Hastings was the younger brother of Henry Hastings, 5th earl of Huntingdon, the dominant magnate in early Stuart Leicestershire. Despite extensive land sales by the 3rd and 4th earls, the Hastings’ estates remained crippled by debts, which totalled £57,470 by 1612.
In 1614 Hastings was nominated by Huntingdon for election at Leicester, but withdrew after securing the more prestigious county seat.
In 1619 Hastings married the younger daughter and coheir of Sir Gilbert Prynne, a prominent Wiltshire knight. Although Prynne’s main estate had already been assigned to the elder daughter when she married Sir Francis Seymour* in 1613, it seems likely that Hastings thereby acquired the manor of Biddestone, in Wiltshire.
In 1620 the puritan John Brinsley, who had been appointed master of Ashby school in Leicestershire by Hastings’ great-uncle, the 3rd earl of Huntingdon, dedicated his translation of Virgil to Hastings. Brinsley stated that Hastings was ‘addicted’ to his studies, and that he had, ‘out of that maintenance, which in regard of your high birth and noble line might seem far too little for yourself’, maintained ‘sundry poor scholars in the university’.
Hastings’ kinsman and namesake Sir George Hastings also sat in 1621, having been elected for Christchurch. As Hastings had himself been knighted in 1619, there is potential for confusion between the two. However, matters are simplified because neither Member received any committee appointments. Moreover, most of the references to Sir George Hastings in the surviving records of the first sitting can be confidently ascribed to this Member because, other than those relating to the Leicestershire election dispute, they refer to the impeachment of Hastings’ patron Bacon, who had been appointed lord chancellor in 1618.
At the committee concerning the courts of justice on 14 Mar. 1621 a petition from Christopher Aubrey was read. This alleged that, on Hastings’ advice, Aubrey had delivered £100 to Hastings in June 1618 to be given to Bacon to obtain a favourable order in Chancery concerning a suit in that court between himself and Sir William Brounker. The order had not been forthcoming, although Aubrey claimed that Hastings had affirmed that Bacon had received the money. On the same day another petition was read, this time submitted by Edward Egerton, who alleged that Hastings, along with Bacon’s secretary Sir Richard Young*, had been party to Egerton’s own attempt to win a favourable hearing from Bacon by bribery. Hastings and Young were both present at the committee and initially attempted to shield their patron from these allegations. Hastings admitted that he had given Aubrey’s money to Bacon but claimed that he had told the latter that it had been given to himself by a grateful client and that he was presenting it to Bacon ‘as pledge of his thankfulness’. He and Young also stated that Bacon had been told that the money from Egerton had been given for work done before Bacon became lord keeper.
At the committee the next day, realizing that he himself was in danger, Hastings changed his story. According to Sir Robert Phelips’ subsequent report to the Commons, Hastings, ‘struggling with himself betwixt ingratitude and honesty’, admitted that Bacon knew that the money had come from litigants. Hastings stated that two or three weeks previously he had been summoned to the lord chancellor’s bedchamber and asked to persuade Aubrey not to prosecute his petition. Hastings agreed, in return for Bacon’s pledge to help Aubrey. As this promise had not been kept, Hastings went on, he had warned the chancellor after the committee proceedings on the 14th that he must speak out, whereupon Bacon had replied, ‘if you do, George ... I must deny it upon my honour’. When John Finch II, another Bacon client, suggested in the ensuing debate that Hastings had solicited the bribes on his own behalf and was only accusing Bacon to save himself, Hastings replied that he had in fact acted out of ‘commiseration of the poor man’s person and estate’. He expressed penitence, and begged forgiveness, though he would ‘rather perish with a just sentence here than escape with a guilty conscience’. He subsequently reiterated his testimony against Bacon on 19 March.
Hastings played no further role in the sitting, although his name may have been mentioned again on 21 May. On that day a letter from one ‘Jenison’ complaining of the warden of the Fleet was read in the Commons. According to the Journal the letter was written to Sir Henry Hastings, but one diarist identifies the addressee as Hastings himself. ‘Jenison’ may have been William Jenison*, who studied at Gray’s Inn in the 1580s, or Michael Jenison, a barrister of the Inn.
In the second sitting of the 1621 Parliament two recorded speeches were delivered by Hastings or his namesake. The identification of the speaker on both occasions is uncertain, but Hastings is the more likely candidate as he would have been a more familiar figure than the Member for Christchurch, who was sitting for the first time and had not previously played any recorded part in proceedings.
On 26 Nov. Hastings delivered a widely reported speech advocating intervention in the Thirty Years’ War. Arguing that Spain was ‘the fountain, from whence all cometh’, he called for a ‘diversive war’ in the Spanish Netherlands, arguing that ‘that country [is] easier over run than the Palatinate’. He stated that 30,000 men could be raised to fight before Christmas by requiring every parish to maintain one soldier, ‘which’, he added, ‘would be an easy charge’. He evidently had a widely exaggerated idea of the number of parishes in England. He also called for ‘a course to stop the fountains of Spain’, presumably a reference to the silver from America; to this end he suggested that ‘our English merchant[s] may go [to sea] with their swords in their hands’. This, he asserted, was the panacea to cure all financial problems, as it would enrich those who set out ships, as the queen had done, and ‘enable us to maintain the war, [and] supply the Palatinate’, whereas ‘relying on a defensive war will exhaust our treasure and make us poor’. He added that ‘there are younger brothers enough here in England to go with the merchants’, although he showed no indication that he was willing to go to sea himself, possibly because his own younger brother, Edward, had died on Ralegh’s expedition to Guyana. He concluded that he wished ‘that the king would take his sword in his hand and throw away the scabbard, that we might show ourselves true Englishmen’. The speech does not seem to have been well received and was dismissed by Pym as ‘some unseasonable motions’.
In 1624 Hastings was nominated by Huntingdon for a seat at Leicester. Writing to the corporation on 15 Jan. the earl stated that he had told his brother that ‘he need not make means to be a burgess of a town in Wiltshire’, where his marriage seems to have opened up alternative electoral possibilities. However the borough elected an alderman of the town instead, and used the fact that it had also elected Huntingdon’s other nominee, the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, (Sir) Humphrey May*, to excuse its rejection of Hastings.
Elected to the second Caroline Parliament at Huntingdon’s nomination, Hastings was appointed to two committees. The first of these was to attend the Lords on the summons issued by the Commons to Buckingham (4 Mar.) and the second was to consider a private bill (23 March). In the debate concerning the defence of the kingdom on 25 Feb., Hastings proposed that the Commons should first ‘consider what our strength is’, and he criticized secretary of state (Sir) John Coke, who had ‘propounded nothing’ in his speech on the Navy. On 3 Apr. 1626 he was granted leave of absence, but he had returned by 21 Apr., when he testified that Buckingham had used his own funds to purchase the lord wardenship of the Cinque Ports from Edward, 11th Lord Zouche.
During the summer Hastings became involved in the financial problems of his brother, Huntingdon, whose lands had been extended by the Crown for debts of £4,500, as he took a lease of part of the Leicestershire estates while the debt was cleared. It was presumably financial difficulties of his own which obliged him to join with his father-in-law in selling Biddestone that same year.