This surname is derived from the name of an ancestor. 'the son of Hasting' (v. Yonge); compare Browning, Harding, &c.

Hasting Moyse, Somerset, 1273. Hundred Rolls.

William Hastinge, Oxfordshire, ibid.

(a) Local, 'of Hastings,' in Sussex, the principal of the Cinque ports.

Henry de Hastinge, Bedfordshire, 1273 A. Richard Hastings, Cambridgeshire, ibid.

The entry above may belong to (1).

Henry de Hastinges, Northamptonshire, ibid.

1668. Married — Thomas Hastinges and Elizabeth Martin: St. James, Clerkenwell.

1799. — Maurice Lenthall and Mary Hastings: St. George, Hanover Square.

The old Scottish family of Hastings were a branch of the English family of that name settled in Scotland during the reign of William the Lion, from whom they obtained a grant of the lands of Dun in Angus (Caledonia, II, p. 592). Johanne de Hastinge, lord of Dun and sheriff and forester of the Mearns, c. 1178, witnessed a confirmation charter by Turpin, bishop of Brechin, c. 1178—98 (REB., II, 257). He also witnessed a confirmation charter by the king of the church of Aberrotheven to Inchaffray, c. 1199—1200, and was still alive in 1210 (Inchaffray, p. 4. 265). As John de Hastinkes he was juror in a dispute regarding the Kirketun of Aberbruthenoth in 1206 (SCM., V, p. 210). His son David de Hastinges married Forflissa or Fernelith, countess of Atholl and succeeded in her right to the earldom in 1242 (Inchaffray, p. 265). Adam de Hastenge witnessed the confirmation of the church of Dunin to Inchaffray c. 1203—4 (ibid., p. 21), and as Adam de Hastinges he witnessed the gift of the land of Okelffas to the canons of Holyrood a. 1214 (LSC., p. 213). He "had from King William a gift of the lands of Kingledoors in Tweeddale, which he afterwards gave to Arnbroath Abbey" (Inchaffray, p. 271). Johannes de Hasting was one of the witnesses to a charter by William the Lion dated at Forfar, a. 1214, and David de Hasting witnessed a charter by Alexander II of a fishing in the thanage of Scon in 1234 (Scon, p. 22, 41). William, son of Robert de Hastings, witnessed the gift of a stone of wax yearly to the church of Glasgow in 1233 (REG., p. 101), and Sir Robert de Hastangg was sheriff of Roxburgh in 1298 (Bain, II, 1007). Some Harestanes have changed to Hastings.

Ó hOistin, formerly Hestin in north Connacht and Histon in Co. Limerick, has now been widely corrupted to Hastings, an English name having no connexion whatever with Ireland. The sept was one of those associated with the powerful MacDermots of Moylurg and their present day representatives are mainly found in Mayo. A branch migrated to Clare and thence to Co. Limerick: the name is found today in both those counties.

(English) 1 belonging to Hastings, the A.- Sax. Hæstingas = (the Domain of) the Hæst-Family [Old English hæst, violent, severe + the pl. of the son suff. -ing] 2 the genit. of Hasting, q.v.

Ó hOistin, formerly Hestin in north Connacht and Histon in Co. Limerick, has now been widely corrupted to Hastings, an English name having no connexion whatever with Ireland. The sept was one of those associated with the powerful MacDermots of Moylurg and their present day representatives are mainly found in Mayo. A branch migrated to Clare and thence to Co. Limerick: the name is found today in both those counties.

Son of Hastang (Norman name). Also place name in South of England.

(English) One who came from Hastings (Haesta’s people or violence), in Sussex; descendant of Hasting or Haesten (violence).

Sir Egerton Brydges pronounces this name to be inadmissible, as “of palpable local English origin.” Further on in the list we come to that borne by the family in Normandy - De Venoix; but Robert, the founder of the English house, certainly did not use it at the date of Domesday. He is there styled either Marcseallus or De Hastings, as the first Norman Port-reeve of that town; and I shall therefore treat of this famous lineage under the name by which it has been always known; reserving some account of the descendants of his younger brother for Venoix. “The Barons of Venoix, near Caen, held their fief as hereditary Marshalls of the Stable (Masters of the Horse) whence they bore the name of 'Le Mareschal,’ or 'Mareschal of Venoix’” (Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, xii. 15). Milo le Mareschal, born probably about 980, and Lescelina his wife, were living 1050, when the Duchess Matilda purchased lands at Vaucelles from them for Holy Trinity, Caen.—(Ibid.) He had issue Ralph le Mareschal and other sons, who came to England 1066. Ralph was living 1086; and had 1. Robert; 2. Roger le Mareschal, who, 1086, held lands in Essex; 3. Gerold, owner of estates in Suffolk, 1086; 4. Gosfried, owner of estates in Hants and Wilts, 1086, father of Gilbert, ancestor of the Mareschals, Earls of Pembroke.

"Robert, the elder son, is sometimes styled Fitz Ralph, elsewhere 'De Hastings,’ and 'Le Mareschal' (Domesd. 17, 73, 74 b. 160 b.; Essex, 107 b.). He was Lord of Venoix, and was the King’s viscount or seneschal at Hastings, where and at Rye his descendants long held the revenues in farm from the Crown. He had William de Hastings, who, c. 1100, married Juliana, granddaughter and heir of Waleran, a great baron of Essex, and was living 1130 (Rot. Pip.) He, with Robert de Venoix his brother, instituted a suit against his cousin Gilbert Mareschal and his son to recover the office of hereditary marshal, which Gilbert, or perhaps Goisfrid, his father, had obtained to the prejudice of the elder line. The suit failed, but in compensation William de Hastings was created Dapifer.” - The Norman People. With this William, Steward to Henry I., who held Ashele in Norfolk by the service of taking charge of the "Naperie” (or table-cloths and linen) at the King’s coronation, Dugdale commences the (pedigree. His grandson and namesake was the father of 1. William, ancestor of the Earls of Pembroke; and 2. Thomas, ancestor of the Earls of Huntingdon.

The elder line was carried on by William's son Henry, who nude the first of the successive Royal alliances by which it was illustrated. He married a niece of William the Lion, King of Scotland, Ada, the daughter of David Earl of Huntingdon, through whose two elder sisters the Scottish crown was conveyed to Edward Baliol and Robert Bruce. Their mother Maud, the sister and coheir of Ralph Earl of Chester, had brought that Earldom to her only son, John le Scot; and on his death in 1237, the whole of this great inheritance was divided between Ada and her sisters. The next Henry de Hastings joined the rebel barons, and was knighted by Montfort’s own hand on the field of Lewes. “No man,” says Dugdale, “was more active against the King than he;” and after the rout of Evesham, he shut himself up in Kenilworth Castle, and held it for six whole months against the victorious army. The King’s messenger, inviting him to surrender “with gracious Offers, he most inhumanly maimed; not being at all daunted with the sentence of Ottobon, the Pope’s Legate, then there, and thundred out against him; nor all the Power wherewith he was begirt.” At last he had to yield on honourable terms; but as a punishment for his obstinate bravery was excluded from the benefits of the Dictum, and condemned to seven years’ imprisonment, though the sentence was only partially carried out His son Henry, whose wife, Eve de Cantilupe, bought him the castle and honour of Bergavenny, was summoned to parliament in 1268, and was the father of John de Hastings, who followed Edward I. in all his campaigns, and was one of the claimants for the crown of Scotland in 1290. He is called on the roll of Car- laverock “the most intimate and best beloved of all those the King had there; reckless and daring in the field, but gentle and debonnair in the hall.”

E voir bien estre le devoit; Car conneus estoit de touz An fair des armes feris e estous, En ostel douz e debonnaires; Ne onques ne fu justice en aires Plus volentris de droit jugier.”> He was named Lieutenant of Acquitaine in the following year, and in 1305 received as his guerdon the entire county of Menteith, with the Isles, forfeited by its Scottish Earl. He had first married a near kinswoman of the King’s, Isabel de Valence, daughter of William de Valence or de Lusignan, Earl of Pembroke, the half- brother of Henry III.; Through his mother, Isabel of Angoulême, King John’s widow, who re-married Hugh de Lusignan, Count de la Marche. and when her brother Aymer de Valence was murdered in France in 1323, she became one of the famous “Pembroke heiresses.” She was the second of them; but her elder sister Anne had no children; thus the succession centred on her and the third daughter Joan Comyn; and her grandson Lawrence de Hastings was declared Earl of Pembroke in her right in 1339. Lord Hastings had a second wife - another Isabel, the daughter of Hugh Earl of Winchester (the elder of the two favourite Despensers): and his eldest son by her, Sir Hugh, of Gressing Hall in Norfolk, was the grandfather of another Hugh, summoned to parliament as Lord Hastings of Gressing in 1342.

A curse was believed to rest on all the lineage of Aymer de Valence, who had sat in judgment on his cousin Thomas Plantagenet, Earl of Lancaster, at Pontefract, and condemned him to die unheard; and his own violent death, two years after, was held to be a retribution for this "mercenary and time­serving act of infamy.” But the fatality did not end with him; for "it was observ’d, that after that Judgment so given, none of the succeeding Earls of Pembroke ever saw his Father, nor any Father of them took delight in seeing his Child.” Family tradition accordingly asserts that both the second and third Earls of this house were posthumous children; but it is impossible to reconcile this statement with the dates, though I have diligently endeavoured to do so. Lawrence, the first who bore the title, was bred up in the soldier-court of Edward III.; followed him to the wars with a princely train, and died early in life (though not in battle) leaving an only son of about a year old. This second Earl was a singularly unfortunate man. He began his career brilliantly by marrying the King’s daughter, Lady Margaret Plantagenet; and when she left him a childless widower, paid 1000 golden florins to the Pope for dispensation to espouse her cousin in the third and fourth degree, Anne, the heiress of the renowned Sir Walter de Manny. In 1372, he was named Lieutenant of Acquitaine, and went, with a great force, to the relief of Rochelle, then beleaguered by the French; but "was attended,” says Dugdale, "with very unhappy success. For no sooner was he got with his Ships into that Haven, but the Spanish Fleet fell suddenly upon him, before he could put his Men in Order to fight; so that few of them escaped Death, Wounds, or Imprisonment: and the Enemy forthwith set fire on all the English Ships, carrying away this Earl, with many other gallant Men, with no less than 20,000 Marks in Money, sent over by King Edward to maintain the War.” After this dire catastrophe, he underwent four years’ imprisonment in Spain, with "most inhuman Usage;” and when he was at length released, died on his way home—probably from its evil effects, but as was currently believed, of a slow poison administered by the Spaniards. His little son - at that time not five years old—who succeeded in 1376 as third Earl of Pembroke, was judged too young to carry the Golden Spurs at the coronation of Richard II. in the following year, according to his hereditary right Hut he was not too young to be married; for his deputy on that occasion was his father-in-law: his wife being a young princess of the House of York, Philippa de Mortimer, the daughter of Edmund Earl of March and his wife Philippa Plantagenet He was a youth of excellent promise; "of so Noble a Disposition, that in Bountie and Courtesie he exceeded most of his Degree but he died in his boyhood, the last of his doomed race; and men discerned in his untimely fate the working of “the curse that weighed upon the blood of Aymer de Valence.” In 1389, “the King keeping his Christmass at Woodstock, and there holding a Tournament, he (being then but seventeen years of age) adventured to Tilt with Sir John de St. John;" and by an unlucky slip of Sir John’s lance, he was run through the body, and killed on the spot. He was an only child, without any near relative; and his heirs were declared to be Reginald Lord Grey de Ruthyn (descended from Elizabeth, daughter of John, third Lord Hastings, and the Valence heiress) in the whole blood; and Edward Hastings (descended from her half-brother Sir Hugh) in the half blood. But the father of this last Earl “did so little regard his next Heir male, and so much dislike Reginald Grey (Father to this last Reginald) that he Entail’d the Castle and honour of Bergavenny, and the greatest part of his Lands upon William de Beauchamp (his Mother’s Sister’s Son) provided he should bear his Arms, and endeavour to obtain the Title of Earl of Pembroke.” Thus little was left for the heirs to claim, beyond the right to bear the arms of Hastings, Or, a Maunch Gules; but this they held in such high esteem, that they contended for it during little less than twenty years in the Court Military, before the Constable and Marshal of England. Edward Hastings’ right to his paternal coat seemed indisputable; but so powerful was the house of Grey, that in the end it was adjudged to Reginald, and he was not only condemned to pay nearly ₤1000 costs (then a very great sum) but imprisoned for sixteen years for disobeying the sentence. This was hard measure, but there was more yet to come. He questioned Beauchamp’s right to the estates; and “Beauchamp invited his Learned Counsel to his House in Pater-noster-row; and after Dinner, coming out of his Chappel, in an angry mood, threw to each of them a Piece of Gold, and said, ‘Sirs, I desire you forthwith to tell me, whether I have any Right or Title to Hastings’ Lordships and Lands?’ Whereupon William Pinchebek stood up (the rest being silent, fearing that he suspected them) and said, ‘No man here, nor in England, dare say, that you have any Right in them, except Hastings do quit his Claim therein; and should he do it, being now under Age, it would be of no validite.’ Perhaps,” continued Dugdale, “there had been some former Entail, to settle them upon the heir male of the Family: But what­ever it was, Hastings apprehended the Injury thereby done him, to be so great, that with extreme anguish of mind, at his latter end, he left God’s curse, and his own, upon his Descendants, if they did not attempt the Vindication thereof.” This injunction they certainly left unfulfilled; nor did they ever attempt to take the titles of Lord Hastings and Stoteville, which, though never summoned to parliament, he had chosen to assume. The last of them, Sir Francis Hastings, died about the time of Elizabeth, and his estates went among his four sisters. But in 1841 the ancient barony was called out of abeyance in favour of Sir Jacob Astley, who traced his descent from one of them; and his grandson, counting up all the intervening heirs and heiresses, is now styled the twelfth Baron Hastings, though the title has been actually borne by no more than five of them.

The kindred house of Huntingdon is derived from Thomas de Hastings (see p. 131), whose son Hugh married a Yorkshire heiress, and settled at Allerstan in the North Riding. Towards the middle of the fourteenth century his posterity migrated to Kirby in Leicestershire, which Sir Ralph Hastings had acquired through his wife Margaret de Herle. They were zealous Yorkists throughout the Wars of the Roses; and when Ed. IV. came to the throne, no man was more honoured and rewarded for "his good and faithful service” to the King and the King’s father than was Sir William Hastings. He was literally loaded with the estates of the attainted Lancastrians, the honours of Peverel, Boloin, Hagenet, and Huntingdon, the lands of Viscount Beaumont, Belvoir Castle, with a great part of the possessions of Lord Ros, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, which had been the Earl of Wiltshire’s, and the Castle and Rape of Hastings, all falling to his share; and was summoned to parliament as Lord Hastings-de-la-Zouch in 1461. Nor were the offices of trust that he held less numerous or less important; he was twice Captain of Calais, once Ambassador to France, Chamberlain of North Wales, Keeper of several of the King’s forests and Constable of six of his castles, with many other preferments too numerous to detail Two Barons, nine knights, fifty-eight esquires, and twenty gentlemen were retained by indenture to serve him in peace and war. He commenced a magnificent castle at Ashby, and unroofed and dismantled Belvoir Castle and Stoke Daubeney (another house of the Lord Ros) to furnish lead and materials for his building. As Lord Chamberlain, he was in constant attendance on the King, and according to Comines (who knew him well), "in great authority with his master, and not without cause, having ever served him faithfully.” Yet he was the pensioner both of the Duke of Burgundy and the King of France, receiving from the latter (besides a present of plate to the value of 10,000 marks) a yearly income of 2000 crowns, for which he refused to give either receipt or acknowledgment, saying, "Put it here” (being in Gold) "into my Sleeve: for no Man shall say, that King Edward’s Lord Chamberlain hath been Pensioner to the French King; nor that my Acquittances be found in his Chamber of Accompts.”

But with the death of the King came the sudden collapse of his greatness. The new Protector, Richard Duke of Gloucester, found this powerful baron a stumbling-block in his path, and resolved to get rid of him. So craftily did he conceal his purpose, that Hastings, when summoned to attend a council at the Tower, followed Sir Thomas Howard thither without suspicion; and being in a merry mood, stopped to chat with his pursuivant and a priest whom he met on the way, telling them the good news that his old enemies, Rivers and Vaughan, were that day to be beheaded at Pomfret. "I pray you come on,” quoth Sir Thomas, who was in the secret of his impending doom: “wherefore talk you so long with a priest?” adding ominously, "You have no need of a priest as yet” Hastings entered the council chamber without a shadow of foreboding; in the full confidence that he was on the most friendly and familiar terms with the Protector. Then followed the scene of violence and reproaches so admirably dramatized by Shakespeare, which was to prepare the way for his arrest as a traitor. The Protector seized him with his own hand, crying, “Make speed, and shrive him apace; for by St.Paul, I will not dine till I see his head off!” “It booted him not,” adds the chronicler, “to ask why; but taking a priest at a venture, he made a short shrift, for no longer would be suffered, the Protector made so much haste to his dinner;” and was then led out to the Tower green, and beheaded on a log of wood that lay there for the rebuilding of the chapel He had married the sister of the King Maker, Katherine Nevill, daughter of Richard Earl of Salisbury, and widow of Lord Bonville and Harrington; and their son Edward had been summoned to parliament the year before his father’s execution as Lord Hungerford; one of the four baronies brought to him by his wife, Mary, the sole heir of Walter, last Baron Hungerford, Botreaux, Molins, and Moels. The attainder was reversed and his lands restored on the accession of Henry VII.; and George, the next heir, who was with Henry VIII. at the taking of Therouenne and Tournay in 1512, was created Earl of Huntingdon in 1529. He was the first of ten Earls of the name that followed each other in uneventful succession up to the end of the last century. The second Earl and his brother Thomas married two sisters, Mary and Winifred Pole, the daughters and coheirs of Henry Lord Montacute, eldest son of the unhappy Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, who, after the execution of her brother, the last male Plantagenet, became his sole heiress and representative, and herself perished on the scaffold. Winifred, the wife of the younger brother, had no children by him, and married again; but Mary, Countess of Huntingdon, was the mother of a large family, and has transmitted her Plantagenet blood to a considerable number of descendants. Francis, tenth Earl, died in 1790, unmarried, leaving two sisters as his heirs; the younger of these, Lady Selina, also never married; and thus the baronies of Hastings, Hungerford, Molines, Botreaux, &c., devolved upon her elder sister Lady Elizabeth, who was the wife of John Rawdon Earl of Moira. Her son the second Earl was created Marquess of Hastings in 1816; but this title ended with the fourth Marquess in 1868: and the old baronies, again passing in the female line, are now vested in the son of his sister, Edith Countess of Loudoun.

For twenty-eight years after the death of this last Earl, the Earldom remained unclaimed, and was believed to be extinct At length, in 1817, it was found that the old name had not altogether passed away; for an unsuspected claimant to its honours was brought to light In August of that year Captain Hans Hastings, a retired naval officer, who was then ordnance store-keeper to the garrison of Enniskillen, was electrified by receiving a letter from a local attorney, named Bell, asking permission to claim for him the Earldom of Huntingdon. As Mr. Bell was, in the first instance, to take upon himself the entire cost and responsibility of the proceedings, the astounded Captain made no difficulty in sending the required authorization, but added in a postscript, “By all things good, you are mad!” Mr. Bell at once set about collecting information, and procured his first valuable cue through a chance acquaintance he picked up on the road, a talkative old crone who offered him a seat in her market cart, and proved to be a former servant of the Hastings family. He followed it up with indefatigable assiduity; succeeded in making out his case; and within a year and a half had obtained a writ of summons for his client, and triumphantly seated him in the House of Lords. The Captain’s great-grandson is the present and fifteenth Earl of Huntingdon.

This junior branch of the house of Hastings bears Argent a maunch Sable in contradistinction of the elder. It has held three other peerages. A brother of William, first Lord Hastings, married Joan, the sister and heir of the brave Lancastrian commander, Lord Willoughby and Welles; and by the favour of Edward IV. obtained the restoration of her forfeited estates, and a summons to parliament as Richardo Hastinges de Welles, Chl'r, in 1482: but his only son died before him. Another cadet, Sir Edward, son of the first Earl of Huntingdon, “a very eminent person in the time of Queen Maryland Lord Chamberlain of her household, was created in 1558 Lord Hastings of Lough­borough in Leicestershire, and also left no male heir. His title was revived in 1643, and granted to Henry Hastings, a brother of the sixth Earl, in reward for his gallantry during the Civil War. He died unmarried in 1665.

That the town of Hastings, co. Sussex, the chief of the Cinque-Ports, derived its name from one Hasting, is evident from the Bayeux Tapestry, where it is styled Hestenga-ceastra, "the fortification of Hasting." Whether he was the well-known Northman pirate is, however, but matter of conjecture. The noble families of this surname are descended from Robert de Hastings, portreeve of that town, and steward to king William the Conqueror, (Collins' Peerage,) hut it is possible that others may be of different origin, and that their name is a direct derivation or patronymic of Hasting, the personal name.

Local. Derived from the borough of Hastings, in Sussex, England, which is memorable for the landing of William the Conqueror, and defeat and death of Harold II., in 1066. Camden derives this name from one Hastings, a Dane, a great robber, who either seized, or built, or fortified it. Somnerus derives it from the Saxon haeste, heat, because of the bubbling or boiling of the sea in that place; but as haste applies rather to voluntary beings, as men and other animals, the name more correctly signifies one who hurries, presses, drives; vehemency, quickness of motion.

Or De Venoix. The Barons of Venoix, near Caen, held their fief as hereditary Marshals of the Stable (Masters of the Horse), whence they bore the name of ‘Le Mareschal,’ or ‘Mareschal of Venoix’ (MSAN, xii. 15). Milo le Mareschal, b. probably c. 980, and Lescelina his wife, were living 1050, when the Duchess Matilda purchased lands at Vaucelles from them for Holy Trinity, Caen (Ibid.). He had issue Ralph le Mareschal and other sons, who came to England 1066. R. was living 1086, and had issue, 1, Robert; 2, Roger le Mareschal, who, 1086, held lands in Essex; 3, Gerold, owner of estates Suffolk, 1086; 4, Goisfrid, owner of estates in Hants and Wilts, 1086, father of Gilbert, ancestor of the Mareschals, Earls of Pembroke. Robert, the elder son, is sometimes styled Fitz-Ralph, elsewhere ‘De Hastings,’ and 'Le Marischal’ (Domesd. 17, 73,74 b, 160 b; Essex, 107 b). He was Lord of Venoix, and was the king’s viscount or seneschal at Hastings, where and at Rye his descendants long held the revenues in farm from the Crown. He had William de Hastings, who, c. 1100, m. Juliana, granddau. and heir of Waleran, a great baron of Essex, and was living 1130 (Rot. Pip.). He, with Robert de Venoix his brother, instituted a suit against his cousin Gilbert Mareschal and his son to recover the office of hereditary marshal, which G. or perhaps Goisfrid, his father, had obtained to the prejudice of the elder line (Dugdale). The suit failed, but in compensation William de H. was created Dapifer. His son, Hugh de H., in 1130 held estates in Leicester and Bucks by m. with the heir of De Flamville, by whom also he acquired estates in Norfolk (Blomefield, i. 168,339). He had issue, 1, Ralph, ancestor of Hastings, Barons of Bergavenny and Earls of Pembroke; 2, Thomas, ancestor of Hastings, Lord Hastings, Earls of Huntingdon. There were numerous branches of these families. From the latter descended in the female line the Marquises of Hastings.

A location name in Sussex.

A Norman name: Hastingues; a local name, island in the river near Bayonne.

Hastings: Robert de Venoix was the first Mareschal or Portreeve of Hastings. He came from Venoix, near Caen. Robert is named in Domesday as FitzRalphand de Hastings and le Mareschal. It must not hastily be concluded that everyone bearing the name of Hastings is descended from Robert de Venoix; many a man was so named simply because a native of that place.