Hopes on the Net Clan Hope Discussion Area Clan Hope Contacts

• Arms: Azure, a chevron Or between three bezants.
• Crest: A broken terrestrial globe surmounted by a rainbow issuing out of a cloud at each end of all Proper.
• Motto: At spes infracta (But hope is unbroken)

This name may be of native Scots origin, coming from the Borders family of Hop or Hoip; Jon de Hop and Adam le Hoip both appear on the Ragman Roll of Scottish nobles submitted to Edward I of England in 1296. Another possibility is that the name may come from the de H'oublons of Picardy because when translated into English it becomes Hope.

The immediate ancestor of the main line appears to have been John de Hope, who came to Scotland from France in 1537. He married and settled in Edinburgh, where he had a son, who eventually became one of the commissioners for Edinburgh to the first General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1560. His grandson acquired the estate of Craighall in the parish of Ceres in Fife, which from then on became the family's principal designation.

Sir Thomas Craighall was a great lawyer of his time and his work, Hope Patricks, is still referred to today. He was made a Baronet of Nova in 1628, and he was one of the drafters of the National Covenant in 1638. He died in 1646, not before seeing two of his sons raised to the Supreme Court Bench. His oldest son succeeded to the Baronetcy and also took the judicial title of 'Lord Craighall'. The sixteenth Baronet was a Member of Parliament for 6 years and served with distinction in both the Boer War and WWI.

The Hopetoun branch of the family is descended from Sir James Hope, younger son of the great Lord Advocate, who took Hopetoun as his territorial style. His son, Charles, was elected to Parliament in 1702 and was raised to the peerage as Earl of Hopetoun, Viscount Aithrie and Lord Hope in 1703. During the eighteenth century, the Earls of Hopetoun acquired most of the West Lothian as well as large parts of East Lothian and Lankshire. The seventh Earl, John Adrian Hope, was Lord Chamberlain to Queen Victoria.

The family still lives in Hopetoun today. The Baronets of Craighall are also still in existence today and are the claimants for the chief ship of this name.