Meteoric rise

Born about 1430, William Hastings was the son of Sir Leonard of Kirby Muxloe, who became a retainer of Richard, Duke of York. By the time of Sir Leonard’s death in 1455 the rivalry between Yorkists and Lancastrians, the two branches of the royal house of Plantagenet, had escalated into war.

William had assumed his father’s allegiance, and was knighted on the battlefield of Towton in 1461 by Richard’s son and heir, who was crowned Edward IV two days later.

In the 1460s Hastings formed a strong bond with the king. He was made Baron Hastings in July 1461, and the next month was appointed chamberlain of the royal household. Between 1462 and 1464 he acquired much land in his native midlands and beyond.

When Edward IV was briefly deposed in 1470–71 by the Earl of Warwick, ‘the Kingmaker’, Hastings stuck by him, fleeing with Edward to the Low Countries, and plotting his return to power. When Edward returned to England in March 1471, landing on the Humber estuary, it was Hastings who provided the first complement of men for his army.

With Edward back on the throne, Hastings became a hugely powerful figure. He was courted for his influence: as a servant of the Paston family remarked in 1472, he had more sway over the king ‘than any man alive’. Yet perhaps remarkably for so successful a courtier, he seems to have been almost universally liked and respected, even by his rivals.

Royal Ambition

Edward IV’s death on 9 April 1483 did not at first appear to threaten Hastings. He favoured the appointment of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Edward IV’s brother, as Protector, rather than the immediate coronation of the 12-year-old Edward V which was sought by the boy’s mother, Elizabeth Woodville.

Hastings, having long been on good terms with Gloucester, seems to have underestimated the latter’s ambition until it was too late. Ignoring warnings, he attended the fateful council meeting at the Tower, at which Gloucester accused him of conspiring with the Woodvilles against him. The charge was in all likelihood trumped up – probably because Gloucester knew that Hastings would never countenance any move on his part to seize the throne outright.

Two weeks after Hastings’s execution, Gloucester deposed Edward V and was crowned Richard III. The ‘Princes in the Tower’ – Edward and his younger brother, Richard – were never seen again.