GLORY OF LORD HASTINGS

Among the dainty knights on his great-grandson’s tomb, above, William, Lord Hastings (1431 – 83) was a friend and supporter of Yorkist King Edward IV, knighted by the victorious King on Towton battlefield, 1461, during the Wars of the Roses between York and Lancaster. Unlike his brother-in-law, Warwick the Kingmaker, Hastings stuck by Edward, following him into exile in 1470 and back the next year, becoming a hugely powerful figure until Edward’s death in 1483. Then the new king, 12-year old Edward V, was placed with his younger brother under their uncle Richard of Gloucester’s ‘protection’ in the Tower of London; after he declared them illegitimate, and himself King Richard III, they were never seen again. Hastings refused to co-operate; at a council meeting in the Tower a week earlier, accused of treachery by Richard, he was summarily executed. He was, at least, buried in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, with Edward IV, and his family allowed to keep his huge estates, among them Kirby Muxloe castle, seen below on a fine English summer day, rain falling in its moat, which was restored in 1911, after the place had been a farmyard for centuries.

The lovely ruin of Kirby Muxloe’s gatehouse, above, left unfinished at Hastings’ death, includes the wonderful spiral stair with seamless brick vaulting wrapping around it, like the inside of a shell. Sixteen miles away is Hastings’ main seat, below, the vast castle at Ashby de la Zouch which his family lived in until the Civil War, when his descendant fought for Charles I until forced to surrender in 1646, when the fortifications – and his ‘only convenient mansion’ – were destroyed. The huge tower was probably one of four planned by Hastings, whose 1483 death brought work to a halt. It stands now a ghostly ruin, soaring into the Leicestershire sky, with broken remains of fine, gothic vaulting and beautifully carved fireplaces stranded up in the air. It’s fascinating to compare this English palace of a wealthy Garter knight with a contemporary Italian one, the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino, thinking that Federico da Montefeltro died one year before Hastings.

To the left of the ruined great tower, above, is the kitchen tower. Between them, against a stormy sky, is the white flagpole of the church where Hastings’ great-grandson, Francis, Earl of Huntingdon, d. 1560, lies in his wonderful tomb, below, of Nottingham alabaster. On its sides stand figures of his antecedents, each under a little ‘canopy of state’ and dwarfed by ever more complex coats of arms. On top are Francis and his Countess, Catherine Pole (herself a great-niece of Edward IV.) The beautiful, serene carving retains hints of colour that once covered it: his robe, the Order of the Garter prominent on its shoulder, still shows a vivid red.