Edward Hastings

Sir Edward Hastings (died 1437) was an English landowner and soldier who fought in the Hundred Years' War but spent much of his life and fortune on unsuccessful claims to hereditary honours.

Origins Born on 21 May 1382 at the family property of Fenwick in Yorkshire, When he refused to pay, claiming that to do so would be to accept Grey's rights, he was imprisoned in the Marshalsea and remained there, sometimes in irons like a common criminal, until shortly after January 1434. Finally paying enough to satisfy Grey, who cancelled the balance, he died on 6 January 1438.

Over 400 years after his death, having suffered imprisonment and impoverishment rather than renounce his rights, a court decided in 1841 that he had in fact been Baron Hastings ever since 1396 and that the arms and title he claimed had therefore been inherited by his descendants.

Family First married to Muriel Dinham, daughter of Sir John Dinham (died 1428), of Hartland, and his first wife Eleanor Montagu (died 1396), they had a son John Hastings, born about 1412, who in 1438 inherited his father's estates at Fenwick, Grimston and Wellow in Nottinghamshire and Mossley in Yorkshire, but never made any claim to the arms or titles that had occupied so much of father's life.

Before 1427 he married secondly Margaret Clifton (died 1456), daughter of Sir Robert Clifton, of Old Buckenham, and his wife Alice. They had no children and after his death she married as his first wife Sir John Wyndham (died 1475), of Felbrigg and Runton.