an English statesman, was the first Governor of the Presidency of Fort William (Bengal), the head of the Supreme Council of Bengal, and thereby the first de facto Governor-General of India from 1773 to 1785. In 1787, he was accused of corruption and impeached, but after a long trial, he was acquitted in 1795. He was made a Privy Counsellor in 1814. Hastings was born in Churchill, Oxfordshire in 1732 to a poor father, Penystone Hastings, and a mother, Hester Hastings, who died soon after he was born.
