Edward Hastings

Sir Edward Hastings (died 1437) was an English landowner and soldier who fought in the Hundred Years' War but spent much of his life and fortune on unsuccessful claims to hereditary honours. Origins Born on 21 May 1382 at the family property of Fenwick in Yorkshire, and baptised that day at Campsall, he was the second son of Sir Hugh Hastings (died 1386) and his wife Anne Despenser (died 1426), daughter of Edward Despenser, 1st Baron Despenser (died 1375) and his wife Elizabeth Burghersh (died 1409). His paternal grandparents were Sir Hugh Hastings (died 1369) and his wife Margaret Everingham (died 1375). Career His father, a noted soldier and supporter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, died on the duke's campaign in Galicia in 1386 and his elder brother Hugh died at Calais in 1396 without leaving children. This left him at age 14 heir to his father and also theoretical heir in the male line to John Hastings, 3rd Earl of Pembroke and 5th Baron Hastings, who had died childless after a jousting injury in 1389. Most of the lands and titles of the earl had however passed to Reginald Grey, 3rd Baron Grey of Ruthin (died 1440), whose descent was through the female line. In 1399, shortly after the coronation of John of Gaunt's son as King Henry IV, he was knighted and was enrolled as a king's knight with a salary of 40 pounds a year until he came into his inheritance. On the king's expedition to Scotland in 1400 he was serving with Grey, who challenged his right to bear the Hastings arms of Or, a maunch gules and, after initiating a law suit the next year even though Hastings was not yet 21, in 1403 had him imprisoned in the Tower of London. In 1404 he ceded to the king the rights his father had held from John of Gaunt in the manor of Sutton Scotney, which had been concealed since 1386, and in 1404 was preparing to serve abroad under the king's son Thomas of Lancaster, Duke of Clarence. After long preliminaries a hearing of Grey's case began in 1407 and the judgement, when eventually given in 1410, was victory for Grey with costs against Hastings, who lodged an appeal.