John Scott (died 1485)

Sir John Scott (or Scot) (c. 1423 – 17 October 1485) of Scot's Hall in Smeeth was a Kent landowner, and committed supporter of the House of York. Among other offices, he served as Comptroller of the Household to Edward IV, and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.

John Scott was the son of William Scott (d.1434) and Isabel Finch (died c.1457), youngest daughter of Vincent Finch, or Herbert, of Netherfield, Sussex.

He had a younger brother, William Scott (1428?–1491), who married a wife named Margery, by whom he had six sons and two daughters, and was founder of the Essex branch of the Scott family.

He also had a sister, Joan Scot (d.1507), who married firstly Thomas Yarde of Denton Court, Kent and secondly Sir Henry Grey of Heton. Joan's daughter, Anne Yarde married Thomas Heveningham of Suffolk.

Scott was appointed to commissions in Kent from 1450 onwards, and with Sir John Fogge and Robert Horn expended in excess of £333 in the suppression of Jack Cade's uprising in that year. By 1456 he was an esquire Henry VI. He was appointed a Justice of the Peace in Kent in 1458, an office he held until his death, and was Sheriff of Kent in 1460.

The 'turning point' in Scott's career, according to Fleming, 'came in June 1460, when, with Fogge and Horn, he gave support to the Yorkist earls that proved crucial to their success in Kent'. Within a year of the accession of Edward IV, Scott was rewarded with annuities, a knighthood, the office of tronage and pesage in the port of London, and appointments as joint Chirographer of the Common Pleas, deputy butler of Sandwich, lieutenant of Dover under Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, 'the Kingmaker', and Comptroller of the Household. In 1462, as a result of the attainders of John de Vere, 12th Earl of Oxford, and Thomas, 9th Baron Ros of Helmsley (d.1464), he was granted custody of Oxford's lands, as well as the reversion of lands which were the jointure of Baron Ros's widow, Margery [sic?], including the castle and manor of Chilham and the manors of Wilderton and Molash. In 1463 he was granted the manors of Old Swinford and Snodsbury in Worcestershire, in the hands of the crown by the attainder of the Earl of Wiltshire, and was among those entrusted with supervision of all 'wardships, marriages, and ecclesiastical temporalities' which had fallen to the crown.