# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hastings, Edward (d.1573)

Date of death 1572 in the ODNB.
​HASTINGS, EDWARD, Lord Hastings of Loughborough (d. 1573), third son of George Hastings, third baron Hastings of Hastings, and first earl of Huntingdon [q. v.], by Anne, daughter of Henry Stafford, duke of Buckingham, was knighted in 1546, and took part in the invasion of Scotland by the Protector Somerset in September 1547. In the parliaments of 1547 and 1552 he sat as one of the members for the county of Leicester. He was one of the king's gentlemen-pensioners, and, when some disputes arose about the Calais frontier in 1550, was sent to Calais with his brother Francis, second earl of Huntingdon [q. v.], who commanded a force there. He was a strong Roman catholic, and while at Calais had some disputes about religion with Underhill, the ‘hot gospeller,’ a member of the same corps, and for arguments chiefly used ‘great oaths,’ swearing ‘by the Lord's foot’ that the Roman doctrine was true. Underhill considered that Hastings was the cause of his arrest in Mary's reign. In 1551 he was sheriff for Warwickshire and Leicestershire. When Edward VI was dying in 1553, the Duke of Northumberland gave Hastings orders to raise four thousand foot in Buckinghamshire to secure the succession of Lady Jane Grey. On the king's death he declared for Queen Mary, who made him a privy councillor, master of the horse, receiver-general of the honour of Leicester and of the court of augmentations. During the disturbance of Greenwich in September he foiled an attempt made to steal the queen's horses, and on the 30th led her horse from the Tower through the streets of London, as she rode to Westminster for her coronation. He was strongly opposed to her marriage with Philip, and threatened to leave her service if she persisted in the scheme, but afterwards withdrew his objections. In company with Sir Thomas Cornwallis [q. v.] he was sent on 28 Jan. 1554 to meet Wyatt at Dartford, and hot words passed between them and the rebel leader. On 11 Feb. he and Lord William Howard carried the queen's commands to the Princess Elizabeth at Ashridge, and after some delay, due to Elizabeth's sickness, brought her up to London. In November he and Lord Paget were sent to Brussels to escort Cardinal Pole to England, and wrote a letter to the queen describing their interviews with the emperor and the cardinal (State Papers, For. 1553–8, pp. 135, 138). He sat in the parliaments of 1554 and 1555 as member for Middlesex. In the council he belonged to the section specially devoted to the queen, and among other marks of her favour received in 1555 grants of the manors of Market Bosworth, Leicestershire, and Creech St. Michael, Somersetshire, and on 25 May was installed knight of the Garter. The Benedictines at Westminster wrote to him, requesting him to keep the queen in mind of her intention to refound the abbey of Glastonbury. On the discovery of Sir Henry Dudley's plot in 1556, he and others of ‘the queen's clique’ (Froude) in the council investigated the conspiracy. In July 1557 he accompanied Lord Clinton [see Clinton, Edward Fiennes de] on his expedition against the French. At the end of the year he seems to have resigned his office of master of the horse for the higher post of lord chamberlain. He was also warden of the stannaries, and on 19 Jan. 1558 was created Baron Hastings of Loughborough in the county of Leicester, and received a grant of the manor of Loughborough. Mary made him one of her executors. As a member of the council he was concerned to some extent in the religious persecutions of the reign. He was one of the lords appointed on 21 Nov. to escort Queen Elizabeth on her entrance into London, and was summoned to court on 20 Sept. 1559. On 23 April 1561 he was confined in Baynard Castle for hearing mass, was convicted and sent to the Tower, where he wrote to the council to sue for pardon; he ‘willingly took the oath’ of supremacy, and was released. After this he appears to have retired to his estate at Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire, where he had built a hospital and a chapel, and there ended his days in devotion, dying on 5 March 1573. He left no children; his wife Joan, whose family name is unknown, survived him. Nichols, quoting from William Burton (1575–1645) [q. v.], says that he was a ‘gentleman of many worthy parts, something given to melancholy,’ and fond of chess, and gives a portrait of him from a window in Stoke Poges Church.
W. H.