13 DECEMBER 1913, Page 15

WARREN HASTINGS.

[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In the Spectator of December 6th, p. 970, is this amazing statement, " Warren Hastings was a Herefordshire man." Permit me as a member of the Worcestershire Warren Hastings Committee to point out a few facts. The family was, from the reign of Henry II., settled at Daylesford in that county for close upon five hundred years. The marriage of his parents, Peniston Hastings and Hester Warren, took place in 1730, at St. Andrew's Church, Worcester. It is true that Warren was born at Churchill, in Oxfordshire, a parish near to Daylesford ; but that was accidental, and after he had repurchased the manor of Daylesford, alienated by his great- grandfather in 1714, Warren lived and died in his ancestral home. Or, as I wrote in my Vindication of Warren Hastings, "That secluded spot was the nursery of his race, the dream of his boyhood, the hope of his strenuous life. It became the shelter of his declining years, and is now the guardian of his dust." Where does Herefordshire come in P I omit divers details, but refer your readers to the last chapter of the Vindication (Henry Frowde, Oxford University Press,