If it is true that you can tell a man by his friends, then another way of coming at John Hopton is through a study of his. There is one snag: we do not know who were his friends. Our task is therefore more modest. If we cannot tell this man by his friends, perhaps we can reveal something more of him and the world in which he lived by an enquiry into the company he kept.

When we first encounter him it is in the society of Yorkshiremen. He was about to get married. The marriage was arranged by his guardians, William Scargill and John Rushworth, and the father of the bride, Thomas Saville; it was in the Saville house at Thornhill in the West Riding that the indenture was sealed on 26 February 1427. The ruins of the hall, perhaps where all this was done, remain, as do the ruins of the chapel where the following Easter John and Margaret were married.