Lord of Mann in the 1390s, who bought the Island and lost it with his head.

He was vice-chamberlain to Richard II, and later Earl of Wiltshire. In 1393 he bought the Isle of Man from the son of the Earl of Salisbury, stepping into the place of the Montacutes. Coke, quoted in the Manx Society volumes, recorded the purchase in a form which mattered to later Manx argument: whoever is lord of that Island is called King, and may lawfully be crowned with a golden crown.

Caught in the quarrel between Richard II and Henry Bolingbroke, he was beheaded in July 1399 by Bolingbroke's supporters, and his estates were forfeited to the Crown for high treason.

The manner of that forfeiture became the Crown's own account of its title. Henry IV granted the Island to Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, reciting that it had belonged to Sir William le Scrope deceased, whom the King had lately conquered and decreed conquered, and had by reason of that conquest seized into his hands. When Percy in turn rebelled, the letters patent of 6 April, 7 Henry IV, granted the Island to Sir John Stanley to hold as fully as le Scrope or any other Lord had held it, rendering two falcons.