Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/141

 murder. Scroope, 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. Scroope,’ 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 Scroope's abandonment by the commons, sealed his fate, and he was condemned to death (Trial of the Regicides, pp. 57–72, ed. 1660). He was executed at Charing Cross on 17 Oct. 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 (The Speeches and Prayers of some of the late King's Judges, 4to, 1660, pp, 73, 80).

Scroope'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 (, Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714;, Fasti, ii. 146; , Register of the Visitors of the University of Oxford, p. 476). His brother Robert was about the same time made fellow of Lincoln College, and created by the visitors B.A. on 19 May 1649 (, Fasti, ii. 128). Scroope also left two daughters, Margaret and Anne.

The regicide is sometimes confused with his distant kinsman, or  (d. 1667), son of Sir Gervase Scroope of Cockerington, Lincolnshire. Sir Gervase Scroope raised a regiment for the king's service, and was left for dead at Edgehill, where he received sixteen wounds, but survived to 1655. The son served in the king's army during the war, and was made knight of the Bath at the coronation of Charles II (, Rebellion, vi. 97;, v. 707; , Memoirs, pp. 78, 85, 103). The fine imposed on father and son for their delinquency amounted to over 6,000l. (Calendar of Compounders, p. 1327). Sir Adrian Scroope, who died in 1667, married Mary, daughter of Sir Robert Carr of Sleaford, and was the father of Sir Carr Scrope [q. v.] (, pp. 6, 9).



SCROPE or SCROOP, CARR (1649–1680), versifier and man of fashion, was eldest son of Sir Adrian Scrope of Cockerington, Lincolnshire, knight of the Bath (d. 1667) [see under ]. His mother, Mary, daughter of Sir Robert Carr of Sleaford in the same county, died in 1685, and was noted in her day ‘for making sharp speeches and doing startling things’ (, Sacharissa, pp. 234–6, 262–70, 282–7). Their son was born in 1649, and matriculated from Wadham College, Oxford, on 26 Aug. 1664, being entered as a fellow-commoner on 3 Sept. He was created M.A. on 4 Feb. 1666–7, and baronet on 16 Jan. 1666–7 (Cal. State Papers, 1666–7, p. 357).

Scrope came to London, and was soon numbered among the companions of Charles II and the wits ‘who wrote with ease.’ About November 1676 he was in love with Miss Fraser, lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of York; but her extravagance in dress—one of her costumes is said to have cost no less than 300l.—so frightened him that he changed his matrimonial intentions (Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. App. pt. v. p. 31). In January of the next year (afterwards Countess of Dorchester) [q. v.] quarrelled with him in the queen's drawing-room over some lampoon that she believed him to have written (ib. p. 37). Scrope fancied himself ridiculed as ‘the purblind knight’ in Rochester's ‘Allusion to the Tenth Satire of the First Book of Horace,’ and attacked his rival in a very free and satirical poem ‘in defence of satire,’ an imitation of Horace (bk. i. satire iv). Rochester retorted with a vigorous lampoon, which is printed in his works (ed. 1709, pp. 96–8), and Scrope made in reply a very severe epigram (Roxburghe Ballads, ed. Ebsworth, iv. 570–1;, Poets, ed. Cunningham, i. 194). Many references to Scrope (he was a man of small stature, and often ridiculed for his meanness of size) appeared in the satires of the period (cf. Roxburghe Ballads, iv. 569, &c.). He was a member of the ‘Green Ribbon Club,’ the great whig club, which met at the King's Head tavern over against the Inner Temple Gate (, First Whig, pp. 85–6, 202).

In 1679 Scrope was living at the north end of the east side of Duke Street, St. James's, Westminster (, ed. Wheatley, i. 534), and in August of the next year he was at Tunbridge Wells for his health, and with ‘a physician of his own’ (, Sacharissa, p. 289). He is said to have died in November 1680, and to have been buried at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields; the baronetcy thereupon became extinct.

A translation by Scrope of the epistle of Sappho to Phaon was inserted in ‘Ovid's Epistles translated by Various Hands,’ numerous editions of which were issued between 1681 and 1725, and it was reprinted in Nichols's ‘Collection of Poems’ (1780, i.