John Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings
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John Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings (6 May 1262 – February 1313), was an English landowner, soldier and administrator who was one of the Competitors for the Crown of Scotland in 1290 and signed and sealed the Barons' Letter of 1301.[1]
He was born in 1262 at Allesley,[2] near Coventry in Warwickshire, the eldest son of Henry de Hastings (c. 1235 – c. 1268) who was summoned to Parliament by Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester as Lord Hastings in 1263. Although following the defeat of de Montfort this peerage creation was not recognized by King Henry III, John Hastings is sometimes referred to as the second Baron Hastings. His mother (whose father William III de Cantilupe (d. 1254) had purchased the wardship and marriage of Henry de Hastings) was the heiress Joanna de Cantilupe (d. 1271), one of the two sisters and co-heiresses of Sir George de Cantilupe (1251-1273), 4th feudal baron of Eaton Bray in Bedfordshire and feudal Lord of Abergavenny.
Career
In 1273, he became the 13th Lord of Abergavenny on the death of his childless uncle, Sir George de Cantilupe, and thereby acquired Abergavenny Castle and the vast lands of the honour of Abergavenny. He also inherited many Cantilupe estates including Aston Cantlow in Warwickshire, one of that family's seats.
He fought from the 1290s in the Scottish, Irish and French wars of King Edward I and held the offices of Seneschal of Gascony and Lieutenant of Aquitaine simultaneously. In 1290 he had unsuccessfully contested the crown of the Kingdom of Scotland as a grandson of Ada, third daughter of David of Scotland, Earl of Huntingdon, who was a grandson of King David I of Scotland. Also in 1290 he was summoned to the English Parliament as Lord Hastings,[3] which created him a peer. In February 1300/1 he had licence to crenellate his manor and town of Fillongley in Warwickshire.[4] He signed and sealed the Barons' Letter of 1301 to Pope Boniface VIII, denying the pope's right to adjudicate the conflict between England and Scotland.[5]
