The property was held by Sir Hugh Burnett for about twenty years, when James Butler, Earl of Ormond (a Lancastrian noble), by some means or other, obtained possession of the land, he was executed at Newcastle after the battle of Towton Moor in 1461. In that year Edward, Duke of York, became King, and rewarded his partisans with titles and grants of land. Among them was Sir William Hastings, whom he created Baron Hastings of Ashby, &c., Steward of Leicester, and ambassador, with the Earl of Warwick, to treat for peace with Louis XI., King of France, who gave him a pension of 2000 crowns per annum. The first payment was made in gold, which Lord Hastings is said to have received with these words, “Put it here into my sleeve; for other testimonial (receipt) you shall get none: no man shall say that King Edward’s Lord Chamberlain hath been pensioner to the French King.” This _may_ be the origin of the crest of the Hastings’ family, a maunch or sleeve. King Edward also gave him “licence to enclose and impark 3000 acres of land and wood at Ashby-de-la-Zouch,” and to erect and fortify houses, &c., there and elsewhere. In the year 1474 he built Ashby Castle, nine years later the Protector (Richard, Duke of Gloucester) accused him of high treason, and, without trial, had him beheaded on a log of wood on Tower Green. His remains were interred in Windsor Castle, where a splendid monument was erected to his memory. As we are not writing a history of the Hastings family, we must confine ourselves to those members of that family connected with the history of the place, which for two centuries centred round its castle and church. Ashby Castle was, as we have seen, built by the first Lord Hastings in 1474. It stands on the south side of the town. Judging by its ruins, it must have been indeed a stately pile. Entering from the west we see the remains of the kitchen, with its fire-places, &c.; it had a groined roof, over which were rooms, with another storey over them, access to these was obtained by a spiral staircase in the north-east corner of the kitchen. The west front of this block has been destroyed, so nothing can be written about its chief entrance, its height is about seventy feet, the dimensions of the kitchen are fifty feet long, by twenty-seven broad, and thirty-seven feet high.