Page:The Marquess of Hastings, K.G..djvu/17

Rh years later was created Earl of Moira in the same peerage. He married three times, without male issue by his first and second alliances, but by the third marriage he had, together with other children, a son, Francis, whose career we are about to describe.

The house of Hastings owes its origin to Robert. Portgrave of Hastings (whence the family name was taken), and dispensator or steward of William the Conqueror. The elder branch of the Portgrave's descendants rose to considerable eminence in the earlier part of English History; one of them, John de Hastings, became Seneschal of Aquitaine, and was in 1290 an aspirant to the throne of Scotland in right of his grandmother Ada, daughter of David Earl of Huntingdon, and niece of Malcolm TV and William the Lion, kings of Scotland. The grandson of this Baron, was Laurence, who was created Earl Palatine of Pembroke in 1339, as representative of his great-uncle, Aylmer de Valence, son of William, half-brother of Henry HI. That dignity expired in 1389, upon the death of Laurence's grandson, and the elder branch of the Hastings family became extinct; but a younger branch survived, and soon became distinguished in the person of Sir William de Hastings, who was born in 1430.

This Knight was a staunch adherent of the House of York, and upon the accession of Edward IV to the throne was rewarded for his services in the civil war by appointments to many positions of trust and emolument, by large grants of the forfeited estates