in the elections for the first protectorate Parliament in 1654. Scrope reported the situation in a letter to Cromwell of 6 August, in which he attacked the mayor and sheriffs as enemies of the ‘godly party’ in the city, who had put up their own candidates, including a former royalist, against those sponsored by the government. He called upon Cromwell, as protector of the ‘saints’, to intervene once again – ‘the Lord has set you up for such a time as this, and will own you in his work, as he has hitherto done’ – in a letter that reveals not only Scrope’s religious radicalism but also his reverence for Cromwell as a divinely ordained ruler.62CSP Dom. 1654, p. 331. Cromwell, in return, undoubtedly saw Scrope as a trusted lieutenant, and there is no foundation to Edmund Ludlowe II’s* claim that the protector was unwilling to leave Scrope in charge of Bristol because he was accounted by enemies of the regime as ‘a person of so much honour and worth’.63Ludlow, Mems. i. 394. Indeed, when the garrison of Bristol was finally reduced in 1655, Scrope was compensated with appointment to the newly-formed Scottish council, with a salary of £600 a year back-dated to 1 May.64TSP iii. 423; iv. 526; CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 108, 152, 309.

Scrope’s record in the Scottish government was uneven. Although he travelled north to take up his seat on the council in September 1655, and initially was the focus of lobbying by both factions in the Kirk, he did not stay in Scotland for long.65Scot. and Protectorate, ed. Firth, 306; Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS L, f. 136v; Corresp. of the Earls of Ancram and Lothian (2 vols. Edinburgh, 1875), ii. 397; Wariston Diary, iii. 18. By May 1656 he was back in London, causing the president of the Scottish council, Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*), to request his return, pointing out that without Scrope and other absentee members, ‘we are but a bare quorum’.66TSP v. 18. George Monck*, who acted as caretaker of the Scottish government from the autumn of 1656, also found Scrope’s continued absence difficult, telling Cromwell in January 1657 that ‘by his absence your business here is like to suffer much’.67Scot. and Protectorate, ed. Firth, 348. In February Monck wrote again, this time to the protectoral council in Whitehall, asking them to appoint another councillor in place of Scrope in order to ensure a quorum north of the border.68Scot. and Protectorate, ed. Firth, 349. Scrope eventually returned to Scotland in March, and again took his place at the council board and on various local commissions in the Edinburgh area.69TSP vi. 156; A. and O. But in July 1658 he was summoned back to England, with leave to stay for three months, and it is doubtful that he visited Scotland thereafter.70CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 101. In the elections for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament in January 1659, Scrope was returned for the shires of Linlithgow, Stirling and Clackmannan, once a rival bid by Sir Archibald Johnston* of Wariston had been scotched by his colleague on the council, Samuel Disbrowe*.71Wariston Diary, iii. 105. Scrope played little part in this Parliament, however, and his five committee appointments give few clues as to his political allegiances. As a Scottish councillor, his inclusion in the committee for Scottish affairs named on 1 April was a matter of course; but it may be significant that he was also appointed to two committees that reflected his earlier military career: those to examine the petition of the widow of the Leveller, John Lilburne, and to consider the arrears of pensions claimed by the sick and maimed soldiers cared for at Ely House and the Savoy.72CJ vii. 600a, 623b, 627b. Despite his attachment to the Cromwellian regime in the later 1650s, it seems that Scrope was still a New Model man at heart.

Nothing is known of Scrope’s activities after the collapse of the protectorate in May 1659, and, despite his vulnerability as a regicide, he did not openly resist the Restoration. On 19 June 1660, Scrope voluntarily surrendered to the Stuart regime.73Whitelocke, Diary, 607. At first – apparently ‘upon the interest of his brother-in-law Mr Waller’ – the House of Commons agreed to allow him the benefit of the act of indemnity, ‘paying one year’s value of his estate’, but new evidence was brought against him by Major-general Richard Browne II*, who claimed that ‘accidentally meeting’ Scrope at the chamber of the current Speaker, Harbottle Grimston*, and talking with him about the death of the late king, the colonel ‘was so far from expressing himself sorry for the samethat he justified what was done therein’.74Ludlow, Voyce, 175, 181. When Scrope was brought to trial on 12 October, the evidence was adjudged ‘very insignificant’, and with good reason. According to Browne, he had told Scrope that the country had suffered terribly because of the ‘murder’ of the king, and the colonel had replied, equivocally, ‘Some are of one opinion, and some are of another’. Despite Scrope’s pleas that he was merely obeying the Long Parliament as ‘the supreme authority of the nation’ and ‘never went to the work with a malicious heart’, as well as reminders that he ‘came in upon the proclamation’, Browne’s evidence was sufficient to condemn him to death.75State Trials, v. 1042-3, 1046; Ludlow, Voyce, 186, 188, 219-20.

Scrope greeted his execution, at Charing Cross on 17 October, with a copybook example of puritan piety. He comforted his weeping children by saying, ‘can anyone have greater honour than to have his soul carried up to heaven upon the wings of the prayers of so many saints?’, and on the night before he ‘slept so soundly that he snored very loudly’, and in due course ‘with great cheerfulness went to execution’.76State Trials, v. 1299. In Lucy Hutchinson’s words, Scrope was ‘raced out for nothing’.77Hutchinson Mems. ed. Hutchinson (1806), 374. He had submitted to the new regime, and despite his radical religious views, he was unlikely to pose a threat to the Stuarts. The verdict was undeniably harsh, and Scrope’s friends were prepared to stand by him. The night before his death, one of his nephews urged him to beg for the king’s mercy, but was ‘thrust away from him, using these words, Avoid Satan’.78Ludlow, Voyce, 246. On the scaffold he was told that other friends were trying to obtain a pardon for him (a suggestion which he again rejected, as a ‘snare’ that would ‘prejudice his conscience’).79Ludlow, Voyce, 246; State Trials, v. 1300. His death was ‘much pitied by many, because he was a comely person, begged the prayers of all good people, and … was of a noble and ancient family’, according to Anthony Wood.80Wood, Fasti, ii. 128. And in July 1661 – within a year of the execution – Thomas Scrope was granted all the estates forfeited by his father, including the ancestral seat of Wormsley.81CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 52.