Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/134

Rh  in support of his claims to the throne. He was succeeded by his brother George as fourth earl. A portrait (dated 1588, ætatis suæ 52) by an unknown painter is in the possession of Lord Bagot.

[Bell's Huntingdon Peerage, 2nd ed. 1821, pp. 62–84; Collins's Peerage of England, 5th ed., iii. 94–6; Cal. Hatfield MSS.; Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser., reign of Elizabeth; Haynes's State Papers; Nichols's Leicestershire, especially iii. 583–8; Camden's Annals; Froude's Hist. of England; Hill Burton's Hist. of Scotland; Leader's Mary Queen of Scots in Captivity, 1880.]  HASTINGS, HENRY (1551–1650), eccentric sportsman, was second son of George, fourth earl of Huntingdon. He married Dorothy, second daughter and coheiress of Sir Francis Willoughby (the builder of Wollaton, Nottinghamshire). She died on 15 Dec. 1638, and through her he acquired Woodlands Park, near Horton, Dorsetshire, together with other remains of the old estate of the Filiols, where he continually resided. Some give him a second wife, Mrs. Jane Langton, but she is not mentioned in his epitaph. In 1645 his estate at Woodlands, valued in 1641 at 300l. per annum, was sequestered, owing to his attachment to the king, but he afterwards compounded for it by the sum of 500l. He died on 15 Oct. 1650, all but a centenarian, and with his wife and their son, Sir George Hastings, who died in 1657, was buried in the Hastings aisle in the belfry of the old church of Horton.

Hastings was the typical country squire of the time. He was of low stature, but strong and well knit, ‘well-natured, but soon angry.’ He always dressed in green, and keeping all sorts of hounds and hawks, devoted himself daily to the chase. His hall was hung with sporting trophies, while favourite dogs and cats occupied every warm or sunny corner. His table was cheaply but abundantly provided from his farms and fishponds, and his hospitality was extreme, but he never himself exceeded, or permitted others to exceed. The pulpit of a neighbouring chapel, long disused for purposes of devotion, formed his larder, and therein, as the safest place, was always to be found a venison pasty or the like. Some features of his character may have been worked up by Addison into his portraits of Sir Roger de Coverley and Will Wimble. A singular account was written of him by Sir A. Ashley Cooper, first earl of Shaftesbury, and was inscribed on a portrait of him at Lord Shaftesbury's seat, Winterbourne St. Giles. Many other amusing details of his domestic economy may be found in Shaftesbury's character, which was first printed in Dr. Leonard Howard's ‘Collection of Letters and State Papers,’ 1753; it was reprinted in the ‘Connoisseur,’ No. 81, 14 Aug. 1755 (, Life of Shaftesbury, i. 25). Dr. Drake (who printed it in Hone's ‘Everyday Book,’ ii. 1624) has omitted some disparaging remarks which Shaftesbury added. Shaftesbury lived near Hastings's residence, and, as a firm adherent of the parliamentary cause, was perhaps prejudiced against the sportsman's character. Woodlands passed into the hands of the Roys, and was subsequently added to Lord Shaftesbury's estate.

The portrait belonging to Lord Shaftesbury was engraved by Bretherton, and may be seen in Hutchins's ‘Dorsetshire.’

[Hutchins's Dorset, 1815, ii. 510, 512; Gent. Mag. 1754, xxiv. 160 (copied from Hutchins); Notes and Queries, 4th ser. x. 470.]  HASTINGS, HENRY, (d. 1667), second son of Henry, fifth earl of Huntingdon, and Elizabeth, daughter of Ferdinando Stanley, earl of Derby, was born about 1609, or possibly a year or two later (, Peerage, vi. 659). He distinguished himself in the civil wars by his services in the royalist cause. On 16 June 1642 he published the king's commission of array at Leicester, was sent for by parliament as a delinquent, and finally impeached (Lords' Journals, v. 145, 148, 191). On the king's visit to Leicester in the following July, Hastings was appointed sheriff of the county (, Rebellion, v. 417). He raised a good troop of horse, fought at its head at Edgehill, and then, with his single troop only and a few officers, came back to Leicestershire with a commission as colonel-general of that county, and established himself at his father's house at Ashby-de-la-Zouch (ib. vi. 275). The influence of his family, and still more his own personal popularity, enabled him to raise a permanent force, and not only to maintain himself at Ashby until the end of the war, but to attack the parliamentarians in all the neighbouring counties. His zeal was further fired by the feud between his own family and that of Lord Grey, the parliamentary commander, ‘between whom the county was divided passionately enough without any other quarrel. And now the sons fought the public quarrel with their private spirit and indignation’ (ib.) Hastings repulsed a combined attack on Ashby in January 1643, took part in the battle of Hopton Heath in March, and in the recapture of Lichfield in April, safely conducted an important convoy of ammunition to Oxford in May, and relieved Stafford Castle in June (Mercurius Aulicus, 1643, pp. 33, 147, 261, 296). The situation of Ashby