[2] He had four brothers and one sister:[3] In 1390 Scrope accompanied John Beaufort, half-brother of the future King Henry IV, on the Barbary Crusade to Mahdia, but otherwise little is known of his early life.

[5] His uncle, Richard Scrope, Archbishop of York, was executed on 8 June 1405 for taking part in the Northern Rising against the King;[6] however, Henry Scrope was not involved in his uncle's failed rebellion, and was serving the King in Wales when he inherited his father's title and lands in 1406.

[7] According to historian James Tait, it was during this period that Scrope came to enjoy the friendship and confidence of the future Henry V, by whose influence he was appointed Treasurer of England in 1410, and made a Knight of the Garter in the same year.

[9] In 1415 Henry V determined to invade France, and in February 1415 Scrope attended a council meeting held for the purpose of planning the forthcoming expedition.

Prior to his execution, Scrope was dragged across Southampton from the Watergate to the north gate, where he and Cambridge were beheaded on 5 August 1415.

[13] Pugh also contends that "there was no plot in 1415 to assassinate Henry V and his three brothers and that heinous charge, by far the most sensational in the indictment, was fabricated to ensure that Cambridge, Grey and Scrope did not escape the death penalty as a well-deserved punishment for the various other offences that they undoubtedly had committed".

[14] The Southampton Plot is dramatised in Shakespeare's Henry V, and in the anonymous play The History of Sir John Oldcastle.