Definition - a clumsy heavy-footed cloddish person
Clodhopper possibly was formed as a humorous way of referring to a country rustic, such as a farmer or a person who hops over clods of plowed field. Our earliest evidence for the word from dictionary of cant and slang from 1699, written anonymously by one B. E., who defines the word simply as “a ploughman” (it comes immediately after the entry for To clip the King's English, which is "not to Speak Plain, when one's Drunk”, which has nothing to do with clodhopper, but bears mentioning for amusement’s sake).
By the early 18th century the word began being used outside of dictionaries; it served as the name of a character described as “A Country Squire” in the 1706 play The Roving Husband Reclaim’d (along with Mr. Callow, “a fop of the town lately come from travel,” and Pickquarrel, “An Attorney”), and soon after begins appearing in print as an insult of increasingly varied meaning.
But the Topick was not a Woman in that Assertion; but if it were, Women in their days were no more like Women in ours, than a Clodhopper is to a Captain o’Foot.
— Susanna Centlivre, The Man’s Bewitch’d, 1709