Few families were more important in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries than the noble house of Scrope; their descent is unbroken from the Conquest. Few houses also have been more distinguished by the number of great offices of honour held both in Church and State. The Scropes were very early settled in Yorkshire, Bolton being, from the period of the reign of Edward I., their principal seat and Barony. The present family is sprung from a younger son of Henry, 6th Lord Scrope of Bolton; it was established at Danby about the middle of the seventeenth century, by marriage with the heiress of Conyers.
See Whitaker's Richmondshire, vol. i. p. 368; the Scrope and Grosvenor Roll by Sir Harris Nicolas, 1832, vol. ii. p. 1, and Poulett-Scrope's History of Castle-Combe; see also Blore's Rutlandshire, (fol. 1811,) p. 5-8, for full pedigrees of the Scropes of Bolton and Masham, (Yorkshire,) Cockerington, (Lincolnshire,) Wormsleigh or Wormsley, (Oxfordshire,) and Castle-Combe, (Wiltshire,) all now extinct; also the Topographer, vol. iii. p. 181, for Church Notes from Cockerington by Gervase Hollis. Adrian Scrope the Regicide was of the Wormsley branch.
Arms.—Azure, a bend or. These arms were confirmed by the Court of Chivalry in 1390, on the celebrated dispute between the houses of Scrope and Grosvenor, as to the right of bearing them. In the reign of Edward III. M. William le Scroope bore the present coat, "en le point de la bend une lyon rampant de purpure." In that of Richard II., M. Henry le Skrop differenced his arms with a label of three points argent, M. Thomas le Scrop at the same period charged his label with an annulet sable, while other members of the family bore the label ermine charged with bars gules, and lozenges and mullets ermine. (Rolls of the dates.)
Present Representative, Simon Thomas Scrope, Esq.
Grimston of Grimston-Garth.
Sylvester de Grimston, "Standard-bearer and Chamberlain to William I.," of Grimston, in the parish of Garton, is claimed as the ancestor of this venerable Norman family, who have ever since the period of the Conquest resided at the place from whence the name is derived.
Younger branches of the Grimstons were seated in Norfolk and Essex, besides the Grimstons of Gorhambury, Earls of Verulam, all now extinct in the male line.
See Poulson's Holderness, vol. ii. p. 60; Clutterbuck's Hertfordshire, vol. i. p. 95; Brydges's Collins, vol. viii. p. 209; and the Scrope and Grosvenor Roll, vol. ii. p. 292. See also Boutell's Brasses, p. 129, for inscriptions to Sir Edward Grimston and his son in Rishangles Church, near Eye, in Suffolk.