HASTINGS, Sir Richard

By the late fourteenth century the Hastings family of Slingsby, a junior branch of the Hastings earls of Pembroke, was one of the wealthiest gentry families in England. Through purchase and marriage it had built up an extensive estate with centres in two counties. Our MP’s grandfather, Sir Ralph, who was killed at the battle of Neville’s Cross in 1346, added to the family’s historic holdings at Allerston in the North Riding of Yorkshire and Wistow in Leicestershire by purchasing, in 1343, the manors of Slingsby (North Riding), Sledmere (East Riding) and Welford (Northamptonshire).9 HMC Hastings, i, pp. viii-x, 136; VCH Yorks. (N. Riding), i. 422, 559; VCH Leics. v. 337-8. To this significant acquisition was added another through marriage to Margaret, daughter of Sir William Herle (d.1347), c.j.c.p. This had not offered much prospect of an inheritance when it was made, but, on the childless death in 1364 of her brother, the noted soldier Sir Robert Herle†, captain of Calais and lieutenant of Brittany, her son, another Sir Ralph, became the sole heir to the several manors that Chief Justice Herle had inherited and also purchased during his long legal career. These lay principally in Warwickshire and Leicestershire and included the manors of Burton Hastings and Drakenage (in Kingsbury) in the former shire and Kirby Muxloe and Braunstone in the latter.10 CIPM, xi. 589. This inheritance gave a new significance to the family’s connexions with the Midlands. Hence it was that our MP’s father represented in Parliament not only Yorkshire (in October 1378 and January 1380) but also Leicestershire (in 1365). Yet Yorkshire remained the main focus of the family’s interests and in 1377 Sir Ralph added to their estates there by purchasing three East Riding manors at Bewick (in Aldbrough), East Halsham and Sutton-on-Hull, formerly of Sir John Meaux.11 HMC Hastings, i, pp. xii-xiii, 174.

Our MP’s father had the connexions to match his wealth. He was long an important retainer of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, receiving an annuity of 40 marks for a period of 30 years, and earning this fee with distinguished service in the field.12 S.K. Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, 56, 109, 271; Scrope v. Grosvenor Controversy ed. Nicolas, ii. 283-5; Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. xci. 131-3. For his will: Test. Ebor. i (Surtees Soc. iv), 216-19. His wealth also enabled him to make provision for his several younger sons, and it is in this context that our MP first appears in the records. On 14 Feb. 1389, when he can have been no more than a child, Richard was given a life interest, expectant on his father’s death, in the family’s lands in Ashby Parva (Leicestershire) and Burton Hastings (Warwickshire).13 CCR, 1396-9, pp. 194-5.

This might have been the extent of Richard’s inheritance, but for a baffling episode in the family’s history. After his father’s death in 1397 the bulk of the family’s lands, albeit subject to the deductions inherent in provision for widow and younger sons, passed to his elder brother, another Sir Ralph. The accession of Gaunt’s son as Henry IV in 1399 should have opened up further opportunities for the family’s continued advancement. Yet the youthful Sir Ralph, with much to lose and seemingly little to gain, chose to involve himself in the rebellion of Archbishop Scrope in May 1405.14 PROME, viii. 407-8. Only speculative explanations can be advanced for what quickly proved a fatal misjudgement. A major part of the family’s lands in Yorkshire (including Slingsby) was held of the Mowbray lordship of Thirsk, giving Sir Ralph a connexion with another of the rebels, the young and impetuous Thomas Mowbray, earl of Norfolk, and he was also a tenant of the archbishop in respect of his manor of Sutton-on-Hull.15 For the tenure of the family’s lands: Yorks. IPM (Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. lix), 61; CIMisc. vii. 365; CCR, 1399-1402, p. 428. A more interesting possibility is that it was our MP’s marriage which drew Sir Ralph into the circle of the rebels. Regrettably the date of this marriage is not known, but it is entirely conceivable that, by the time of the rebellion, Richard had married one of the archbishop’s nieces, the daughter of Sir John Scrope by the widow of Sir Thomas Percy (d.1387), younger son of another of the rebels, Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland.16 Neither the will of Sir John Scrope made on 18 Dec. 1405, or the inqs. taken two months later after the death of his brother, Stephen, Lord Scrope of Masham, describe Sir John’s daughters as married: Test. Ebor. i. 339; CIPM, xix. 129, 133, 137. This, however, does not prove that the marriage had not then taken place. Such speculation aside, there is every reason to suppose that Richard joined his elder brother in rebellion, for, on 18 July 1405, he secured a pardon for treason and felony. Sir Ralph was not to be so fortunate. Two days later he was adjudged guilty of treason before Sir William Fulthorpe at Durham and immediately executed. His head was then sent to be displayed on the pillory of the town of Helmsley.17 CPR, 1405-8, p. 69; 1408-13, pp. 195-6; CIPM, xix. 216. Sir Ralph’s head remained displayed until Oct. 1405 when it was presumably returned to the fam. for burial: CCR, 1405-9, p. 1.

Whatever the emotional impact of this loss upon our MP, from the point of view of his material prospects it was both good and bad. He was now heir to a considerable inheritance, but that inheritance was under forfeiture. Even before his brother’s execution, the Crown had made grants from it: on 16 July Fulthorpe was granted the family’s tenements in York. More substantial alienations soon followed. Early in August Sir John Tiptoft† was granted the Leicestershire manors of Kirby Muxloe and Braunstone for life; another royal servant, Henry Lound, had the manor of Sutton-on-Hull, also for life; and, more alarmingly for our MP, the reversions of that manor together with that of Bewick were granted to Peter, Lord Mauley, not for life but in fee. Later, in March 1408, the keeping of the manor of Welford was committed to Hugh Martin at £7 p.a.18 CPR, 1405-8, pp. 39, 51, 53-54, 85, 88, 177; CFR, xiii. 102. Yet the family estate had some protection in that an important part of it remained in the hands of our MP’s mother, who not only had dower in the alienated manors but also held Slingsby in jointure.19 For her jointure interest in Slingsby: CCR, 1396-9, p. 194; 1399-1402, p. 428. Further, John Blaket†, the husband of our MP’s elder half-sister and a servant of the new King, was no doubt acting in the family’s interest, when, through a series of grants made between August 1405 and February 1410, he secured the farm of the Hastings lands in Leicestershire that were not in Tiptoft’s hands.20 CFR, xii. 316; CPR, 1405-8, p. 261; 1408-13, p. 164.

Even, however, without the family estate, Hastings was not without a competence, at least if his first marriage is to be dated to this period. Although the political connexions it brought were unfortunate in the circumstances of 1405, these were negated by its material advantages. His wife had no immediate claim to her mother’s share of the Anglo-Scottish earldom of Atholl – that was destined for her half-brother, Sir Henry Percy (d.1432) of Atholl (Perthshire) – but her father, as the younger son of a baronial family, had benefited from a substantial settlement. He had an estate of inheritance in the Scrope manors of Hollin Hall and 21 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 324; CIPM, xix. 129, 133, 137; VCH Herts. iii. 280. Yet, as it transpired, Hastings’s share of these manors was to form only a minor supplement to his income. He soon won restoration to his patrimony, perhaps in recognition of his family’s earlier service to the house of Lancaster or else in conformity to the political norm that forfeitures were rarely permanent. That restoration came in the Parliament that began on 27 Jan. 1410, in which Blaket represented Leicestershire. Blaket, although he was later to come into conflict with his brother-in-law, was probably the sponsor of the petition successfully presented in the second session for that restoration. On 8 May, the day before the dissolution, the King gave Hastings licence to enter all his ancestral possessions notwithstanding any judgement, forfeiture or royal grants.22 PROME, viii. 478-9; CPR, 1408-13, pp. 195-6.

Once restored, Hastings had reason to view rather differently his mother’s interest in his patrimony. During the period of forfeiture that interest kept these lands out of the hands of royal grantees, but now it diminished his own income.23 His inheritance was also, theoretically at least, burdened by the settlements made by his fa. on his yr. sons, of one of which our MP had himself been a beneficiary. His brother, Nicholas, had been given the manor of Sutton-on-Hull; Hugh, Braunstone; and Leonard, Wold Newton: CCR, 1396-9, pp. 194-5. This economic conflict may be the context of a damaged Chancery petition that probably dates from soon after our MP’s restoration. His mother, through connexions about which one can only speculate, had remarried a Cornishman, Sir Ralph Botreaux*, and it was Sir Ralph who complained to the chancellor that Hastings had ousted him from the manor of Bewick and, more interestingly, taken his wife into his custody. Hastings was perhaps taking advantage of Botreaux’s residence in distant Cornwall to seize part of his mother’s dower or jointure. On the other hand, given Sir Ralph’s rather questionable reputation (he was later to be accused of employing black magic to bring about the death of his nephew, William, Lord Botreaux), our MP’s motives may have been less selfish, perhaps to protect his mother from the consequences of an ill-judged marriage.24 C1/6/38. However this may be, Botreaux’s claims remained a burden on his estate. In 1418 Hastings was paying an annual farm of at least £56 (and probably significantly more) to him, and this charge continued at least as late as 1423, when his mother last appears in the records.25 HMC Hastings, i. 293-4.

Hastings also fell into dispute with Blaket. The two men appear to have been on co-operative terms before our MP’s restoration. Indeed, there was no reason why they should not have been. Blaket’s wife, Margaret, was our MP’s elder half-sister and heiress to her mother, the daughter and heiress of Sir Robert Saddington of Noseley (Leicestershire). Hastings had no claim to her Saddington lands nor did he make one. The problem lay in the steps Blaket had taken to protect his own interest in them. By a fine levied in 1402 he and his wife settled her maternal inheritance on themselves and their issue, with remainder in successive tail male to her three daughters by her first marriage.26 CP25(1)/126/71/4. This settlement, designed to give her daughters by Blaket preference over her daughters by her first husband, Sir Roger Heron of Croydon (Cambridgeshire), was unobjectionable to our MP’s branch of the family save in one important particular: it included the manor of Newton Harcourt which was not part of that inheritance. That manor had been purchased by Hastings’s grandfather, Sir Ralph Hastings, from the London draper, John Poultney, and, in our MP’s contention, settled by his father on Margaret in tail male. Thus, on Margaret’s death in 1407, the right to the manor passed to him. On his restoration as the Hastings heir, Richard took steps to recover the manor, having two of his father’s feoffees enter on the possession of Blaket’s feoffees, Sir John Blount† of Sodington (Worcestershire) and Sir Thomas Lucy† of Charlecote (Warwickshire). Unfortunately for him, an assize of novel disseisin convened at Market Harborough on 4 Jan. 1412 ruled this a disseisin. Hastings quickly brought a writ of error but it was to be more than ten years before he recovered what seemingly should have been his.27 KB138/23.

Soon after this disappointment Hastings began his career in local government, and it is significant that that beginning should have come in Leicestershire. His mother’s interest in the manor of Slingsby is probably the reason he came to live at Kirby Muxloe. He was described as resident there when, in February 1413, he was commissioned to arrest two gentry criminals, William and John, the sons of Sir Roger Perwych† (d.1388) of Lubenham. He had two personal interests in this matter: the pretext for the arrest was the complaint of the men of Market Harborough and Great Bowden, manors owned by his wife’s first cousin, Henry, Lord Scrope of Masham, and he had his own dispute with John Perwych, whom, in a later lawsuit, he sued for the theft of livestock in the autumn of 1411. Even so, neither this commission nor a similar one issued in the following May succeeded in apprehending them for they remained free to carry out their most notorious crime, a violent assault in June on James Bellers†, returning home after representing Leicestershire in Parliament.28 CPR, 1408-13, p. 478; 1413-16, pp. 36, 114; KB27/618, rot. 21; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 180.

In between the issue of these two commissions Hastings received a promotion that demonstrated beyond doubt that his earlier disloyalty had been forgiven. He was one of those singled out for knighthood at the coronation of Henry V. His pricking as sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire in the following year showed that he now had a position of trust.29 C115/K2/6682, f. 63v. It was, however, in war abroad rather than administrative service at home that he was to justify his promotion. On 26 May 1415, while in office as sheriff, he indented to serve in France with seven men-at-arms (excluding himself) and 24 archers, a sizeable retinue for a new knight, and on the following 6 June he was paid an advance on his wages of £67 17s. 4d.30 E404/31/312; E159/214, recorda Easter rot. 4. The revelation, on the eve of the army’s departure, that Lord Scrope of Masham was guilty of treason, must, given his own past, have been an embarrassment to him, but he was not himself implicated.31 In his will of 23 June 1415 Scrope made bequests to the two daughters of his uncle, Sir John Scrope, although he does not mention their husbands: Scrope v. Grosvenor Controversy, ii. 144-5. He went on the fight at Agincourt and he indented to serve again in the following year. On 30 May 1416, in company with Sir Nicholas Montgomery† of Cubley (Derbyshire) and Sir John Osbaldeston of Osbaldeston (Lancashire), he undertook to accompany the King on a campaign at sea, assembling at Southampton on 22 June with nine men-at-arms and 18 archers. Six days earlier he had pawned plate to an alien merchant, Felippo Vannoche of Siena, presumably to raise money for the expedition. As it transpired that expedition, which culminated in victory over the French in a naval battle at the mouth of the Seine on 15 Aug., was not led by the King himself but by his brother, John, duke of Bedford. Sir Richard’s presence in Bedford’s ranks is implied by the delivery to him by the Crown on 1 Nov. 1416 of royal jewels as security for the payment of wages of £113 6s. 6d.32 N.H. Nicolas, Agincourt, 353; HMC Hastings, i. 299-300; E159/214, recorda Easter rot. 4; A. Curry, ‘After Agincourt’, in The Fifteenth Cent. VII ed. Clark, 35, 38, 46. Not surprisingly, he went on to fight in the major campaign of the following year, on this occasion with a retinue of five men-at-arms and 18 archers.33 E101/51/2, m. 39; HMC Hastings, i. 299. Hastings remained in France intermittently until the end of the reign. He was apparently present at the siege of Melun for, by letters patent dated there on 2 Aug. 1420, he was granted the castle and lordship of Horston (Derbyshire) to hold for life. The previous grantee, Sir Philip Leche† of Chatsworth, another of those knighted at Henry V’s coronation, had been killed at the siege a few days before. Later, in May 1421, he indented for another season of campaigning, bringing with him nine men-at-arms and 30 archers.34 CPR, 1416-22, p. 333; E101/50/1, m. 4; 70/6/725.

This military activity left Hastings little time for domestic affairs. After the end of his shrievalty in 1415 he took no part in local administration until the next reign. One important domestic matter did, however, engage his attention. He supported his wife’s half-brother, Sir Henry Percy, in a dispute with Robert Thorley, treasurer and receiver-general of Queen Joan and the third husband of Sir Henry’s late mother, Elizabeth of Strathbogie. On 16 Feb. 1417 our MP joined Percy in a bond in £2,000 to Thorley, in relation to Thorley’s claims against the Strathbogie inheritance, and a year later he was a feoffee for the settlement of these claims, with Percy conceding to Thorley a life interest in the valuable Nottinghamshire manor of Dunham.35 CCR, 1413-19, pp. 382, 384; CPR, 1416-22, p. 122. Less creditably, in Trinity term 1418 he unsuccessfully sued a writ of formedon against the keeper of the chapel of Noseley for the manor of Caldecote (Warwickshire), which his father had alienated to the chapel in 1369.36 CP40/630, rot. 34; VCH Warws. iv. 40.

For Hastings as for many others the death of Henry V marked the end of his military duties and the pattern of his career changed dramatically. He turned to royal and domestic service at home with the same energy he had previously devoted to campaigning. On 9 Dec. 1422, early in the new reign, he was appointed to the constableship of the duchy of Lancaster lordship of Knaresborough, an office that was no sinecure. In November 1424 he had a reward of £10 for conducting five important Scottish prisoners from Knaresborough to the Tower.37 CCR, 1422-9, p. 104; E404/41/147; E403/669, m. 5. But his duties in Knaresborough were a minor burden compared with those he assumed in county administration. In February 1423 he was appointed to his second term as sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire; and in July 1424, when the commissions of the peace were afforced throughout the country, he was named to the benches of the North Riding and Leicestershire. Few men were better qualified for election to Parliament and he was returned for Yorkshire on 26 Mar. 1425.38 CFR, xv. 12; CPR, 1422-9, pp. 565, 572; C219/13/3. A few months after the end of the assembly he was pricked as that county’s sheriff, and on the day that his term of office ended he was reappointed in Warwickshire and Leicestershire. This remarkable series of appointments strongly suggests that Hastings was a trusted royal servant, and it is likely that he had a place in the royal household. When, on 19 June 1425, during the second session of Parliament in which he represented Yorkshire, he was ordered to deliver two Scottish prisoners, in his custody at Knaresborough, to the sheriff of that county, he was described as ‘King’s knight’.39 CFR, xv. 117, 156; CCR, 1422-9, p. 182. Another indirect indication of his Household service is the frequency with which he appeared in person in the central law courts: e.g. KB27/618, rots. 21, 37.

During this period Hastings concluded his dispute with Blaket over the manor of Newton Harcourt. On 28 Nov. 1423 five arbiters, headed by his wife’s first cousin, John, Lord Scrope of Masham, returned an award by which, through a series of convoluted conveyances, Hastings was to have the manor in return for a rent of £18 payable during Blaket’s life.40 HMC Hastings, i. 294-5. Soon after, he had the opportunity to repay Scrope for his assistance. On 3 Aug. 1424 he headed a powerful Yorkshire jury, sitting before royal commissioners of inquiry, that swore that the manor of Masham was entailed to Scrope and that it should thus be restored to him out of the hands of the royal grantee, Henry, Lord Fitzhugh.41 CPR, 1422-9, pp. 218-19; J. Fisher, Hist. and Antiqs. Masham, 497-9.

It was while serving his fourth term as sheriff that Hastings made a marriage that further increased his wealth and importance. On 15 July 1427 the archbishop of York had a papal mandate to dispense him and Elizabeth, widow of William, Lord Deincourt, from the disability of consanguinity in contracting marriage.42 CPL, vii. 529. The mandate has our MP related to his proposed’s wife’s late husband in the second and third degrees of kindred, in other words, they were first cousins, once removed. This supports the identification of his mother as a Grey of Rotherfield. William, Lord Deincourt’s maternal grandfather was Sir Robert Grey (d.1388), and the kinship specified in the mandate would be satisfied if our MP’s mother was Sir Robert’s sister. This match had an obvious advantage for Hastings. Although Elizabeth was a childless widow, her childlessness was a result of her youth. She was more than 20 years his junior (her brother, John, the future Viscount Beaumont, was not born until 1409), and thus brought him the hope that she would remedy his own lack of children. This hope was not to be realized, although not because she was barren, for she later had issue by her third husband, Sir Thomas Neville of Brancepeth.43 Plantagenet Ancestry, 615; CP, iv. 127n. Her son, Sir Humphrey Neville, was to be a notable rebel against Edw. IV. Hastings had to comfort himself with the marriage’s social and material benefits. As the widow of one peer and the daughter of another, her social antecedents were superior to his own, and, although not an heiress, she was not without resources. A valor of the Deincourt lands made soon after her first husband’s death valued her jointure and dower at £109 8s. 6d. This was less than it might otherwise have been because of the survival of her first husband’s paternal grandmother, Alice Neville, who had £243 11s. 8d. p.a., and the income was unhelpfully derived from scattered thirds of manors.44 CP, iv. 126-7; SC12/1/1/21. According to her inq. post mortem, she held in dower thirds of the manors of Duston (Northamptonshire), Granby (Nottinghamshire), Elmton (Derbyshire) and, in jointure, the manor of Olton in Solihull (Warwickshire): CIPM, xxvi. 492-4, 496. None the less, it was a useful supplement to Hastings’s income and more than adequate compensation for what he had lost with his first wife’s childless death.45 His first wife was dead by Trin. 1426 when her manor of Haldenby was settled on Hastings for his life with remainder over to her sis. and h., the wife of Thomas Clarell: CP25(1)/280/155/38. Further, it was not the only supplemental income the marriage brought him. On 29 Nov. 1427, soon after the death of his new mother-in-law, Hastings, with three lawyers, Bartholomew Brokesby*, John Bowes* and Gerard Meynell*, was granted the keeping of the lands she had held in dower until the Beaumont heir, John, came of age. On the following 8 May this was extended to include the dower lands of the ward’s grandmother, Katherine Everingham, the whole to be held for £200 p.a.46 CFR, xv. 203-4, 211-12, 228-9. With these responsibilities may have gone another, that of finding a suitable bride for the orphaned heir. On 25 June 1428 Sir William Phelip† entered into a recognizance in 2,000 marks to Hastings and another of the custodians of the Beaumont estate, Sir William Babington, c.j.c.p., for the observance of an indenture, and there can be little doubt that that indenture concerned the marriage of the future Viscount Beaumont to Sir William’s daughter (and later heiress), Elizabeth.47 CCR, 1422-9, p. 403.

Soon after making his second marriage Hastings, as sheriff, was involved in a contested parliamentary election. According to the indenture drawn up between him and the electors, Sir William Mountfort* and John Mallory* were elected at the county court convened at Warwick on 22 Sept. 1427. This return was, however, challenged by one of the county’s leading gentry, Sir William Peyto‡, who claimed that his lawful election had been set aside by our MP in favour of Mallory’s unlawful one. On 20 Nov. 1428 Peyto, as the new sheriff, was ordered to summon Hastings into Chancery to show why he should not pay the penalty of £100 laid down by statute for a false return. Sir Richard vigorously defended himself, counter-claiming that, after the election indenture had been duly and lawfully sealed, Peyto ‘cum multitudine hominum pomposorum’ of the borough of Warwick and others had demanded his own return and the under sheriff, Edmund Colshill, had then drawn up a new indenture naming the MPs as Mountfort and Peyto. The terms of this defence are significant: Hastings asserted that the borough returned its own MPs and thus the townsmen had no voice in the election of the knights of the shire. This looks like a quarrel over a poll with Peyto’s return depending on the disputed validity of the votes of the townsmen, and a jury, sitting before the justices of assize on 22 July 1430, found that Hastings had made a lawful return.48 C219/13/5; Parliamentarians at Law ed. Kleineke, 108-15. What is more difficult to determine is whether he was here simply a disinterested victim of events or the agent of some factional strife that gave rise to the disputed election. It has been argued that Mallory was returned as a shire knight inimical to the interests of the leading local magnate, Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, then absent in France, and Peyto, as one of the earl’s leading men, acted in the earl’s interest to supersede the election.49 C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 385-7. This argument largely depends on associating Mallory with the earl’s local opponents, John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, and the earl’s aunt, Joan Beauchamp, Lady Abergavenny, and such an association is questionable. None the less, if Mallory was not associated with Mowbray and Lady Beauchamp, Hastings certainly was. His tenurial connexion with the Mowbrays was also a personal one: in a will made on 12 May 1429 the duke named him, along with such of his intimates as Robert Southwell, among his general attorneys; and, at some date before 1428, he was a feoffee in at least some of the manors contentiously acquired by Lady Abergavenny from Hugh, Lord Burnell.50 N. Country Wills (Surtees Soc. cxvi), 37; CPR, 1429-36, p. 506; CCR, 1435-41, p. 322; 1441-7, p. 171. If, then, there was a political dimension, Hastings may have been guilty of illegally excluding Peyto, but the matter remains doubtful.

In the early 1430s Hastings twice acted as arbiter in disputes involving the borough of Leicester, very near his residence at Kirby Muxloe. On 31 July 1431 he was nominated alongside the two chief justices, Sir William Cheyne and Sir William Babington, to rule on the question of whether the men of the town were liable to the payment of tolls at Torksey (Lincolnshire), where the Fosse Dyke joined the river Trent. Later, on 24 Apr. 1433, when he was once more sheriff of the county, he was himself at Leicester, in company with William, Lord Ferrers of Groby, Babington and other local notables, to return an award in a dispute between the mayor and community and the collegiate church of St. Mary over pasture rights.51 Leicester Bor. Recs. ed. Bateson, ii. 244-53. His involvement in such matters, together with his four terms as sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire, imply that his interests lay predominantly in the Midlands. This, however, is a mistaken impression. The best-documented events of his career may have been related to his lands in those two counties, but he remained, in a way that his Hastings successors did not, as much a northerner as a midlander. This was particularly so after his mother’s death had brought the castle and manor of Slingsby into his hands.52 His mother was dead by June 1428 when he was assessed on property in Slingsby to the subsidy on knights’ fees: Feudal Aids, vi. 314. On 8 Jan. 1431 he conveyed the manor to John and Robert Hastings, probably his brothers, and his servant, John Walker: CP40/685, cart. rot. In June 1429 he was named as an envoy to negotiate with the Scots, and on the following 5 Sept. he was again elected to represent Yorkshire in Parliament.53 Rot. Scot. ii. 266; C219/14/1. His membership of this assembly illustrates the role of MPs in the nomination of tax collectors. He and the other Yorks. MP, Sir Richard Pickering*, nominated Thomas Simkinson of Wakefield as one of the W. Riding collectors, but Simkinson, under the name of Thomas Wakefield, successfully pleaded his office of one of the King’s clerks in the ct. of c. p. as grounds for discharge: CFR, xv. 293; E159/206, brevia Hil. rot. 20. In November 1431 he was added to the bench in the West Riding, a rather curious appointment as his lands lay predominantly, if not exclusively, in the other two Ridings. Later, on 23 July 1433, the King demised to him, at an annual farm of £10, the herbage and agistment of two pastures within the duchy of Lancaster lordship of Pickering and appointed him as a forester within the lordship during pleasure.54 CPR, 1429-36, p. 628; DL42/18, f. 70d. In the following November he was pricked for his second term as the Yorkshire sheriff (just after finishing yet another term in Warwickshire and Leicestershire).55 CFR, xvi. 112, 176.

The importance of Hastings’s Yorkshire interests is also made apparent in the pattern of his appointments to ad hoc commissions of local government. In the later part of his career he was routinely named to commissions there, appearing on 14 in six years from March 1430, presumably in recognition of the fact that he was now lord of Slingsby. By contrast, his appointments in the Midlands were intermittent. He was never nominated in Warwickshire, and did not appear on any Leicestershire commissions, save for that of the peace, between November 1424 and January 1436, when, in a burst of activity, he was named to three. There is here a curious discrepancy between the infrequency with which he was named to commissions in those two counties and the frequency with which he served as sheriff. It might be that he was so often chosen as sheriff to represent, as a royal servant, the interests of the Crown, but that he was insufficiently a part of local society in Warwickshire and Leicestershire to justify his appointment to commissions.

Although Hastings was very active in county administration, he was too important a man, particularly perhaps after his second marriage, to have his horizons so narrowly confined. By the autumn of 1433 he was exercising a more important role, that of chief steward of the dower lands of the King’s mother, Queen Katherine, an office that brought a handsome annual fee of 100 marks. As the principal officer in the lordship of Knaresborough, which was part of that dower, he was well qualified for the office. In these last years of his career he also had connexions with another wealthy widow and with several peers of lesser rank. On 14 Nov. 1432 he offered surety when Anne, dowager-countess of Stafford (of whom he held his manor of Bewick in the East Riding) undertook to pay £2,000 for the marriage of the Mowbray heir. In 1430 he was named as a feoffee of William, Lord Lovell, the brother-in-law of his second wife; in 1435 he acted in the same capacity for Thomas, son of William, Lord Ferrers of Groby, in the manor of Stebbing (Essex); and in July 1436 he was nominated as one of the supervisors of the will of the Yorkshire peer, John, Lord Greystoke.56 E101/408/18; CFR, xvi. 117; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 57-58; Bodl. Dugdale mss, 17, p. 66; Reg. Langley, iv. (Surtees Soc. clxx), 206. His high standing in this last part of his career is further exemplified by his admission to the prestigious fraternity of the London tailors.57 Guildhall Lib. London, Merchant Taylors’ Co. accts. 34048/1, f. 246.

While serving his last term as sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire, Hastings became involved in a controversial legal action. In Hilary term 1433 he brought an action of quare impedit for the advowson of the church of Mancetter, which he claimed as appurtenant to his nearby manor of Drakenage and thus entailed on his Herle ancestors. At first sight this appears a straightforward lawsuit to reclaim property unlawfully withheld, but a contemporary narrative of the dispute over a greater inheritance, of which the advowson was only a small part, shows that the truth was more complex. One of the claimants to that greater inheritance, Robert Arneburgh, alleged that Hastings brought his suit as part of series of actions designed to make him and his wife, Joan, acknowledge the claim of Joan’s illegitimate nieces to a moiety of the inheritance of Joan’s father, Sir Geoffrey Brokholes. One of these nieces was the daughter-in-law of Ralph Bellers of Brownsover (Warwickshire), whom the Arneburghs saw as the ‘chief labourer’ against them; and it was in his support that they believed Hastings was acting.58 C. Carpenter, Armburgh Pprs. 15-16, 21-24, 26, 66, 145; CP40/688, rot. 322; C1/2/15. In an unrelated action a prominent townsman of Leicester, William Grantham*, claimed that Hastings had, on 20 May 1435, imprisoned him at Newton Harcourt, a few miles to the south-east of Leicester, and taken his crops and household goods to the value of £20. Both parties appeared in person in the court of common pleas in the following Trinity term with Hastings claiming Grantham as his villein appurtenant to the manor of Newton Harcourt. On 21 July a Leicester jury found in the plaintiff’s favour before the justices of assize and awarded him costs and damages worth £5. Hastings sued a writ of attaint against the jurors, but the original verdict was confirmed on 23 Feb. 1436. As with other similar cases, this was very likely a collusive suit designed to register the plaintiff’s free status in a court of record, with the attaint being no more than a ploy to secure a second verdict in the plaintiff’s favour.59 Leics. Village Notes ed. Farnham, iii. 263; CP40/699, rot. 301. In 1428 Hastings had been involved in a similar action with respect of a villein allegedly from his manor of Wistow: CP40/669, rot. 396; 680, rot. 109.

Hastings died on 10 Sept. 1436. The detailed extents in his inquisitions post mortem valued his lands at an annual clear value of over £150, and, allowing for the undervaluation typical of inquisitions and the omission of certain estates (notably Slingsby), it would be surprising if the Hastings inheritance was not worth comfortably in excess of £200. His widow’s dower, again to judge from inquisition valuations, was worth about £70 p.a., which tallies well with such an estimate.60 HMC Hastings, i. 295; CIPM, xxiv. 699-702. He is known to have been assessed to the 1436 subsidy in Yorks. but no returns survive for the county: E179/240/269. Taking account of the dower Elizabeth enjoyed from her first husband, Hastings must, in the later part of his career, have had a landed income of in excess of £300 p.a., enough to make him one of the richest gentry, even without the fee of 100 marks p.a. he had from Queen Katherine. His will does not survive, but a lawsuit shows that his executors were his widow, his kinsman, Sir Edmund Hastings*, his putative brother, John, John Pershay, John Selowe and John Walker. By Easter 1439 his widow had married Sir Thomas Neville.61 CP40/713, rot. 177. His heir was his younger brother Sir Leonard.