Hopton’s family was of Yorkshire origin, with a tradition of Crown service dating back to the reign of Edward IV. In Tudor times their principal estates lay in Suffolk, which county they regularly represented in the Commons between 1539 and 1589. However, Hopton’s father disposed of his East Anglian interests to provide for his 15 children, ten of whom were daughters. Fortunately for themselves, the Hoptons also owned a group of manors in east Somerset, acquired at the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and for the remaining half-century of their existence they flourished as west-country magnates.
Hopton’s father and eldest son were both created knights of the Bath, but he himself was the only adult head of the family in eight generations not to be knighted. This was not for lack of means: his mother’s jointure included a lucrative iron forge, the revenues from which he later used to rebuild both Ditcheat and Evercreech Park, Somerset. Nor did he show any distaste for public life, as in 1604 he was returned to the Commons for Shaftesbury, where he may have been nominated by William, 3rd earl of Pembroke.
Hopton was one of the most energetic Somerset magistrates of the period, and he and John Symes* were the only justices to oppose Sir Robert Phelips* during the 1614 county election. He took his own turn as knight of the shire in 1621, presumably with the support of Phelips’s adversary John Poulett*, who signed his election indenture.
Hopton probably made four speeches (as Mr. Hopton) during the session. On 27 Apr. he unsuccessfully urged a vote to declare the sale of baronetcies a grievance, while on 1 May, when the Fleet inquiry revealed the scandalous behaviour of Edward Floyd, a Catholic inmate who had mocked the king’s daughter, he urged the House to ‘inquire [into] who those are that do resort to Floyd, because ’tis likely they are so ill-affected and [have] such rotten hearts as Floyd’. On 31 May, as the Commons debated what to do in the few days remaining before the summer adjournment, Hopton seconded Sir Thomas Roe’s motion to suspend the export of ordnance and currency, and called to promote free trade. On 4 June, the day the House adjourned, he opposed calls for a fresh grant of supply, urging that ‘this was an extraordinary occasion which would not be supplied in an ordinary way, wherein the purse of the poor would be drawn dry before the affections of the rich will be wound up to this height’; he was presumably content with the undertaking that Members would support the relief of the Palatinate with all resources at their disposal.
Although Hopton was appointed to the Privy Council’s standing committee on trade in 1622, and his surviving brothers held posts at Court and in the diplomatic service, he never sat in Parliament again. In the feuds that divided Somerset during the following generation he opposed Phelips over militia training and the reintroduction of church ales, showing a degree of real animosity when he described himself as ‘esteemed a fool by them that do think themselves wiser than other men’. It was presumably Phelips, as one of the commissioners for compositions for knighthood fines, who rated Hopton for the exceptionally large figure of £150 in 1630. Hopton died intestate around eight years later, letters of administration being taken out by his son (Sir) Ralph on 17 Sept. 1638.