Author: Hopson, Edward
Biography:
HOPSON, Edward (1702-81: findmypast.com)
He was born and baptised on 26 Apr. 1702 at Weybridge, Surrey, the son of Edward Hopson, a naval officer, and his wife Jane Pinckney (d 1736), who had married at St. Andrew, Plymouth, on 4 Dec. 1695. His father, a nephew of the naval hero Sir Thomas Hopson, rose to be a vice-admiral and died in command of the fleet in the West Indies on 8 May 1728. The son had a classical education but did not attend university: the obituaries at his death and the monumental inscription to him describe him as a scholar, a gentleman, and a Christian. On 10 Sept. 1728 he married Anne Pinckney, who must have been a relation on his mother’s side, in Salisbury Cathedral: they had four daughters, two of whom outlived their parents. They must have lived quietly as local gentry leaving few traces in the public record and at some point about the middle of the century moved from Weybridge to Norwich, Norfolk, where he died on 17 Apr. 1781 and was buried on 24 Apr. at St. Michael At Plea. Rational Conduct, centred on the Golden Verses of Pythagoras and intended to demonstrate the compatibility of ancient wisdom with Christian conduct, was a project of his later years, privately printed in 1770 and then expanded for publication in 1777. MR scoffed at the effort, “plain prose and very plain verse, with notes.” There is no reference to Hopson’s wife on his monument at the church, although there is one to their second surviving daughter, Elizabeth, who died in 1786. Anne Hopson appears to have died in Weybridge before 1740, but no reliable record has been found. (findmypast.com 11 Nov. 2022; ancestry.com 11 Nov. 2022; “Hopson [Hopsonn], Sir Thomas,” ODNB 11 Nov. 2022; MR 57 [1777], 406; Norfolk Chronicle 21 Apr. 1781; Surrey Archaeological Collections 17 [1902], 56-7)