William Scrope, 1st Earl of Wiltshire
Supporter of Richard II of England

William le Scrope, Earl of Wiltshire, King of Mann (c. 1350 – 29 July 1399) was a close supporter of King Richard II of England. He was a second son of Richard le Scrope, 1st Baron Scrope of Bolton.
He was the third and final king of an independent Manx Kingdom.
Life
He was a soldier-adventurer in Lithuania, Italy and France, where he served with John of Gaunt. Gaunt made him seneschal of Aquitaine in 1383.
He was made vice-chamberlain of the household of King Richard II in 1393 and granted the castle and manor of Marlborough in Wiltshire. In the same year his father purchased for him the Isle of Man from the earl of Salisbury, giving him the nominal title Dominus de Man or King of Mann. In 1394 he became a Knight of the Garter.
He was created Earl of Wiltshire in 1397 and became Lord High Treasurer in 1398.
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This entry incorporates text from “William Scrope, 1st Earl of Wiltshire” 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.