Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon (c. 1535-1595), married the Duke of Northumberland's daughter Catherine. His mother was Catherine Pole (d. 1576), a descendant of George, Duke of Clarence; and, asserting that he was thus entitled to succeed Elizabeth I of England on the English throne, Huntingdon won a certain amount of support, especially from the Protestants and the enemies of Mary, Queen of Scots.

In 1572 he was appointed president of the Council of the North, and during the troubled period between the flight of Mary to England in 1568 and the defeat of the Spanish Armada twenty years later he was frequently employed in the north of England. It was doubtless felt that the earls own title to the crown was a pledge that he would show scant sympathy with the advocates of Mary's claim. He assisted George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury , to remove the Scottish queen from Wingfield to Tutbury, and for a short time in 1569 he was one of her custodians. Huntingdon was responsible for the compilation of an elaborate history of the Hastings family , a manuscript copy of which is now in the British Museum. As he died childless, his earldom passed to his brother George.