Vane, Sir Henry the elder

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Vane, Sir Henry the elder (1589–1655) and Sir Henry the younger (1613–62). Politicians of contrasted character. The father was a worldly minded courtier, adroit, thrusting, industrious, and bent on accumulating a great landed estate. The son was a radical puritan with mystical leanings, and in middle life a doctrinaire republican. What they shared was political skill—and some deviousness in exercising it.

Through purchase or patronage, the elder acquired a succession of posts in the royal household, won Charles I's confidence, and became a privy counsellor in 1630. Favoured also by the queen and the marquis of Hamilton, he rose in February 1640 to secretary of state. As such, he recorded Strafford's fatal words about using an Irish army ‘to reduce this kingdom’, which his son leaked to Pym. Gradually he aligned himself with the future parliamentarians, until Charles stripped him of all his offices. With his son, he sat on the Committee of Both Kingdoms and in the Rump.

The younger Vane sacrificed a promising career at court in 1635 for the religious liberty of Massachusetts, where within six months he was elected governor. But through supporting the unorthodox Anne Hutchinson he got deep into religious controversy, clashed seriously with the general court, resigned, and returned home in 1637. In the Long Parliament he rapidly became a leader of the war party, a close ally of Cromwell, and after Pym's death its most influential single member. But by 1648 he and Cromwell were parting company, and he held aloof from the king's trial. He was very active, however, in the government of the Commonwealth, and he regarded Cromwell's Protectorate as a betrayal of its republican principles. His subversive tract A Healing Question (1656) cost him four months' imprisonment, but he returned to prominence with the restored Rump in 1659. He was excepted from pardon at the Restoration, but Charles II granted the Convention's plea for his life. To the shame of the king and the Cavalier Parliament, he was nevertheless executed in 1662.

Austin Woolrych

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Sir Henry Vane (statesman)

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