Edward Hasted, the son of Edward Hasted and Anne Tyler, was born at Dove Court, Lombard Street, London on 20th December 1732. Joseph, his grandfather, was Chief Painter to the Royal Navy at Chatham, had speculated financially and successfully to establish the family wealth and assumed a Hasted coat of arms. Edward's father (also Edward) was a barrister in London, married Anne Tyler daughter of a London goldsmith in 1722, but died suddenly at the age of 38 in 1740. The family moved to Rome House near Chatham where Edward spent his teenage years. He was educated at King's School in Rochester from 1740 to 1744, then at Eton until 1748, and finally at a private school in Esher until 1750. After a short period as a member of Lincoln's Inn, at the age of 20, he left home in 1752 to return to Sutton-at-Hone where he married his wife Anne Dorman in 1755. For the next thirty years, while Edward concentrated on his history of Kent, they lived at St John's Jerusalem, the manor house that he largely rebuilt at Sutton-at-Hone, and then at St Georges Street next to the Cathedral at Canterbury. Between 1760 and 1773 Edward and Anne had six sons and three daughters

Edward Hasted's personal, financial and business life are quite fascinating - his affair with Mary Jane Town, his indebtedness was legend, his time in prison, his escapes to France. It is not until 1807, when he was nearly 75, that his personal life settled down when his old patron and friend the Earl of Radnor arranged for him to spend his remaining years in modest comfort at Lady Hungerford's Hospital at Corsham in Wiltshire. He died there on 14th January 1812.

Edward Hasted's life was dedicated to The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent which has always been regarded as one of the finest of the great Hanoverian county histories of England. The first edition, in four large folio volumes, was issued between 1778 and 1799. The second edition was considerably revised and extended and published between 1797 and 1801 in twelve octavo volumes. The work is extensive and covers in depth the family lineage, genealogy, history of many properties, ecclesiastical patronage, parish churches and their incumbents, manors, farms, minor gentry of Kent and the history of Kent. In addition, the work includes extensive and detailed contemporary maps as well as topographical descriptions of nearly every part of Kent as at the latter half of the eighteenth century.