Page:The Marquess of Hastings, K.G..djvu/15

 LORD HASTINGS

CHAPTER I

Family History. War of American Independence, 1754-1781

Francis Rawdon-Hastings, afterwards Marquess of Hastings and the Governor-General of India, whose administration there forms the subject of the present memoir, was born on the 9th of December, 1754. He was the eldest son of John Lord Rawdon by his third wife, Lady Elizabeth Hastings (eldest daughter of Theophilus, ninth Earl of Huntingdon), who, upon the death of her brother, the tenth Earl, in 1789, succeeded to many of the honours and to all the estates of the Hastings family; these she transmitted to her son Francis, who assumed his mother's surname in addition to his own, and thus united in his own person the representation and the traditions of two illustrious families.

The Rawdons derive their ancestry from Paulyn de Rawdon, who is said to have commanded a body of archers at the Battle of Hastings, and was rewarded