John Scrope

John Scrope (circa 1662 – 9 April 1752) was a British lawyer and politician.

He was the son of Thomas Scrope, a Bristol merchant, the third son and ultimate heir of Colonel Adrian Scrope of Wormsley in Oxfordshire, the latter hung drawn and quartered after the restoration as one of the regicides of Charles I.

Scrope was educated at the Middle Temple and called to the bar in 1692. In May 1708, following the Act of Union, he was appointed a Baron (judge) of the Court of Exchequer in Scotland. In this capacity he was one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal from 26 September 1710 (following Lord Cowper's resignation) to 19 October 1710, when Sir Simon Harcourt was appointed Lord Keeper.

Elected to the Parliament of Great Britain for Ripon at the general election of 1722, he exchanged his office of Baron of the Exchequer for that of Secretary to the Treasury. He later sat for his home city of Bristol and then from 1735 to his death for Lyme Regis.

He was a close ally of Sir Robert Walpole, First Lord of the Treasury from 1721 to 1742, and after Walpole's resignation was called by a committee of parliament, the Committee of Secrecy under the chairmanship of Lord Limerick, to account for £1,059,211-6s-2d, part of £1,384,600-6s-3d which had passed through Treasury hands within ten years, that could not be accounted for. Scrope refused to account for the money, claiming, with solicitor Paxton, it had been secret service funds for which he was only accountable to the King.

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