Everything about Ralph Hopton 1st Baron Hopton totally explained
Ralph Hopton, 1st Baron Hopton (
1598 – September,
1652) was a
Royalist commander in the
English Civil War.
The son of Robert Hopton of
Witham,
Somerset, he appears to have been educated at
Lincoln College, Oxford, and to have served in the army of
Frederick V, Elector Palatine, in the early campaigns of the
Thirty Years' War. In
1624 he was lieutenant-colonel of a regiment raised in England to serve in
Mansfeld's army. King
Charles I, at his coronation, made Hopton a Knight of the Bath. In the political troubles which preceded the outbreak of the Civil War, Hopton, as member of parliament successively for
Bath,
Somerset and
Wells, at first opposed the royal policy, but after
Strafford's
attainder (for which he voted) he gradually became an ardent supporter of Charles, and at the beginning of the conflict he was made lieutenant-general under the marquess of Hertford in the west.
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; his next, to carry the war from there into
Devon. In May
1643 he won the brilliant
victory of Stratton, in June he overran Devon, and on
July 5 he inflicted a severe defeat on Sir
William Waller at the
Battle of Lansdowne. At Lansdowne he was severely wounded by the explosion of a powder-wagon and soon afterwards he was besieged in
Devizes by Waller; he defended himself until relieved by the victory of the
Battle of Roundway Down on
July 13. He was soon afterwards created Baron Hopton of
Stratton. But his successes in the west were cut short by the defeat at the
Battle of Cheriton in March
1644. 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. It was too late to stem the tide of the parliament's victory, and Hopton, defeated in his last stand at
Torrington on
February 16 1646, 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 downright loyalty was 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. The peerage became extinct at his death. The king, Prince Charles, and the governing circle appreciated the merits of "their faithful lieutenant less than did his enemies Waller and Fairfax, the former of whom wrote, 'hostility itself can't 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.'"
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