References: Hebert, Walter H., Fighting Joe Hooker (In-
dianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1944); Bruce, George, “Bull
Run II,” in Collins Dictionary of Wars (Glasgow, Scot-
land: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995), 43; Butterfield,
Daniel, Major-General Joseph Hooker and the Troops from
the Army of the Potomac at Wauhatchie, Lookout Mountain
and Chattanooga: Together with General Hooker’s Military
Record from the Files of the War Department, Adjutant-
General’s Office, U.S.A. (New York: Exchange Printing,
1896); Tremain, Henry Edwin, In Memoriam: Major-
General Joseph Hooker (Cincinnati: Robert Clark & Co.,
1881).
Hopton, Ralph, first baron Hopton (1596–1651)
English general
Born at Witham Friary in Somerset in 1596, Ralph
Hopton was the scion of a family whose fortune
had been made through the destruction of monas-
teries, ordered by King Henry VIII. He received his
education at Lincoln College, Oxford University, and
was admitted to the Middle Temple, one of the four
Inns of Court in English law, in 1614; however, he
did not earn a degree from either institution. In 1620,
Hopton joined the military mission led by Horace
Vere (1565–1635) in an attempt to rescue Elizabeth of
Bohemia, daughter of James I of England, after Johann
Tserclaes Count von tilly and his Catholic League
marched onto Prague in one of the main battles of the
Thirty Years’ War. Hopton joined Vere and another
young English soldier, William Waller, to aid Eliza-
beth in her escape from Prague, successfully bringing
her to safety. As a result of this adventure, Hopton
began a close friendship with Waller that would last
many years.
Although elected to a seat in the House of Com-
mons from Shaftesbury in 1621, Hopton remained in
Europe, serving in Sir Charles Rich’s Regiment of Foot
on the Continent. In 1625, he returned to England,
where he was honored with the Knighthood of the Bath
(KB), married, and settled down in a home in Somerset.
He accepted a seat in the House of Commons in 1625
first representing Bath and then, from 1628 to 1629,
representing Wells. From 1629 to 1639, he served in
various local offices in Somerset, including deputy lieu-
tenant. In 1639, he served in the First Bishops’ War,
prompted by King Charles I’s attempt to change the
Scottish church. With the rank of captain, he served in
a Royalist regiment commanded by Philip Herbert, the
fourth earl of Pembroke.
In 1640, Hopton was once again elected to the
House of Commons from Wells. This session of Parlia-
ment, dubbed the Long Parliament because it stayed in
session until 1653, was noted for its opposition to the
policies of King Charles I, breaking out in open rebel-
lion and ultimately leading to the English Civil War.
Hopton joined Edward Hyde, Lord Clarendon, and
Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, in opposing the king,
and he voted for the bill of attainder against the earl of
Strafford, Charles’s impeached privy councillor, in 1641.
In December 1641, Hopton was one of five members
of Parliament to present the Grand Remonstrance—a
manifesto or document drawn up by the House of Com-
mons listing reforms drafted by that body—to the king.
Nevertheless, he remained loyal to Charles and to the
Crown. In January 1642, he backed the king’s attempt
to arrest five sitting members of the House of Commons.
Hopton biographer F. T. R. Edgar writes: “His royalism,
always latent, was bound to emerge when the crunch
came. It has three roots: first, his non-Laudian high
Anglicanism, akin to Falkland’s, manifest in Hopton’s
alignment with the ‘Episcopal Party’ and his defence of
the bishops; second (in common with his colleague Cul-
peper), a concern for the militia and a recognition of the
need on the King’s side for a show of strength; and third,
it would be hard to deny, a sense of personal loyalty to
the throne itself.”
Due to his sympathy and support for Charles in the
face of growing confrontation, Hopton was imprisoned
in the Tower of London for two months in 1642, by
order of the House of Commons. After being released,
he returned to Somerset and formed an army to imple-
ment the King’s Commission of Array, an order to raise
a fighting force to defend the Crown. As commander of
this militia, Hopton marched into Cornwall and, on 19
January 1643, met the 4,000 pro-Parliamentary forces
under Lord Ruthven at Braddock Down near Liskeard.
He and his fellow Royalist commander Bevil Grenville
routed the Parliamentarian troops, forcing them to flee
from the battlefield. Because Ruthven’s troops were sup-
posed to support the earl of Stamford’s army near Corn-
wall, this rout gave Hopton an advantage in fighting
Stamford, who was forced to retreat.
At Stratton, Cornwall (16 May 1643), Hopton won
a victory over the Parliamentarian leader Major-General
James Chudleigh, who was captured and defected to thehopton, RAlph, FiRSt bARon hopton