Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon

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Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon
Catherine Pole
OccupationAdministrator, diplomat, and military commander

Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon,

successor to Elizabeth I. He hotly opposed the scheme to marry Mary, Queen of Scots, to the Duke of Norfolk, and was entrusted by Elizabeth to see that the Scottish queen did not escape at the time of the threatened uprising in 1569. He served as President of the Council of the North
from 1572 until his death in 1595.

Early life

Education

Hastings was born in

King Edward IV. This gave him some claim to the throne. Hastings was educated at first by private tutors at his family manor. A year or so senior to Edward VI, Hastings joined the young prince at his studies at the king's invitation. He was tutored under Richard Cox, John Cheke and Jean Belmain. They provided both youths with an education based on the principles of Humanism. In 1548 he spent a brief period at Queens' College, Cambridge, profoundly influenced by the evangelical Protestantism he encountered at court and at the university.[1]

Marriage and imprisonment in the Tower of London

His father was a political ally of John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, and to further their alliance the two elder politicians arranged the marriage of their children. On 21 May 1553, Henry was wed to Katherine Dudley, daughter of Northumberland by Jane Guildford.

In 1553, Edward VI was dying and his appointed heir was his cousin Lady Jane Grey, Northumberland's daughter-in-law. Jane's reign lasted only from 10 to 19 July 1553 until her cousin Mary I of England prevailed. Due to his marital alliance, Henry backed Northumberland in his attempt to divert the succession in favour of Lady Jane Grey in July 1553, and on Mary Tudor's triumph he found himself incarcerated in the Tower of London. Mary attempted to reconcile with the Hastings family and soon they were free again and by oath loyal to her.[citation needed]

Henry entered the household of his great-uncle

John King,[6] and William Chaderton.[7]

Political career

Detail from the Vaughan Porch of Leicester Cathedral. The Earl of Huntingdon is 3rd from the right

He had been loyal to

Mary I during their respective reigns and his father remained an influential politician. When Mary I died childless and was succeeded by her younger half-sister Elizabeth I in 1558, the new queen also counted on the reliable Hastings family among her supporters. Together with the second earl, Lord Hastings received a summons to the Lords in the first parliament of Elizabeth, and attended assiduously, being present (among much else) at the passage of the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity in the spring of 1559. Henry was named a Knight of the Bath by the new queen regnant
.

His father died on 25 January 1560 and Henry became the third Earl of Huntingdon. He thus assumed responsibility for his widowed mother and his ten siblings.

Stunted rise to power

With his humanist education, experience of court life, and a brother-in-law,

heirs to the throne. Huntingdon was among these possible heirs and won a certain amount of support, especially from the Protestants and the enemies of another claimant Mary, Queen of Scots.[8] Huntingdon soon discovered that his Yorkist ancestry barred his way. Indeed, when Elizabeth fell ill with smallpox in October 1562, the Protestant group put him forward as a potential successor and, though he subsequently did all in his power to convince her of his loyalty, the queen proved very slow thereafter to employ him outside his native county of Leicestershire.[9]

President of the Council of the North

However, he was still useful to her. It was doubtless felt that the earl's own title to the crown was a pledge that he would show scant sympathy with the advocates of Mary's claim. For three months during the northern uprising in the autumn of 1569, he assisted George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury to remove the Scottish queen from Wingfield Manor to Tutbury.[8] He is often mentioned - negatively - in coded letters from Mary, Queen of Scots, to the French ambassador.[10] He was later one of the peers at her trial in 1586.

Elizabeth formally recognised his service by creating him a

Thomas Radcliffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex as president of the council in the north, in 1572 Huntingdon was appointed president of the Council of the North
. Throughout the period the north of England stood as a buffer zone against Scotland, still in a highly volatile state after Mary's flight.

He was prominent and active in the preparations of 1588 for the Spanish invasion.

Later life

Quartered arms of the 3rd Earl of Huntingdon

Having gone north to Newcastle to oversee the musters in the autumn of 1595, Huntingdon planned to join his wife at court for Christmas. On his return to York in late November, however, he fell ill with a fever and died there on 14 December 1595.[11]

At court, Elizabeth went out of her way to comfort his distraught widow, though she did little to mitigate the debts. Childless, Huntingdon had educated

intestate, George, fourth earl of Huntingdon, tried to avoid taking up the administration of his estate, but the queen insisted upon Huntingdon's being given a funeral commensurate with his rank, and he was buried with his nephew, Francis, who only outlived him by three days, at St Helen's Church, Ashby-de-la-Zouch
, on 26 April 1596.

A portrait of Huntingdon in armour dated 1588 now hangs in the Tower. Huntingdon was responsible for the compilation of an elaborate history of the Hastings family, a manuscript copy of which is now in the British Museum.[8]

Notes

  1. ^ a b Claire Cross, "Hastings, Henry, third earl of Huntingdon (1536?–1595)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, January 2008 accessed 11 May 2017
  2. ^ Cross 1966, p. 35.
  3. ^ Cross 1966, p. 40.
  4. ^ Cross 1966, p. 33.
  5. ^ Stone, Lawrence, The crisis of the aristocracy, 1558–1641, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002 (reprint), 341.
  6. ^ Cross 1966, p. 276.
  7. ^ Cross 1966, pp. 257–58.
  8. ^ a b c  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Huntingdon, Earls of s.v. Henry, the 3rd earl". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 949.
  9. ^ Cross 1966, pp. 143–5.
  10. S2CID 256720092
    .
  11. ^ Michael Brennan, Noel Kinnamon, Margaret Hannay, The Letters of Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert Sidney (Philadelphia, 2013), pp. 119-121.

References

  • Cross, Claire (1966). Puritan Earl 3rd Earl of Huntingdon. London: Palgrave Macmillan Limited.
    OCLC 1084422747
    .

External links
Political offices
Preceded by Lord Lieutenant of Leicestershire
1559–1587
with the Earl of Huntingdon (1559–1561) 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Custos Rotulorum of Leicestershire
bef. 1573–1595
First known holder Lord Lieutenant of Rutland
?–1595
Lord Lieutenant of Yorkshire
1586–1595 		Vacant
Title next held by
The Lord Burghley
Lord Lieutenant of Cumberland, Northumberland and Westmorland
1586–1595 		Vacant
Title next held by
The Earl of Cumberland
Peerage of England
Preceded by Earl of Huntingdon
1560–1595 		Succeeded by
writ in acceleration
)
1559–1595
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