VI CENTENARIANISM 233 



Dickinson, of Mayfair, who has been kind enough to 

 inform me of this case, has copies of the register both 

 of his birth and death, establishing this fact. As Dr. 

 Dickinson observes, the Quakers are very precise in 

 these matters. 



3. James Hastings, for upwards of sixty years 

 rector and impropriator of the living of Hartley in 

 Worcestershire, father of Admiral Sir Thomas Hast- 

 ings, Sir Charles Hastings, Admiral Hastings, and 

 the Eev. Henry Hastings, died in his hundred-and- 

 first year. His grandson, Mr. Gr. W. Hastings, of 

 Barnard's Green, Malvern, has obliged me with the 

 following details. He was born in London, in Soho 

 Square, 2d January 1756; and his birth register, of 

 which Mr. Hastings has a copy, is at St. Martin's, 

 Trafalgar Square. He was entered as a gentleman 

 commoner of Wadham College, Oxford, in 1776. At 

 the request of Sir Thomas and Mr. Hastings, the 

 warden of Wadham last year looked up the entries in 

 the college and university books, and sent a copy of 

 an entry, giving the age of James Hastings as twenty 

 at matriculation. He was admitted to holy orders by 

 the Bishop of Oxford, at St. Mary's, in November 

 1779. As no one can be admitted to the orders of 

 the Church of England till the age of twenty-three, 

 this again carries him back to 1756 as his birth-year. 

 Mr. Hastings has the letters of orders in his posses- 

 sion ; they have never left the family, and prove in- 

 contestably that James Hastings was twenty-three in 

 1779. He was married at the parish church of 

 Chipping Norton in February 1781, and his age is 



