Mary Scrope

Who was Mary Scrope?

Mary Scrope was the granddaughter of Henry Scrope, 4th Baron Scrope of Bolton, and the sister of Elizabeth Scrope, wife of John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, and Margaret Scrope, wife of Edmund de la Pole, 3rd Duke of Suffolk. She is said to have been in the service at court of King Henry VIII's first four wives. As the wife of Sir William Kingston, Constable of the Tower of London, she was in attendance on Anne Boleyn during the Queen's brief imprisonment in the Tower in May 1536, and both she and her husband were among those who walked with the Queen to the scaffold. By her first husband, Edward Jerningham, she was the mother of Sir Henry Jerningham, whose support helped to place Queen Mary I on the throne of England in 1553, and who became one of Queen Mary's most favoured courtiers.