Henry Hastings († 1269)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hastings family coat of arms

Sir Henry Hastings (also Henry de Hastings ) (* around 1235; † before March 5, 1269 ) was an English nobleman and rebel.

Origin and youth

Henry Hastings was a son of Henry Hastings and his wife Ada, the third daughter of David, Earl of Huntingdon , the youngest brother of the Scottish King William I , and of David's wife Maud, a daughter of Earl Hugh of Chester .

When his father died in 1250, he was about 15 years old and still a minor. His father's extensive estates, which yielded over £ 600 annually and which were mostly in the northern and western Midlands , were placed under the administration of eight other barons, most notably Guy and Geoffrey de Lusignan , two half-brothers of the king, and by Guy de Rochford . The right to marry Henry was given to Guy de Lusignan, who about a year later, along with the right to marry his sisters, sold it to Hastings' neighbor, William III de Cantilupe . Hastings himself remained a ward of Queen Eleanor of Provence , from whom he received an annual pension of £ 10.

Connection to the nobility opposition to the king

In 1255 Hastings accompanied the king on a visit to Scotland. On May 10, 1256 he finally came of age, which he could inherit from his father. In August 1260 the king called him up as a vassal for military service. But a little later he belonged to the aristocratic opposition to Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester against the king. The exact reasons for this are unknown; Hastings may have had interests similar to Montfort, who like him had extensive estates in the Midlands. In addition, he was angry with the king's Lusignan half-brothers who had exploited his possessions when he was a minor and then charged him £ 200 when he came of age. Hastings came into contact with other young nobles who were also opponents of the Lusignans, especially Geoffrey de Lucy , William de Munchensi and Nicholas Seagrave . These became the core of the aristocratic opposition in the winter of 1261, when Heinrich III. Revoked the recognition of the Provisions of Oxford . The king required them to send him their seals so that they could also be pardoned under the Treaty of Kingston . Apparently they did not comply with this request, because in Parliament in May 1263 Hastings and his friends continued to support Simon de Montfort. The king tried to mobilize them to fight the Welsh and offered them that he would knight them. The young barons also refused this offer. Hastings waged a guerrilla war with other young nobles against the king's supporters in 1263, which is why he was excommunicated by Archbishop Boniface of Savoy . On December 13, 1263, he finally declared that he would accept the arbitration award of the French king, which he would make on the validity of the Provisions of Oxford.

Role in the war of the barons

When it came to an open war of the barons in the spring of 1264 after the arbitration of the French king, the Mise of Amiens , Hastings became one of the leaders of the rebels. In April 1264 he was with Gilbert de Clare in Kent , where he supported the unsuccessful siege of Rochester Castle . In doing so, he put pressure on David of Ashby and certainly also on other knights to join the rebels led by Montfort. On May 14, 1264 he took part in the Battle of Lewes , where he was knighted by Montfort either on the morning of the battle or on May 4 in London. In the battle he was one of the leaders of the City of London contingent, along with Geoffrey de Lucy, Hervey of Boreham and Humphrey V. de Bohun , which was initially routed by the attack of the troops under the heir to the throne, Lord Eduard . However, after Montfort had clearly won the battle and thus could take over the government again, he appointed Hastings constable of the castles of Scarborough , Kirtling and Winchester . In June Hastings supported the younger Simon de Montfort when he arbitrarily took action against the Baron William de Braose in Sussex and finally punished him with a fine of 10,000 marks . On December 14th, Hastings was called to De Montfort's Parliament , and in February 1265 he took part in a tournament at Dunstable .

In the Battle of Evesham on August 4, 1265, in which the royal party was able to decisively defeat Montfort, Hastings was wounded and taken prisoner by Thomas de Clare . Of the four knights from his retinue, two died in the battle. The king granted his wife £ 100 annually from the proceeds of Hastings' estates, which were confiscated and divided among eight of the king's supporters. After February 1266, Hastings was released, but in May 1266 joined the remaining rebels, the so-called disinherited ones , around Robert de Ferrers, 6th Earl of Derby in Chesterfield . He only escaped being captured again at the Battle of Chesterfield on May 15 because he was hunting at the time of the battle. He moved to Kenilworth Castle , where he pillaged the area with John de la Ware and others. They then holed up in the castle, which was besieged by the king from June to December 1266. Since he had chopped off the hand of a royal messenger as the leader of the garrison, he was explicitly excluded from the Dictum of Kenilworth that offered the disinherited the opportunity to repurchase their possessions. After the surrender of the castle in December 1266, the king decided that he could only buy back his possessions against payment of seven times the amount of his annual income. Although Hastings had sworn at the surrender not to take up arms against the king again, after his release he joined the disinherited on the Isle of Ely . He quickly became their leader until he had to surrender to Lord Eduard in July 1267 under the terms of the Dictum of Kenilworth. Apparently he was able to raise the majority of the sum to buy back his goods without much difficulty, presumably in the end he only had to pay five times the amount of his annual income. He died at the age of 34, perhaps from the effects of injuries sustained in the War of the Barons. Hastings and later his wife were buried in the chapel of the Franciscan Convent in Coventry .

Marriage, offspring and inheritance

Before 1261 Hastings had married Joanna de Cantilupe, daughter of William de Cantilupe and Eva de Briouze . With her he had three daughters and two sons, including

  1. ∞ Rhys ap Maredudd
  2. ∞ Sir Robert de Champayne
  • Joan Hastings
  • Lora Hastings (1339) ∞ Thomas le Latimer, 1st Baron Latimer of Braybrooke

After Hastings' untimely death, the king gave the guardianship of his eldest son and heir John to his brother Richard of Cornwall and his son Edmund . In 1269 an agreement was signed according to which John would be married to a daughter of William de Valence , one of the Lusignans . Edward I claimed to the Pope in 1275 that this marriage was supposed to settle the enmity between the Hastings family and the royal family. Hastings widow Joanna received a Wittum in 1269 , from which she received about £ 230 a year. She died around July 1271.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hastings, Henry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES De Hastings, Henry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English nobleman and rebel
DATE OF BIRTH around 1235
DATE OF DEATH before March 5, 1269