HOPKINS, Edward (?1675-1736), of Coventry.

Hopkins belonged to a prominent Coventry family who represented the city in most Parliaments from 1660 to 1710, when he transferred to Lord Cornwallis’s borough of Eye. A staunch Whig, connected with Lord Sunderland through his uncle, Thomas Hopkins, M.P. Coventry 1701, who had been Sunderland’s secretary,M. D. Harris, ’Mems. of Edward Hopkins’, EHR, xxxiv. 491-504. he voted with the Government in all recorded divisions after George I’s accession. Rewarded with an Irish place, he exchanged it to become secretary to the Duke of Grafton as lord lieutenant, from whom he obtained the post of master of the revels, or censor of plays, in Ireland at £300 p.a.Chas. Maddox to Edw. Hopkins, 3 Oct. 1722, Hopkins mss. On 26 Apr. 1723 he supported the bill for a special tax on Roman Catholics, but declared that the second reading should be postponed to give the House more time to consider it, in which Walpole acquiesced.Knatchbull Diary. He did not stand in 1727, dying 17 Jan. 1736.