I have thought that the following old letter, relative to a family once of some distinction, and especially as describing a very remarkable individual, from whom a multitude of living persons are immediately descended, might be of sufficient interest to occupy a place in "NOTES AND QUERIES." It has never, that I am aware of, been published; but it has long been preserved, amongst similar papers, with the accompanying endorsement:--"Though Mr. Ernle's letter relating to Lady Hopton and her family contains some fabulous accounts, and is in some parts a little unintelligible, yet it may be urged in confirmation of the truth of the several descents therein mentioned. He was the son of Sir John Ernle, and could not but have some general knowledge of his grandmother's relations." This Mr. Ernle, afterwards knighted, died A.D. 1686. Sir Arthur Hopton lived at Witham Friary, co. Somerset, and the heroine of this document was, according to the pedigree in Sir R. C. Hoare's _Monastic Remains of Witham_, &c., Rachel, daughter of Edmund Hall of Gretford, co. Lincoln, Esq. The date of Sir Arthur's death is not there given, but he was made a K.B. in 1603. C. W. B. "I will give you as good an account as I can remember of our wise & good Grandmother Hopton, who I think was one Hall's daughter of Devonshire without title, & had an elder brother, without child, who said to his younger brother's wife, who was then with child, if she would come to his house, & lie in, he would give his estate to it if a daughter, & if a son it should fare never the worse: so she had my grandmother, & he bred her up & married her to Sir Arthur Hopton of Somerset: who had 4000 a year, & she as much. "By him she had 18 children; 10 daughters married; whose names were: Lady Bacon, Lady Smith, Lady Morton, Lady Bannister, & Lady Fettiplace; Bingham, Baskett, Cole, Thomas, & my Grandmother Ernle; these daughters & their children have made a numerous company of relations. The duke of Richmond & Lord Maynard married our Aunt Bannister's daughters & heirs (one to Rogers, the other to Bannister).[1] Fettiplace, which was also Lord Jones, his daughter & heiress married Lord Lumley, now Scarbro. [Footnote 1: ("The Lady Bannister's first husband was Mr. Rogers, of Brenson (_hodiè_ Bryanston) near Blandford, in Dorsetshire: by him she had the Dutchess of Richmond, who was heiress to him: she had another daughter of Sir Robt. Bannister, who married Lord Mainard."--_Added in another Version._)]