User:Harrias/Ralph Hopton

Ralph Hopton, 1st Baron Hopton (March 1596 – September 1652) was a Royalist commander in the English Civil War, appointed  lieutenant-general under the Marquess of Hertford in the west at the beginning of the conflict.

Early life
Ralph Hopton was born in March 1596, the eldest child of Robert Hopton and Jane ( Kemeys). The exact date of his birth is unknown, but he was baptised on 13 March at Evercreech, roughly 9 miles east of Glastonbury, in Somerset. The Hopton family were of good standing among the gentry; Hopton's ancestors had attended christenings of future kings, served as Lieutenant of the Tower of London, and as Knight Marshal in the Royal Household. In 1538, during the Reformation, the family was granted the lease of Witham Friary, and later were given full grant of that and further monastic land formerly held by Glastonbury Abbey in Somerset. In his Memoires, David Lloyd suggests that Hopton could read by the age of three and write with good knowledge of Greek and Latin words within another eighteen months, though Lloyd's biographies have been criticised as being often inaccurate.

He was educated first at a local grammar school, supposed by his biographer F.T.R. Edgar to be King's School, Bruton, due to its proximity to Witham. He then attended the Middle Temple in London; common for a man of his standing at the time. After this, he is supposed to have been educated at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he studied under Robert Sanderson. There is no record of his matriculation or graduation from Oxford, but several contemporary references confirm his attendance. Edgar posits that he attended without any intention of graduating, using it "for seasoning, social polish, and contacts."

Service in the Palatinate campaign
In 1620, aged 24, Hopton joined several of his peers among the both the nobility and the gentry in volunteering to fight in the Palatinate campaign of the Thirty Years' War. Sir Horace Vere commanded the English force in support of King James I's son-in-law, Frederick V of the Palatinate. They left England in July 1620, and after landing in the Low Countries, they travelled to Bohemia and split their forces to join with those of the Margrave of Ansbach. The Spanish Catholic forces maintained the upper hand despite the English reinforcements, and Frederick V was defeated at the Battle of White Mountain, just outside Prague in early November. Hopton was part of the escort which saw Frederick V and his wife, King James I's daughter, Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, escape from Prague; when it was not possible for the Queen to travel in her coach, she would ride on horseback behind Hopton. One of Hopton's younger sisters, Abigail, served as one of the Queen's Maids of Honour, and was also part of the escape. During the passage they fought off raids from the Cossacks, while the royal's own servants stole from their luggage, before reaching Breslau (modern-day Wrocław, in western Poland) after a week. Edgar suggests that his part in her escape was Hopton's "lifelong and perhaps only boast".

Hopton arrived back in London in late-February 1621, and within a week he was elected to parliament in a by-election for Shaftesbury, acting in the interests of the Earl of Pembroke. Hopton was noted as being vociferous during debate about the conduct of Edward Floyd, a Catholic lawyer who had insulted Frederick V. When parliament adjourned in June, Hopton received permission to leave England again, and returned to the Palatinate campaign in Europe, serving in Sir Charles Rich's Regiment of Foot. He took further leave from the European war to return to England to marry Elizabeth Capell, a widower who had been married to Justinian Lewin, a Privy Councillor. Elizabeth was not deemed a suitable wife by one contemporary writer, John Chamberlain, who suggested that because of her age (she was five year's Hopton's senior, so around 32 at the time of their marriage), and the fact that she had only had one child, she might not be able to provide him with an heir, which Chamberlain concluded was "a hazard for a man of his parts and fortunes". In contrast, Edgar describes Elizabeth as being "reputedly a woman of wit and beauty, well fitted to be a soldier's wife".

He was invited to stand for parliament again in 1624 as a knight of the shire for Somerset, but declined. James I had acceded to the pressure being placed on him to intervene in the European wars, and allowed levies to be raised to fight in the conflict. By this time Hopton had risen to be a lieutenant colonel, and he was granted permission to levy either 200 or 250 men from Somerset. Fellow commanders in the army, which fought under Ernst von Mansfeld, were George Goring and William Waller, the latter of whom he formed a strong friendship with. Upon the death of James I and the start of King Charles I's reign, there was a shift in priorities; Charles I decided to attack the Spanish directly and ordered an attack on Cádiz. The Secretary of State, The Lord Conway wrote to the English ambassador to the United Provinces, the Viscount Dorchester, at the end of May requesting the Hopton return to England to take part in the Cádiz expedition. He wrote a second set of letters a month later, including one to Mansfeld, requesting that he grant Hopton leave, before following this up with another letter a week later. The letters show the regard in which Conway held Hopton; in the letter to Hopton himself, he wrote that he "took special notice of your great worth and virtue", and that taking part in the attack on Cádiz would be a better way of finding favour with the new King.

Peace-time administrator
Hopton returned to England in late-July 1625, and travelled to the King's court at Oxford, where he sat in parliament as a member for Bath. He excused himself from the Cádiz expedition, and also from returning to the Palatinate campaign, writing to the Viscount Dorchester that, "the miseries we suffered in the last journey ... make me afraid to have charge of men where I have any doubt of the means to support them". He was accordingly granted a discharge from Mansfeld's army, and settled at Evercreech Park. Hopton was made a Knight of the Bath during Charles I's coronation honours in February 1626. He did not sit in the subsequent parliament, but was returned for Wells in 1628. During his first two stints in parliament, Hopton was a relatively minor member, sitting on committees but making little contribution. In the 1628 sitting, he made more notable input; he made a speech about the injustice of the Forced Loan imposed by the King, and later suggested wording for a report on the topic in which he emphasised the loan's illegality. During a debate about people's freedoms, he was in favour of an amendment to the Petition of Right which would limit the powers of the Crown. In March 1629, King Charles dissolved parliament, frustrated with both the growing power that parliament were demanding over religious matters, and the restrictions they wanted to place upon his own powers. Another parliament would not be called until 1640; in the interim, Charles governed the country by Personal Rule.

In 1629, Hopton was appointed as both a deputy lieutenant and a justice of the peace for Somerset. The first position, which Edgar supposes was conferred upon him by his patron, the Earl of Pembroke, who was the Lord Lieutenant of Somerset, made Hopton one of the men responsible for training and leading the county's militia. In his other role, as a justice of the peace, Hopton was responsible for general administrative tasks for the county, as well as presiding over magisterial sessions in which he heard cases in an arbitrational role. Throughout the 1630s, in addition to his duties as a deputy lieutenant and a justice of the peace, he also took on several commissioner roles, and was at one time the treasurer for hospitals in east Somerset.

Moderate reformer
Hopton returned to military duty in the Bishops' Wars, commanding a troop of cavalry in Charles I's guard to fight the Scottish Covenanters. Like many in the English army, Hopton was uneasy about fighting against those with similar religious beliefs; although Hopton was a firm supporter of the Church of England, he was tolerant of Dissenters. Despite his personal unease, he was upset with the mutiny and unrest in the English troops, opining that a properly training militia would have behaved better. Faced with a mutinous army that he felt could not beat the Covenanters, Charles ultimately signed the Treaty of Berwick before any major battles were fought. The King subsequently wanted funds so that he could return with a stronger army, and called his first parliament in eleven years, in which Hopton was selected for Somerset. Hopton was appointed to two significant committees during this parliament, but it was dissolved after just three weeks by Charles, leading it to be known as the Short Parliament.

The resumption of hostilities with Scotland, in which Hopton was not involved, left Charles with no choice but to convene parliament again. Hopton sat as a member for Wells. As with the Short Parliament, the Long Parliament (as it came to be known), was more interested in sorting out its grievances about the period of Personal Rule than in granting the King more money. One of parliament's first acts was against the Earl of Strafford, one of the King's chief advisers, who had suggested that Charles should be "loosed and absolved from all rules of government". After Strafford successfully defended himself at his impeachment trial, the Puritan group in parliament pressed for a bill of attainder, in which Strafford would be declared a traitor and executed. Hopton sided with the Puritans, saying that to "authorize, and practice things not law is to subvert law." He also spoke out against Royalists interests when he condemned the Lord Finch, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and pushed for greater action to be taken against Catholics. Hopton voted in favour of the Grand Remonstrance in late 1641, which listed the illegal acts conducted by the King, and demanded parliamentary reform, but Sir Edward Nicholas, a prominent Royalist at the time, suggested that Hopton did so reluctantly, "having before declared his judgment against it." Hopton delivered and read the Grand Remonstrance to the King, who was said to give "especial respects to Sir Ralph".

During this period, Hopton was considered to be a moderate reformer; he agreed with many of the reforms which the Long Parliament was calling for, but disagreed with the drastic measures being taken by some of the more radical members. He was respected in parliament, and was accorded the honorific "that Ancient Parliament Man" during the Long Parliament, a term often reserved for former Speakers. Nonetheless, his biographer Edgar suggests that Hopton lacked political acumen, saying that he was "impervious to subtleties of thought and diction, innocent of theory—neither lawyer ... nor philosopher". His views often reflected the middle ground of the house, and as the influence of the extreme Puritans increased, he grew uncomfortable.

Ultimately, he sided with the King against Parliament: after the King entered the House of Commons with around 80 armed men in January 1642 to arrest five members who were most vociferous against him, Hopton defended his right to do so, saying: "Did not we give first provocation? And how gracious the King's speech!". He subsequently became a prominent Royalist supporter within parliament, and in place of "that Ancient Parliament Man", he was now referred to as the "King's Servant". According to the historian John Forster, Hopton "contradicted everything that was said without scruple", and it was for speaking against the House in March 1642 that parliament imprisoned Hopton in the Tower of London for two weeks.

Civil War
After his release from the tower, Hopton was firmly on the side of the King, and in June he was appointed by the King as a commander of the trained militia in Somerset. The Marquess of Hertford was named as the King's Lieutenant General in the West, with Hopton as one of his senior military advisers. The Royalists chose Wells as their base in Somerset, preferring it over Bristol as they felt the latter had Parliamentarian sympathies, and Wells was more central. Both the Royalists and Parliament began recruiting within Somerset; Hopton had some sway from his time as deputy lieutenant for the county, but the general population of the county was more sympathetic towards Parliament than the King. Although the Royalists had an early victory at Marshall's Elm, around 7.8 miles south-southwest of Wells on 4 August, they were forced to retreat from the town two days later as it was surrounded by the local population armed with "pitchforks, dungpecks, and suchlike weapons, not knowing whom to fight against, but afraid ... of the papists." Hertford relocated his army to Sherborne in Dorset, where they were able to garrison the castle. While Hopton was busy in Somerset, Parliament voted on 5 August to expel him from parliament, and later that month accused him of high treason. The First English Civil War formally began on 22 August, when the King displayed his standard at Nottingham.

The Royalists could only settle in Sherborne for a month before they were besieged by a Parliamentarian army led by the Earl of Bedford. After the initial siege, which lasted only four days, Hopton was sent with around 350 men to keep watch on the Parliamentarians, who had settled in Yeovil. Hopton set his men up on Babylon Hill overlooking Yeovil, and just before sunset decided to withdraw. Unseen by Hopton or his men, their enemy had sneaked up on them, and according to Richard Brook's account, "was more muddle than battle." The Parliamentarians almost succeeded in capturing Hopton and his force, but in the end Hopton was able to extract his infantry after a Parliamentarian troop were routed due to the death of their captain. Hopton and his army retreated back to Sherborne, and both sides subsequently withdrew further; Bedford moved his army to Dorchester, while Hertford, after hearing of the loss of Portsmouth, decided to fall back to Minehead. Hopton counselled against the move, warning that it would be a long march past both Taunton and Dunster Castle which were held against them. They were chased the entire way by Bedford's forces, and suffered a lot of desertions. On arriving in Minehead they found there were only two boats, and so on Hopton's advice Hertford shipped the infantry and artillery, along with himself to Wales, leaving Hopton with around 160 horsemen, split into 110 cavalry and 50 dragoons.

Among those that remained with Hopton were some prominent Cornish leaders, and it was across north Devon to Cornwall that Hopton led his remaining men.

Old
His first achievement was to rally Cornwall to the royal cause by indicting the enemy before the grand jury of the county as disturbers of the peace, and had the posse comitatus called out to expel them. Next, he carried the war into Devon. In May 1643, he defeated the Parliamentarian forces in the West Country at Stratton, enabling him to overrun Devon and link up with reinforcements under Prince Maurice. On 5 July, their combined forces clashed indecisively with Sir William Waller at Lansdowne. Hopton was severely wounded there by the explosion of a powder-wagon. Soon afterwards, he was besieged in Devizes by Waller; he defended himself until he was relieved by the Royalist victory at Roundway Down on 13 July. He was soon made Baron Hopton of Stratton.

These successes in the west enabled the Royalists to expand their control across southern England as far as the western fringes of Sussex in late 1643. But a counter-attack led by Waller forced Hopton back to Winchester. Hopton was reinforced by a force under the Earl of Forth. But on 29 March 1644 he was defeated by Waller at Cheriton and again forced to retreat. After this, he served in the western campaign under Charles' own command, and towards the end of the war, after Goring had left England, he succeeded to the command of the royal army. Hopton was defeated at Torrington on 16 February 1646 and surrendered to Thomas Fairfax.

Subsequently, he accompanied the Prince of Wales in his attempts to prolong the war in the Isles of Scilly and the Channel Islands. His intransigent views were incompatible with the spirit of concession and compromise which prevailed in the prince's council from 1649 to 1650, and he withdrew from active participation in the cause of royalism. He died in exile at Bruges in September 1652. His title was extinguished with his death. The king, Prince Charles, and the governing circle appreciated their faithful lieutenant less than did his enemies Waller and Fairfax, the former of whom wrote, "hostility itself cannot violate my friendship to your person," while the latter spoke of him as "One whom we honour and esteem above any other of your party."