Richard le Scrope

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Richard le Scrope (c1350- June 1405) was born into a prominent Yorkshire family, the fourth son of Henry, first Baron Scrope of Masham. He took an arts degree at Oxford, and by 1379 Cambridge had conferred on him doctorates in both canon and civil law.

Scrope's ascent through the Church hierarchy was steady though unremarkable. By 1376 he was in deacon's orders and warden of John of Gaunt's chapel at Tickhill Castle. He was ordained into the priesthood in March 1377, at which time he was a canon at York, and the next year he became chancellor of the University of Cambridge. By 1382 he was protonotary to the papal curia.

A papal bull of 1385 suggested Scrope as Archbishop of Chichester, but Richard II promoted instead his personal confessor, Thomas Rushhook. The following year Urban VI named Scrope bishop of Conventry and Lichfield. Scrope's service to Richard II on various diplomatic missions earned him a royal request that he be translated to the see of York, where he was consecrated archbishop on 2 June 1398.

The forces which transformed this quiet churchman into a rebel can be traced back to the revolution of 1399, when Henry Bolingbroke deposed his cousin Richard II. Bolingbroke owed much of his success to the support of Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland. However, because of a financial crisis early in his reign, Henry either could or would not reimburse Northumberland for the costly border wars being waged on his behalf. Relations between Henry and Northumberland were finally strained to the breaking point in 1403 when the King refused to ransom back Edmund Mortimer, Percy's son-in-law, who had been captured while leading royal forces against Owain Glyndŵr's Welsh rebels. Northumberland and his son, Henry "Hotspur" Percy, withdrew their allegiance from Henry IV and rose against him in open insurrection. In July 1403, Hotspur was killed at the battle of Shrewsbury and the rising was temporarily quelled. Two years later, however, Northumberland fomented a second rebellion. This time, Percy persuaded Archbishop Scrope to join him.

Up until this time, Scrope was evidently a placid royalist with little interest in national politics. He appears to have remained neutral during the precarious days of the revolution of 1399.

After the coup, however, Scrope served in the delegation which relieved the imprisoned Richard II of his crown, and he presided with Archbishop Thomas Arundel at Henry's hastily arranged coronation. Furthermore, in 1400 Scrope secured loans to help finance Henry's expedition against the Scots, and he seems to have remained on good terms with the new King as late as August 1403, when he celebrated a special mass for him during a royal visit to York.

In 1404, however, the amiable relationship between the King and the Archbishop deteriorated rapidly. The Scrope family made several lucrative marriage alliances with the fractious Percies, while at about the same time the powerful Northumberland clan also became generous patrons of Scrope's cathedral. Moreover, the Archbishop understandably objected to the taxation of Church lands which was proposed by the so-called "Unlearned Parliament" of 1404. Finally, it is not unlikely that Scrope, along with Thomas Mowbray, the nineteen year-old Earl Marshal, was unwittingly manipulated by the Earl of Northumberland, who used the highly respected but politically naive Archbishop to legitimize his private campaign of revenge and self aggrandizement.

In the spring of 1405 Scrope composed a manifesto indicting the King on several charges of willful misrule. This propaganda campaign was evidently something of a success, for, having raised three knights and an armed mob of some eight thousand men, Scrope set out with Mowbray on 27 May to join forces with Henry Percy and Thomas Bardolf. Before they could meet, however, Percy found himself hopelessly outmaneuvered and delayed. As a result, Percy decided to abandon the motley expedition led by Scrope and Mowbray, leaving his inexperienced allies to face a large loyalist army led by Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland, and Prince John of Lancaster.

After a three-day stalemate on Shipton Moor, Scrope agreed to parley with Westmorland, but as soon as the Archbishop disbanded his followers in accordance with the terms of the truce, he was arrested and imprisoned at Pontefract.

Henry arrived soon thereafter, transferred Scrope to the Archbishop's own residence at Bishopthorpe, three miles south of York, and set the trial for Monday, June 8. Archbishop Arundel, fearing gross violations of ecclesiastical law, arrived early that morning to urge the King to submit the matter to either Parliament or the Pope, but his pleas for caution were ignored.

Henry, after lying ill at Ripon for nearly a week, marched against Bardolf and Percy and pursued them to Scotland. Eventually, after Percy's death at Bramham Moor in 1408, the northern rising was crushed altogether. Henry thus survived the gravest crisis of his reign, but only at the cost of killing a popular archbishop, a deed which provoked such universal outrage that Henry narrowly escaped excommunication. In fact, Henry probably only remained within the pale of the Church because of Gregory XII's fear that the English king might shift his allegiance to the rival pope at Avignon. Meanwhile, Richard Scrope was quietly buried in the northeast corner of York Minster.

Religious Posts
Preceded by: Robert Waldby	Archbishop of York 1398–1405	Succeeded by: Henry Bowet