Family and Education

?1st s. of Sir Edward Hastings of Leicester Abbey. educ. ?Emmanuel, Camb. 1592 or ?Lincoln, Oxf. 1593. m. Mabel, da. of Anthony Faunt of Foston, Leics., 4s. 3da. suc. fa. 1603. Kntd. 1603.

Offices Held

J.p. Leics. by 1606.

Biography

It is not known whether the Henry Hastings who sat for Leicestershire in 1601 was the eldest son of Sir Edward Hastings, fourth son of the 2nd Earl of Huntingdon, or the eldest son of Walter Hastings, the 2nd Earl’s sixth son. Either of them may have matriculated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1592 or from Lincoln College, Oxford in 1593, though it was Walter’s son who proceeded to Gray’s Inn in 1595: Sir Edward’s puritanism would suggest Emmanuel as his son’s college. Both were knighted in 1603—within three weeks of each other—and subsequently resided in or near Leicester, Sir Edward’s son at Leicester Abbey until his purchase of Humberstone, some two miles north-east of the town, and Walter’s at Braunston, about the same distance to the south-west. Sir Edward’s prominence in the county, and the fact that he had been senior knight of the shire for Leicestershire in the previous Parliament tips the balance and makes his son the likelier Member. But the likelier of two men did not always sit, as, for example, in the same county in 1571, Henry Hastings, son of Sir Edward, died in 1629.1

Hastings was given leave of absence on 28 Nov. 1601 ‘for his necessary affairs’. The knights for Leicesterhsire were eligible to attend the order of business committee on 8 Nov. and the monopolies committee on 23 Nov., but no activity is recorded in Hastings’ name.2

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: J.E.M.

Notes

• 1. Nichols, Leics. i. 316, 417; iii. 273, 278, 593 n. 3; iv. 610, 617-18; Vis. Leics. (Harl. Soc. ii), 73; Leicester Recs. iv. 42.
• 2. D’Ewes, 624, 649, 658.