Family and Education

bap. 9 Dec. 1651, 6th but 1st surv. s. of Sir Henry Vane^† and bro. of Christopher Vane. educ. travelled abroad 1668-70; I. Temple 1671. m. May 1675, Frances, da. of Sir Thomas Liddell, 2nd Bt., of Ravensworth Castle, co. Dur., s.p. suc. fa. 1662.1

Offices Held

J.p. co. Dur. 1674-d., commr. for recusants 1675.

Biography

Vane was descended from the same Kentish stock as the Earl of Westmorland (Charles Fane). His grandfather, Charles I’s secretary of state, reverted to the older spelling of the name, and bought Raby with other property in Durham for £18,000 in 1629. His father, the well-known republican and millenarian enthusiast, was executed after the Restoration, and the steward of the Raby estate is said, with his mother’s encouragement, to have ‘presided over’ a local conventicle. Nevertheless, encouraged by his recent appointment to the commission of the peace, he stood for the county on its enfranchisement. ‘All the sectaries in the whole county were for Mr Vane’, and he defeated Sir James Clavering for the junior seat by 120 votes. He was too ill to attend the election, and died of smallpox four days later on 25 June 1675. He was buried at Staindrop.2

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Authors: Gillian Hampson / Geoffrey Jaggar

Notes

• 1. Hutchinson, Dur. iii. 264; C. Dalton, Wrays of Glentworth , ii. 125; CSP Dom. 1667-8, p. 331; 1675-6, p. 187.
• 2. V. Rowe, Sir Henry Vane , 2-3, 232-41, 255-61, 270; Dalton, 113-15, 126; VCH Dur. ii. 56; CSP Dom. 1675-6, pp. 184-5, 340.