HOPTON, Sir Robert

In a county where every shire knight of this period was a belted knight, Hopton was one of the more obscure individuals to be elected. The Hoptons of Wortley (West Riding) were not a family from the upper echelons of the county gentry, yet the family name did gain some prominence in the fifteenth century. An illegitimate branch, the issue of Joan, who was probably a daughter of the Hoptons of Wortley, by their important neighbour, Sir Roger Swillington (d.1391) of Swillington, inherited that family’s large Yorkshire and Suffolk estates on the extinction of the legitimate Swillington line in 1429.1 C.F. Richmond, John Hopton, 5-6. One of Sir Roger’s grandsons, John Hopton, took up residence on his grandfather’s lands in Suffolk, while John’s brother Robert* became a follower of William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, and twice sat in Parliament for the de la Pole borough of Wallingford. The subject of this biography, however, left far less of a mark. His immediate ancestry is extremely uncertain, and it is difficult to distinguish him from other men of the same name. His family had been resident in the West Riding since at least the mid thirteenth century, taking their name from the village of Hopton, near Mirfield.2 Feudal Aids, vi. 128, 130. Throughout the fourteenth century the heads of the family were generally described as ‘of Mirfield’, but by 1357 the family, in addition to its lands in Mirfield and surrounding vills, had other lands further to the north at Wortley and Armley near Leeds.3 Warrington Lib., Beamont mss, 499.

The first reference to our MP may date from as early as April 1407, when ‘Robert Hopton of Mirfield’ sued out a pardon for a minor outlawry on a plea of debt in the court of common pleas. But this is more likely to have been his putative father if one may judge from the next reference: in November 1413 Robert, son and heir of Robert Hopton, esquire, entered into a bond in £40 to Hugh Aghton. This suggests that our MP had then but recently inherited the family estates and thus is to be identified with the namesake who mustered in the retinue of Richard, Lord Scrope of Bolton, for service in the Agincourt campaign.4 CPR, 1405-8, p. 256; C241/210/42; N.H. Nicolas, Agincourt, 344. Thereafter he largely disappears from the records for the next few years. Given his later knighthood, it is probable that this is to be explained by a prolonged period of military service in France. There is no direct evidence for this supposition, but his kinsman, John Hopton, mustered in the retinue of the Yorkshire knight, Sir Henry Brounflete, in 1417, as did both John and William Hopton in June 1421. This is significant in the context of a later reference to our MP: in May 1431 he conveyed the bulk of his estates to feoffees headed by Brounflete.5 E101/50/1, m. 2; 51/2, m. 24; W. Yorks. Archive Service, Kirklees, Beaumont of Whitley mss, DD/WBD/I/12. Perhaps he did so in anticipation of returning to France for a further period of service. Contingents commanded by Sir Thomas Tunstall and Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, landed in France during the following summer, and Hopton may have been with one or other of them. That, at least, would explain his knighthood at some date between May 1431 and January 1433, when he made a conveyance of his property at Eccleshill near Wortley.6 Calverley Chs. (Thoresby soc. vi), 246.

Indirect evidence that Hopton returned to England in about 1432 after a sustained, if intermittent, absence, is provided by his first appearance since 1416 in the transactions of his neighbours. On 10 Mar. 1433 he made a £20 bond with Walter Calverley of Calverley, and soon afterwards he witnessed a jointure settlement for Sir John Langton† of Farnley and his wife, Euphemia.7 Yorks. Deeds, x (Yorks. Arch. Rec. Ser. cxx), 62-63. He also, more significantly, took a part in wider local affairs, winning a seat in the Parliament which assembled that July. Interestingly, the sheriff who presided over his election was Brounflete, and perhaps this explains his return for a county whose representation was dominated by more substantial families than Hopton’s. This is not, however, to say that he was a man of no substance: in the subsidy returns of 1436 he was assessed on an income of £60 p.a. drawn from Yorkshire and some undocumented holdings in Northamptonshire.8 C219/14/4; E159/212, recorda Hil rot. 14 (viii)d.

Hopton’s appointment to a commission of array in July 1434 provides further evidence that he was a man of military reputation greater than implied by the surviving records. Yet after attesting the Yorkshire election in 1435 he again disappears from the records.9 CPR, 1429-36, p. 360; C219/14/5. Either he returned to France or, more probably, retired after a brief dalliance with public affairs. Little more is known of him until his death in 1447. On 6 June of that year administration of his estate was granted to Richard Bygley of Wortley, probably his servant.10 Borthwick Inst. Univ. of York, York registry wills, prob. reg. 2, f. 157a. He left at least one son, John, who was evidently of age on his father’s death, and his grandson, Roger†, the younger son of this John, went on to enjoy a prominent career. A yeoman in the household of Edward IV, he represented Chippenham in the Parliament of 1478 and was knighted in 1497.11 C.E. Arnold, ‘Political Study of the West Riding, 1437-1509’ (Manchester Univ. Ph. D. thesis, 1984), ii. 57-58. Later members of the family included another John Hopton, chaplain to the future Queen Mary I and later bishop of Norwich, and Sir Ingram Hopton, the Royalist soldier whose death at the battle of Winceby in 1643 marked the extinction of the senior Hopton male line.12 Oxf. DNB, ‘Hopton, John (d.1558)’; Royalist Composition Pprs. ii (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. xviii), 186.