HOPTON, Robert

Hopton’s father, Thomas, was the bastard son of Sir Robert Swillington (d.1391), the chamberlain and councillor to John of Gaunt, who was a man of considerable wealth and influence.3 Ibid. 1-6, 25, 26. Although Thomas’s expectations were naturally limited by the circumstances of his birth, his half-brother Sir Roger Swillington assisted him to a good marriage (to one of Sir Roger’s own stepdaughters), and named him as heir to his estates in what seemed an unlikely event that he himself and his two sons and daughter, Margaret, wife of Sir John Gra*, should all happen to die without issue. Against the odds, the fortunes of war and the estrangement of Margaret from her husband worked to the Hoptons’ advantage, so that in 1430 Thomas’s elder son, John Hopton, inherited a very substantial part of the Swillington estates, situated principally in Yorkshire and Suffolk. John’s younger landless brother, Robert, looked for advancement initially to the leading magnate in the latter county, William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, chief minister to Henry VI and chamberlain of England.

It was undoubtedly to the duke, the constable of Wallingford castle, that Robert owed his return for Wallingford to the Parliament summoned to meet on 6 Nov. 1449. He sat at a time when the interests of Crown and duke were as one, and both he and his elder brother were then in receipt of livery as members of the royal household, albeit with John ranked among the esquires while Robert was accorded more lowly status.4 E101/410/3, ff. 31, 32v. Although Duke William stood in grave need of supporters in the Commons as he faced impeachment and the wrath of many who held him responsible for the loss of Normandy, it is unlikely that his servant Hopton could have done anything to help him. After Suffolk’s murder in May 1450 Hopton continued to offer his service to the widowed Duchess Alice, who now faced serious challenges from supporters of the de la Poles’ principal rival in East Anglia, John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk. One of them was John Howard*, who was already engaged in a quarrel with Alice over their inheritance of the estates of the late Sir Thomas Kerdiston*. After a summer of major uprisings, in October Howard and his armed followers allegedly entered her parks at Eye, Wingfield and elsewhere, and attacked her servants, including Hopton and the more prominent Edward Grimston. Over the course of the next year members of the Mowbray affinity were said to have hunted and killed 600 of the Alice’s deer and committed various other trespasses, leaving Hopton and his fellows unable to carry out their lady’s business. Their chance to inflict retribution came in February 1453, at a time when the Court had regained its ascendancy. The dowager-duchess’s accusations against Howard and his men were heard before commissioners of oyer and terminer holding judicial sessions at Ipswich, in a highly charged atmosphere,5 KB9/118/2 (pt. 1), no. 17. for on 12 Feb., only a few days before the indictments were laid, many of the men indicted had been involved in a violent dispute over the election of the shire knights for Suffolk to the Parliament due to assemble at Reading on 6 Mar. It was later claimed that a gathering of 600 armed men at Ipswich had attempted to put pressure on the under sheriff at the county court to make a return in favour of their candidates, both members of the Mowbray affinity. The next county court for Suffolk did not meet until 12 Mar. The sheriff then returned a new indenture naming (Sir) Philip Wentworth* and Gilbert Debenham I*, both favourable to the court and the dowager-duchess, as the county’s representatives. Hopton was among the 70 or so attestors recorded on that occasion, in company with many other well-wishers of the de la Poles.6 C219/16/2; Richmond, 109; R. Virgoe, ‘Three Suff. Parlty. Elections’, Bull. IHR, xxxix. 188-91. Nevertheless, the nervous collapse of the King in the summer of 1453 ensured that Hopton’s own political career never took flight.

Thereafter, Hopton’s active life was spent in a limited and local framework, to which his second appearance in the Commons in 1467 was an exception. He was only ever placed on two royal commissions: once along with his brother in November 1470, during the Readeption, and once with his nephew William in May 1472. In this period he busied himself with the affairs of his brother, adopting the role of John’s faithful servant and trusted adviser for at least 25 of his later years. In the early 1450s the bailiff of Blythburgh had from time to time paid him money on John Hopton’s instructions; he may already have had an annuity by his gift, although if so it was a small one in comparison to that of ten marks he received from him in the mid 1460s. He last received this annuity at Michaelmas 1477, and it evidently ceased to be paid when John died in the following year.7 Richmond, 150-2. During 1466-7 he was particularly busy on his brother’s behalf, working with others of John’s council on the final negotiations for a settlement with the Dunwich authorities over the old matter of the shifting mouth of the Dunwich river. He himself may have had a direct interest in this affair, for he rented three plots of marshland at Walberswick from his brother. In the course of the negotiations he and Henry Sotell, the King’s attorney-general, spent three days and nights at Westwood putting the finishing touches to the final agreement. Robert undertook various tasks on his brother’s estates. In January 1472, for instance, he was at Easton Bavents overseeing the marking of sheep purchased from the executors of Nicholas Nel.8 Ibid. 87, 152-4; Suff. RO (Ipswich), Blois mss, HA 30/50/22/10/17 (6), 30/314/1, 30/314/18, mm. 1-4. Curiously, however, John did not engage him as a feoffee of the estates he settled on his wife in jointure.9 CCR, 1476-85, no. 492; CPR, 1476-85, pp. 142-3; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 200.

Whereas Hopton’s place of residence earlier in his career is not known, during the 1460s and 1470s he almost certainly lived on the Suffolk coast at Southwold. In 1461, at the request of Thomas Denys* of Ipswich, he was enfeoffed of a messuage there belonging to Denys’s debtor, Richard Skylman, a former bailiff of the town, on the understanding that if Skylman failed to pay the debt of 40 marks the feoffees would sell the property to satisfy Denys. However, within a few years he married Skylman’s widow, and when required to relinquish the messuage to Denys’s executor, Richard Felawe*, he refused to do so. Together with his wife Hopton also rented property in Southwold from Mettingham College, to which he paid rents of 5s. 8d. in 1478-9.10 C1/41/152; Stowe 934, ff. 62v, 63. By July 1489 these holdings were no longer in his possession, so we may assume that by then his wife had died, and perhaps he had too.11 Stowe 934, f. 72v.

It remains uncertain whether it was our Robert Hopton or his nephew of the same name (educated at Lincoln’s Inn) who was a feoffee of the Suffolk manor of Harkstead on behalf of William Tendring† (d.1499), who married Thomasina Sydney (d.1485), a stepdaughter of our MP’s late brother. Whichever Robert Hopton it was, he was still living in 1493 after the death of a co-feoffee, Sir Roger Townshend†, the husband of Thomasina’s half-sister.12 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 250; Richmond, 100, 129-30. Robert the nephew, who was still at school in 1477-8, received an annuity of £10 from his brother, the new lord of the Hopton estates: Richmond, 61-62, 141-2.