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Richard Scrope (bishop)

Archbishop of York

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ3431392 ↗
Source-derived summary

Richard le Scrope (c. 1350 – 8 June 1405) was an English cleric who served as Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield and Archbishop of York and was executed in 1405 for his participation in the Northern Rising against King Henry IV.

Family

Richard Scrope, born about 1350, was the third son of Henry Scrope, 1st Baron Scrope of Masham, and his wife, Joan, whose surname is unknown. He had four brothers and two sisters:

Sir Geoffrey Scrope (c.1342–1362), who married Eleanor Neville, the daughter of Ralph de Neville, 2nd Baron Neville, by Alice, daughter of Hugh de Audley, and was slain at the siege of the Castle of Piskre in Lithuania in 1362, dying without issue.

Stephen Scrope (c.1345 – 25 January 1406), 2nd Baron Scrope of Masham

Henry Scrope (1359 – 1425), 4th Lord FitzHugh, 3rd Baron of Ravensworth, who married Lady Elizabeth DeGrey (1365 – 1427)

Sir John Scrope, who married Elizabeth Strathbogie

Joan Scrope, who married Henry FitzHugh, 2nd Baron FitzHugh

Isabel Scrope, who married Sir Robert Plumpton

Career

His father had had a distinguished career as a soldier and administrator, and according to McNiven, Richard's Scrope's first preferments in the church probably owed a great deal to family influence. Scrope was rector of Ainderby Steeple near Northallerton in 1368, warden of the free chapel of Tickhill Castle, and in 1375 official to Thomas Arundel, Bishop of Ely. He was ordained deacon on 20 September 1376, and priest on 14 March 1377. During this time he studied arts at Oxford, and by 1375 became licentiate in civil law. By 1383 he had earned doctorates of canon and civil law at Cambridge, and in 1378 was chancellor of the university.

From 1382 to 1386 Scrope was at Rome, serving as a papal chaplain and an auditor of the Curia. In 1382 he was instituted Dean of Chichester. Although his election as Bishop of Chichester in September 1385 was blocked by King Richard II, Scrope was made Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield on 18 August 1386, and consecrated by Pope Urban VI at Genoa on the following day.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Richard Scrope (bishop)” as archbishop of York. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Richard, Scrope and bishop.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1350, 1405, 1342, 1362—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1350. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Richard, Scrope and bishop providing the first useful test.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Richard Scrope (bishop)”, the useful work is to connect “archbishop of York” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3431392. VIAF identifies the subject as 49957160. The Library of Congress control number is n98096877. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1350, 1405, 1342 and 1362.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Richard Scrope (bishop)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.