Sir Henry Vane was an English statesman and for one year governor of Massachusetts Bay.
Background
Sir Henry Vane was the eldest of twelve children born to Sir Henry Vane, Knight, and Frances Darcy, his wife. A recent biographer claims that his mother was a granddaughter of Vincent Guicciardini, a descendant of the Florentine historian.
He was baptized May 26, 1613, at Debden, Essex, which was probably his birthplace, rather than Hadlow, Kent, as is sometimes stated.
Education
Vane was educated at Westminster School and at sixteen entered Oxford at Magdalen Hall. Since his principles prevented his taking the required oaths, he remained only a brief time and then went to the Continent to study, probably at Leyden, and visited Vienna and Nurnberg.
Career
Vane early became a Puritan and his position in England became uncomfortable. In 1635, he sailed for Massachusetts in the Abigail, arriving at Boston on October 6. He was admitted as a member of the church on November 1 and as a freeman of the colony on March 3, following, and the same day was chosen to serve on the commission for military discipline. Previously, however, he had been made one of three arbiters to whom citizens of Boston had to submit their cases before they could proceed to law, and with the Rev. Hugh Peter had secured the calling of a meeting at which the two endeavored to reconcile the factions of the former governors John Winthrop and Thomas Dudley.
On May 25, 1636, Vane was elected governor of Massachusetts, when he had been in the colony less than eight months and was but twenty-three years old. His first task, carried through successfully, was to establish a series of regulations governing the entrance of ships into the port, and to soothe the feelings and close the mouths of a group of sea captains resentful of the fact that the king's colors were not displayed by the colony John Endecott, not long before, having cut the cross from the ensign as idolatrous. Vane had arrived in Massachusetts just in time to hear the trial of Roger Williams, with whose views he was in sympathy.
On July 26, 1636, as governor, he received word from Williams that the Pequots and Narragansetts were threatening war. In August a punitive expedition under Endecott was sent against the Pequots a move which was one of the causes of the Pequot War of 1637; but through the magnanimous intercession of the banished Williams the Narragansetts were kept from taking a hostile part, and in October 1636, a treaty was effected at Boston between the English and Miantonomo, the Narragansett sachem.
Shortly afterward a theological storm broke which wrecked Vane's career in America. The arguments of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, who laid stress on inner illumination of the spirit, had divided the local clergy into those who preached a "covenant of works" and those who preached a "covenant of grace. " Her opponents, claiming that she was teaching a religion which absolved those adhering to it from obedience to law, thus undermining the foundations of the colony, demanded her suppression. Former Gov. John Winthrop, the Rev. John Wilson, and most of the other leaders were opposed to her. The Rev. John Cotton, with whom Vane lived, was at first her supporter, but he eventually joined the majority. Vane, with her brother-in-law, the Rev. John Wheelwright, stood by her and was bitterly reviled.
Disheartened, in December he tendered his resignation as governor, pleading that letters from home necessitated his return to England; but he was persuaded to reconsider and retained the governorship until the end of his term. The controversy was carried into the election of 1637. Since Vane was strong in Boston, his opponents secured the holding of the election at Newtown, and he was defeated by Winthrop.
The next day Boston chose Vane as one of its deputies to the General Court, which promptly quashed the election on the ground of a technical irregularity, but when he was chosen again at a new election he was allowed to take his seat. The struggle was not yet over, however. The General Court on May 17 passed an act prohibiting, under penalties, any newcomer from remaining in the colony more than three weeks without the consent of the magistrates; this move was designed to prevent any addition to the ranks of the Hutchinson party and to allow the incumbent authorities to remain in control.
Winthrop circulated an argument in manuscript defending the act and Vane answered him in another, defending civil liberty and religious toleration. Vane sailed for England August 3, 1637. Although he left Massachusetts under the disapproval of the leaders of the colony, he harbored no resentment, and later gladly served the cause of his one-time fellow citizens. When in 1645, he befriended two Massachusetts men in difficulties Winthrop commented: "Sir Henry Vane, though he might have taken occasion against us for some dishonor which he apprehended to have been unjustly put upon him here, yet both now, and at other times he showed himself a true friend to New England, and a man of a noble and generous mind". To Roger Williams he was a loyal and a valuable friend. In 1644, he helped Williams to secure the Rhode Island charter, which bore Vane's signature as one of the commissioners for plantations.
From the time of his return to England, however, the story of his life belongs in the main to English history. In 1639, he was appointed joint treasurer of the navy. Vane was elected to both Short and Long parliaments and was instrumental in securing the condemnation of Strafford and Laud, but had no part in the trial and condemnation of the King. He was a member of all Councils of State. Not in sympathy with the Protectorate, after the dissolution of the Long Parliament he retired from public life. Under Richard Cromwell he was once more a member of Parliament, but when the Long Parliament reassembled, he was expelled. Following the Restoration, he was excepted from the Act of Indemnity, and, after two years in prison was tried for treason, found guilty, and executed on Tower Hill.
Achievements
Personality
Vane had not been always wise in his acts as governor, but he was always honest and generous-minded, and his later and more important career in England probably owed much to the lessons in toleration which his experience among the sectarians of New England afforded him.
Connections
On July 1, 1640, at St. Mary's, Lambeth, he married Frances, daughter of Sir Christopher Wray of Ashby in Lincolnshire; they had thirteen children.