John Hopton

John Hopton (d.1558) was a Bishop of Norwich.

He was a member of the Dominicans by 1516, in Oxford. He was educated at the University of Bologna in Italy and at Oxford University, where he took a doctorate in theology.

During the reign of Edward VI, Hopton was Chaplain to Mary Tudor, later Queen Mary I, and was summoned before the Privy Council in 1549 and ordered to stop celebrating the Catholic Mass.

When Mary acceeded to the throne, Hopton was appointed Bishop of Norwich, and was consecrated on 28 October 1554. John Foxe, in his 'Acts and Monuments' described him as a ruthless persecutor of Protestants, "in such sort, that many of them he perverted, and brought quite from the truth, and some from their wits also".

Hopton died in December 1558, and he is buried in Norwich Cathedral.