HOPKINS, Edward (c.1602-57), of Connecticut and London.

What is known of the early life of Edward Hopkins comes from the will of his distinguished uncle, Sir Henry Lello, a merchant with interests in the Levant trade and English ambassador to Turkey between 1597 and 1607.13The Report of Lello ed. O. Burian (1952); Handlist of British Diplomatic Representatives ed. Bell (1990), 284. The Hopkins family hailed from the Shropshire-Herefordshire border south west of Bishop’s Castle, as did the family of Lello, whose exotic-sounding name was probably an Anglicisation of a Welsh one, probably Llywelyn.14T.J. and P. Morgan, Welsh Surnames (Cardiff, 1985), 148-9. The Lellos were a family of minor gentry status, recorded by the heralds in the visitation of Herefordshire in 1634.15Vis. Herefs. 1634, 141. Various material benefits of Henry Lello’s success as merchant and diplomat were accrued in due course by his family. He himself never married, but paid for the dowries of two of his four nieces, Edward Hopkins’s sisters, and gave Edward £400 at some point before 1630, perhaps to set him up in business. An even greater favour was accorded Edward’s brother, Henry Hopkins, who at Lello’s death inherited the office of warden (gaoler) of the Fleet prison and keeper of both old and new palaces of Westminster. These were potentially lucrative offices, the keepership of the palaces especially so, since they included the rents from the shops and stalls in Westminster Hall. Lello’s bequest to Henry Hopkins also included the small manor of Thickhoe, in Ashdon, Essex, where Lello lived, and the apparent preferment of Henry over Edward Hopkins may well suggest that the latter was the second son of his parents.

An early eighteenth-century biographical sketch of Edward Hopkins described him as a ‘Turkey merchant’, his standing in that commercial arena doubtless improved by his uncle’s bequest to him of his stake in the East India Company.16C. Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Bk. II, 23. During the 1630s, Hopkins lived in the London parish of St Stephen, Coleman Street, ‘the “Faubourg St Antoine” of the English Revolution’, where John Davenport, one of the feoffees for impropriations, was minister.17F.C. Norton, Governors of Connecticut (Hartford, Conn. 1905), 7; C. Hill, Economic Problems of the Church (Oxford, 1956), 255. In September 1631 Hopkins married at St Antholin, Budge Row, another church closely associated with the feoffees. His bride was Ann Yale, a godly woman from north-east Wales, the step-daughter of Theophilus Eaton, another godly merchant.18St Antholin, Budge Row par. reg.; ‘Theophilus Eaton’, Oxford DNB. By 1635 Hopkins was helping John Winthrop with his colonial activities in America by sending over cargoes of necessities, and it is clear that what the two men shared was a vision of a godly community that could not flourish in England under the authoritarian religious policies of the government. Hopkins had the contacts and skills to organise the shipments to Massachusetts, but it was a project under the supervision of others, including Sir Arthur Hesilrige*, thus part of the wider colonising activities of the group focussed on Providence Island which included William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke and John Pym*.19Winthrop Pprs. iii. 201-5, 209. By the summer of 1636, Hopkins had himself resolved to emigrate, and by early April 1637 had sailed for Boston, Massachusetts, in the company of his former minister, Davenport.20Winthrop Pprs. iii. 388-9; Winthrop Jnl. 223. From there he moved on to settle in Hartford, Connecticut.21Winthrop Jnl. 570.

Accompanying him to America were his wife Ann and her step-father Theophilus Eaton, who became founder-governor of New Haven.22‘Theophilus Eaton’, Oxford DNB. At some point during the Hopkins’s stay in America, if not earlier, Ann Hopkins developed a mental illness which proved resistant to various plans for a cure.23Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, Bk. II, 23-4. John Winthrop senior considered Ann Hopkins’s illness to be the result of her involvement in religious enquiry and debate, and other matters ‘proper to men, whose minds are stronger’; she should have confined herself to ‘household affairs and such things as belong to women’.24Winthop Jnl. 570. Despite this continuing domestic tragedy, Hopkins quickly established himself in the government of Connecticut, alternating with John Haynes as governor, or deputy governor, from 1640. He worked with Eaton on the founding of New Haven, and was a signatory to the articles of confederation which brought the colony into being in August 1643.25Recs. of the Colony of New Plymouth ed. Pulsifer, 8; Johnson’s Wonder-Working Providence ed. J.F. Jameson (New York, 1910), 171, 178-9. Attending its meetings as a commissioner of Connecticut, Hopkins was quickly elected to the presidency of the New England Confederation, again serving in an alternate pattern with Haynes.26Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, Bk. II, 17.

Hopkins was noted for his piety, both in the wider public arena of New England life and in his own household and neighbourhood.27Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, Bk. II, 23. He was described by one of his admirers as ‘a man that makes conscience of his words as well as his actions’.28Winthrop Pprs. iv, 453. By 1648, he was an important figure in the colonial government, that year trying to set up a meeting between the New England confederation and Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch director-general of New Netherland, which later became New York.29Winthrop Jnl. 714. Hopkins probably welcomed the inauguration of the commonwealth. In March 1649 he passed on news from Dartmouth, his future parliamentary seat, to John Winthrop junior, correctly reporting the assassination of Thomas Rainborowe* and incorrectly that of Philip Skippon*.30Winthrop Pprs. v. 321-2. From the late 1640s, he was contemplating a return to England, against a ‘stream of advice to the contrary’.31Winthrop Pprs. v. 231; Public Recs. of Conn. ed. Trumbull, 222. According to an early biographer of his, Hopkins only left Connecticut because of the need for him to manage the estate in England he inherited on the death of his brother in 1655.32Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, Bk. II, 24. Henry Hopkins had gone to the king’s headquarters at Oxford during the civil war, but managed to cling on to his offices, despite the efforts of John Wylde* in 1643 to prise them from him.33CJ iii. 283b. This inheritance passed on to Edward Hopkins the property of his uncle, Sir Henry Lello, including the office of warden of the Fleet prison, the keepership of the palace of Westminster and the farm at Thickhoe, in Ashdon. But Edward’s return to England took place much earlier than this: it was probably in the autumn of 1651; certainly no later than 1652, when he was named as a navy commissioner, with a salary of £250 a year, during the last months of the Rump Parliament.34Lttrs. of John Davenport ed. I.M. Calder, 90; CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 351. His wife's illness and his own indifferent health probably played a part in his decision to return, as well as his interest in the culture of godliness professed by the Rump.

In February 1653, Hopkins was required by Nicholas Lechmere* to look into the case of Andrew Vesey, captured by the Dutch during the Anglo-Dutch conflict.35CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 532. This was almost certainly the son of Andrew Voysey*, Member for Dartmouth during the Short Parliament, and this may have been the episode which first linked Hopkins with the Dartmouth mercantile elite. Hopkins retained his post as navy commissioner through the political changes of 1653-4. By May 1653 he was working with Robert Thomson*, a more senior figure than he in naval service.36CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 584. Doubtless impressed by his diplomatic work in New England, on 24 October 1653 the Nominated Assembly named Hopkins as a commissioner for the administration of justice in Scotland. This proved an unwelcome preferment to Hopkins himself, who within four days managed to secure himself an exeat.37CJ vii. 339a, 341b. It was probably this narrow escape from service in Scotland, rather than a decision against a contemplated second emigration across the Atlantic, which was applauded by Hopkins’s friends in November as providential.38CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 517. In August 1654, Hopkins was once again considered for a different post, but in the event he was passed over until a year later, when he became a commissioner for the admiralty, on a salary of £400 a year.39CSP Dom. 1654, p. 538; 1655-6, pp. 9, 10; 1657-8, p. 399.

At the admiralty, Hopkins became a close friend of Robert Thomson, with whom he helped prepare the fleet for sea. Among the projects to which Hopkins and Thomson thus contributed was the ill-fated Western Design, the fleet despatched to the Caribbean. In June 1655, the admiralty commissioners were rewarded each with a gratuity of £150 for their hard work.40CSP Dom. 1655, p. 200. The following year, Hopkins was elected for Dartmouth to the second protectorate Parliament. In the previous Parliament, in 1654, the borough had been represented by a local man, Thomas Boone, who was strongly associated with the commonwealth and who was willing to work as a local magistrate but not as a Parliament-man under the Cromwellian regime. Boone’s aloofness left something of a political vacuum at Dartmouth in 1656, but there is no doubt that Hopkins was elected on the naval interest there. The growing strength of the Cromwellian navy must have been applauded by the Dartmouth merchants, who had long lobbied for better protection against various enemies of English shipping, even if they must have harboured grave doubts about the wisdom and value of Cromwell’s war against Spain.

Hopkins was named to a total of eight committees in this Parliament. He was elected to the important committee for privileges (18 Sept. 1656), and a few days later to a committee on the prisoners in various gaols following the crack-down by the major-generals after Penruddock’s rising.41CJ vii. 424a, 429a. On 27 September he was named to a committee on timber supplies, a topic of great interest to the navy. The same day, after a proposal to refer the revision of all existing legislation to a committee of the whole House had been defeated, Hopkins was among the committee to which this task was referred. The scrutiny of legislation passed by previous legislating bodies during the constitutional upheavals of the 1640s and 50s thus far was clearly an important task; among those joining Hopkins in it were John Disbrowe* and the Devon MPs Henry Hatsell and Edmund Fowell.42CJ vii. 429b. Hopkins was named to a ‘special’ committee on trade on 20 October, and to another that worked on a scheme to fund the ministry in Great Yarmouth (14 Nov.).43CJ vii. 442a, 453a. On 18 December, after the Quaker James Naylor had been ordered to be publicly whipped, Hopkins was added to the committee on his case, which now had to deal with the petitions against Quakers that came from many regions, including from Devon.44CJ vii. 470a. This proved to be his last nomination to a parliamentary committee. The diarist Thomas Burton* recorded no speech by Hopkins.

Hopkins never forgot his links with Connecticut. As early as April 1656, he wrote to his former minister, John Davenport, that he intended to endow a college there.45Lttrs. of John Davenport, 162. Despite the continuing pull of New England, he continued to be active in his post as an admiralty commissioner, even while he was in Parliament. On 25 November, the mayor of Dartmouth advised him of naval intelligence involving Dartmouth ships, suggesting how a successful partnership between the town and its parliamentary representative might have continued to develop.46CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 468. By early in 1657, however, Hopkins disappears from the record, and in March that year he drew up his will, moved by ‘the evident and strong intimations of his pleasure to call me out of this transitory life unto himself’ given by ‘the sovereign lord of all creatures’. Among his bequests were an estate in Connecticut to establish a grammar school and college ‘for the public service of the country in future times’ and cash legacies of over £2,000.47PROB11/263/523. Robert Thomson was one of the overseers of Hopkins’s will. Hopkins died on 13 March 1657. It emerged during the exercise to retrieve his salary that his wife had only recently come back from America and had been settled in a navy house.48CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 327, 529; 1657-8, p. 399. She lived on, despite her mental frailty, until 1698. During his final illness, Hopkins apparently predicted the fall of the protectorate:

God will shortly take the protector away, and soon after that you will see great changes overturning the present constitution, and sore troubles come upon those that now promise better things unto themselves.49Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, Bk. II, 24.

Hopkins had no descendants. His principal heir was his nephew, Henry Dally, but his will made no mention of the keepership of the palace of Westminster or of the Fleet.