Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/164

 Scudamore was released upon condition of submitting himself to parliament in London. On going thither he found that his house in Petty France (a house adjoining that in which Milton subsequently wrote ‘Paradise Lost’) had been sequestered and all his goods seized and inventoried. He received news, moreover, that various outrages had been perpetrated at his country houses at Llanthony and Holme Lacy, but these were happily checked by Waller, who sent courteous apologies in answer to Lady Scudamore's remonstrance. Scudamore soon discovered his mistake in appealing to parliament. Irritated by the king's confiscation of Essex's estates in Herefordshire, they ordered the sale of his goods in Petty France and at the Temple, refused the fine that he offered, and committed him to the custody of the serjeant-at-arms. He remained in confinement for three years and ten months, when his affairs were settled upon his paying a fine of 2,690l., his son James being subsequently included in this composition (November 1647; Cal. for Compounding, 1643). In all, however, owing to the forced sales of his goods, the sequestrations, and his gifts to the royal cause, he estimated that he lost 37,690l. by the civil war, quite apart from the munificent alms which he distributed to distressed royalists. Scudamore was much broken by his confinement and by the wreck of the royalist fortunes.

During his later years he devoted himself almost exclusively to study and to the seeking out and relieving of impoverished divines. Among those he ‘secretly’ benefited were Dr. Edward Boughen [q. v.], John Bramhall [q. v.], Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) [q. v.], Canon Henry Rogers (1585?–1658) [q. v.], Dr. Sterne, and Matthew Wren [q. v.] (cf., Sufferings of the Clergy, p. 35; , pp. 110, 112, where are enumerated upwards of seventy clergymen in receipt of alms from him). From 1656 he allowed 40l. per annum to Peter Gunning [q. v.], afterwards bishop of Ely (, Hist. of St. John's, p. 235). He also presented many books and other gifts to the dean and chapter of Hereford. Bishop Kennett stated that he gave in all not less than 50,000l. towards religious objects. He died on 8 June 1671, and was buried in the chancel of Holme Lacy church. He married, on 12 March 1614–15, Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Sir Arthur Porter of Llanthony, Gloucestershire. She died, aged 52, and was buried at Holme Lacy in December 1651. Some six years later died Scudamore's younger brother, Sir Barnabas, who served with distinction under Prince Maurice, and successfully defended Hereford in July-August 1645 against Alexander Leslie, first earl of Leven [q. v.] The siege was raised upon the approach of Charles on 1 Sept., when Scudamore, who was forthwith knighted, remarked that the Scotch mist had melted before the sun (Letter to the Lord Digby concerning the Siege of Hereford, 1645, 4to). Less than four months later (18 Dec.) the gates were opened by treachery, but Scudamore crossed the Wye on the ice, and escaped to Ludlow. Sir Barnabas died, impoverished in estate, on 14 April 1658.

The first viscount's son, James, baptised on 4 July 1624, M.P. for Hereford in 1642 and for Herefordshire 1661–8, accompanied his father to Paris, where he spent some years after 1639, and died in his father's lifetime, in 1668, at the age of forty-four. He appears to have been a friend of John Evelyn. To him has been wrongly attributed a vulgar parody in verse entitled ‘Homer à la Mode’ (1664), which was the work of his distant kinsman, James Scudamore of Christ Church, Oxford (son of John Scudamore of Kentchurch, 1603–1669), who was drowned on 12 July 1666; he was at Westminster, and there is extant a curious letter from his grandfather to Busby asking the master's acceptance of a cask of cider (cf., Lit. Illustr. v. 395; , Alumni Westmon. p. 154). The first viscount was succeeded by his grandson, John Scudamore (1650–1697); he married Frances, daughter of John Cecil, fourth earl of Exeter, by Frances, daughter of John Manners, earl of Rutland; the ‘impudentest of woman,’ wrote Lady Camden, she ‘eloped with a Mr. Coningsby, who was thought to have got all Lord Skidmore's children’ (Rutland Papers). The peerage became extinct upon the death of the third viscount, James Scudamore, on 2 Dec. 1716. He was educated at Gloucester Hall, Oxford, where he was contemporary with the poet John Philips and with Anthony Alsop, who dedicated to him in 1698 his ‘Fabularum Æsopicarum Delectus’ (, Cyder, 1791, p. 52 n.) He was M.P. for Herefordshire 1705–1713, and for Hereford 1715, and was created D.C.L. at Oxford on 12 May 1712, when Hearne met him, ‘an honest man.’ His widow died of small-pox in 1729, and her death occasioned Pope's allusion, ‘and Scud'more ends her name’ (Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, ii. 436), her houses having been favoured resorts of some of Pope's circle. There is a fine portrait by Kneller of Lady Scudamore and her daughter at Sherborne Castle. Some of the second viscountess's character-