Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/135

Rh enabled Hastings to obstruct the communications between London and the north and north-west of England. The parliamentary newspapers nicknamed him ‘Rob-carrier,’ from the frequency with which he intercepted the northern carriers and robbed them of their packs. On 23 Oct. 1643 the king rewarded Hastings by creating him Lord Loughborough (, Oxford Docquets, p. 95). In the spring of 1644 Hastings attacked Nottingham, and distinguished himself in Rupert's relief of Newark (, Memoirs, ed. 1885, i. 300, 385;, v. 308). In May 1645 he joined the king's army before Leicester, and was made governor of that place after its capture (Diary of Richard Symonds, pp. 181, 184). On 18 June, four days after the battle of Naseby, Hastings surrendered Leicester to Fairfax, obtaining leave for the garrison to march away without their arms ( Anglia Rediviva, ed. 1854, p. 54). Hastings held out in Ashby until 28 Feb. 1645–6. By the capitulation he was to be at liberty to join the royalist garrison of Worcester or Bridgnorth, or to go to France or Holland, and on 18 May 1646 he, in company with Sir Aston Cokayne, obtained the parliament's pass to go abroad (, Memoirs of the House of Hastings, p. 123; Journals of the House of Commons, iv. 548). In the second civil war Hastings joined the insurgents in Essex, and took part in the defence of Colchester (, Desiderata Curiosa, ed. 1779, p. 479). During the siege his special province was the supervision of the commisariat and the distribution of provisions to the besieged. Matthew Carter warmly praises his unwearied activity (A True Relation of the Expedition of Kent, Essex, and Colchester, p. 159, 2nd edit.). After the surrender of Colchester the House of Commons voted Hastings one of the seven great delinquents to be banished for their share in the second civil war (10 Nov. 1648). The independents, however, revoked this vote (13 Dec. 1648) as ‘destructive to the peace and quiet, and derogatory to the justice of the kingdom’ (Old Parliamentary History, xviii. 145, 472). Hastings would no doubt have been tried by the high court of justice, had he not succeeded in escaping from his imprisonment at Windsor. He joined Charles II in Holland in March 1649 (, Chronicle, ed. 1663, p. 420). In the winter of 1650–1 a royalist insurrection was projected, and Hastings was destined to command the cavaliers of the midland counties (Milton State Papers, pp. 47, 50, 77). He was also engaged in the royalist conspiracy of 1654, but took no part in the actual rising of March 1655 (Cal. Clarendon Papers, ii. 392, 440). On the Restoration Hastings was appointed lord-lieutenant of Leicestershire (5 Jan. 1661), and obtained a grant of the farm of the duties on the export of cattle to Ireland from Chester and other parts, a grant which he afterwards commuted for a pension of 500l. per annum (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1663–4, p. 289).

In 1664 Hastings, who was then living at Loughborough House, in the parish of Lambeth, obtained an act of parliament ‘to make the river or sewer navigable from or near Brixton Causeway to the River Thames. He died at London, unmarried, in January 1666–7, and was buried in the chapel of St. George in Windsor Castle (, p. 128).

[Authorities quoted; Collins's Peerage, ed. Brydges; H. N. Bell's Memoirs of the House of Hastings, 1820; Clarendon's Hist. of the Rebellion, ed. Macray. Letters of Hastings may be found in the Pythouse Papers, ed. W. A. Day, and Warburton's Life of Prince Rupert.]  HASTINGS, HUGH (1307?–1347), soldier, born about 1307, was elder son of John, second baron Hastings [q. v.], by his second wife, Isabel, daughter of Hugh le Despenser the elder, earl of Winchester [q. v.] He married Margery, elder daughter and eventual heiress of Sir Jordan Foliot, in whose right he acquired estates at Elsing and Gressenhall, Norfolk; he served in Flanders in 1340, and on 25 Feb. 1342 was summoned to parliament, but received no later summons. In 1343 he held a command in Flanders, when three hundred prisoners were captured ( ap. Scriptt. Decem, 2586), and in the same year was in Brittany. He accompanied Henry, earl of Derby (afterwards Duke of Lancaster), to Gascony in 1345, was with him at Bergerac in July, and in the fight at Auberoche in October. In 1346 he formed one of the garrison at the siege of Aguillon (, iii. 48, 67, 124–5). He died in 1347 and was buried in Elsing Church, which he had built; in the east window there are portraits of Hastings and his wife, with the arms ‘or, a maunche gules,’ and in the chancel there is a very fine brass to his memory (, Ancient Sepulchral Monuments, vol. i. pt. ii. 98–101;, Specimens of Ancient Sculpture, pp. 13, 14, 38, with plates). On a marble slab in the chancel there is the inscription, ‘Yis churche hathe been wrowt by Howe de Hastyng and Margaret hys wyf.’ Margery Hastings died in 1349; she left a son Hugh, who is perhaps the Sir Hugh Hastings who served with John of Gaunt in Spain in 1367. He died at Kalkwell Hill, Yorkshire, in 1369, and was buried in the Friars Church at Don-