3 - John Hopton and his family
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 October 2009
Summary
There ar aboughte and in Suffolk but fewe men as of gentilmen and men of substance but if it be in Blithing hundre, were Hopton is grete…'
John Bocking to John Paston 8 May 1456 Davis 1, p142Who knows whether the best of men be known? or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembred in the known account of time?
Sir Thomas Browne, ‘Urne-Burial’ in Works, ed. Geoffrey Keynes, vol. 1 (new ed., 1964), p167Already we have an impression of John Hopton the man, however hazy it might be. He is beginning to emerge from his background. We will never get him clear; he will never stand out in the foreground; he will always be a figure in a landscape. It is his landscape certainly, but he does not dominate it with his individuality as say Gainsborough's Mr and Mrs Andrews do theirs. Or, more to our point, as the Pastons blaze forth, dazzling us with their personalities. They, and their part of the landscape, come before us so brilliantly that other characters in other places, obscure in comparison (we peer closely to try to perceive them), appear not merely dull but also so ill-suited as to be not at all fitting. The Pastons, their friends, enemies, and neighbours are larger than life; or at least, so marvellously well-drawn are they (by themselves and by each other), that that is what they have become.
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- John Hopton: A Fifteenth Century Suffolk Gentleman , pp. 102 - 158Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1981