The ancestor of this Sir Ralph Hopton, knight, came out of France or Normandy, a soldier or huntsman under William the Conqueror 1066, by the name of the Norman
Hunter, to whom he gave Hopton in the Hole in the county of Salop, (from whence afterwards he was denominated De Hopton,) which he conveyed to him and his heirs, and failing the remainder, to the crown.
Sir William de Mohun, one of the founders of the Abbey of Newham in Devon, 30th Henry III. gave to the same the bailiwick of the hundred of Axminster, and also the manor of Norton, with the hundred and bailiwick of Major Trigshire, now Stratton in Cornwall. (See Prince’s Worthies of Devon.) After the dissolution of Newham Abbey, 26 Henry VIII. it fell to the crown, from whence the present titles of those bailiwicks are derived.
TONKIN.
Stratton is in the hundred of the same name, and is bounded to the west by the north or Severn channel and Poughill, to the north by Kilkhampton, to the east by the river Tamar, to the south by Lancells, Marhamchurch, and Poundstock.
As for the name, it is no other than the street town, from its consisting chiefly of one street, and being a great thoroughfare, but more probably from a Roman Way. [from the Roman stratum or street certainly, on which it lies. W.]
In anno 1291, 20 Edward I. the rectory was valued (Tax. Ben.) at £7. 13s. 4d. being appropriated to the Priory of Lanceston; and the vicar at 20s.
This church is a vicarage, valued in the King’s Book, at £10. 11s. 6d. ob.; the patronage in the crown.
THE MANOR OF STRATTON.
In Domesday Book Stratone was one of the manors given by William the Conqueror to his half-brother Robert Earl of Morton, when he made him Earl of Cornwall.