HASTINGS, WILLIAM HASTINGS, BARON

born c. 1430 died 1483 English soldier and diplomat, a supporter of King Edward IV and the Yorkists against the Lancastrians in the Wars of the Roses. Son of Sir Leonard Hastings (d. 1455), he was master of the mint and chamberlain of the royal household under Edward IV and was created a baron in 1461. During the Earl of Warwick's rebellion (146971) Hastings won the powerful but vacillating duke of Clarence over to the side of his brother the King. After Edward's death (1483) he captured the affections of the royal mistress, Jane Shore. She encouraged him to oppose the succession of the Yorkist duke of Gloucester, afterward Richard III, who, following a confrontation in the Tower of London (dramatized in Shakespeare's Richard III), had Hastings beheaded.