SlfflliENRY VANE JR.GOVERNOFl 
 OF iVfASSACHl/SETTS AND FRIEND OF 
 ROCEll WILLIAMS AND RHODE ISLAND 
 
 iENRY MELVILLE KING 
 
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 CopghtN" 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSITS 
 
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SIR HENRY VANE, Jr. 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, Jr. 
 
 GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 AND 
 
 FRIEND OF ROGER WILLIAMS 
 AND RHODE ISLAND 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY MELVILLE KING, 
 
 n 
 
 PASTOR EMERITUS 
 OF THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, PROVIDENCE, R. I. 
 
 PROVIDENCE, R. I. 
 
 PRESTON & ROUNDS COMPANY 
 ]909. 
 
 /^ 
 
.'Jn 
 
 COPTBIGHTED, 1909, 
 
 bt henry m. king. 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 E. L. FREEMAN COMPANY, 
 
 PROVIDENCE, R. I. 
 
 T.H 246 98 4 
 SEP 23 l§09 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This historical study was undertaken for the 
 purpose of forming a correct estimate of the 
 character of one of the most interesting leaders 
 in the English Commonwealth, of ascertaining 
 the nature and value of his service in the 
 struggle for freedom of conscience in England 
 ^nd New England, and more particularly of 
 setting forth his important and exceedingly 
 helpful relation to Rhode Island and his claim 
 upon the lasting gratitude of its people. Few 
 lives have a greater fascination for the student 
 of English and Colonial history than the life 
 of Sir Henry Vane, Jr. Born of a noble family, 
 early catching the spirit of Puritanism, sur- 
 rendering position and prospects out of love 
 for the truth and the rights and hberties of the 
 people, laboring unweariedly, self-sacrificingly, 
 courageously, for the cause which he had 
 •espoused, leaving the impress of his influence 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 upon Old England and New England and link- 
 ing them together as no other man of that 
 period did, the intimate friend and coadjutor 
 of Oliver Cromwell, and yet daring to oppose 
 and resist him when he believed him to be 
 wrong, and patiently suffering the consequences 
 of such resistance, and finally in the prime of 
 life unrighteously condemned and cruelly 
 executed by the treachery of Charles II, Vane's 
 portrait stands out amid the smoke, the con- 
 fusion, the strife of his time, calm, serene, 
 consistent, heroic. If this little book shall 
 help to make one who has been to many only 
 a name, a living reality, and a vital force in 
 the upward struggle of humanity, the author 
 will be fully compensated. 
 
 The substance of the book was presented in a 
 paper read in Boston at the mid-winter meeting 
 of the Backus Historical Society, January 18, 
 1909, and read also in Providence at a regular 
 meeting of the Rhode Island Historical Society, 
 February 9, 1909. Such added material is 
 now included, in what is still only a monograph 
 making no pretension to a full biography, as 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 will give, it is hoped, a clear and intelligible 
 portrait of Vane and a true account of his 
 connection with the greatest movement in 
 modern history. 
 
 Henry Melville King. 
 Providence, August, 1909. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Sketch OF Vane's Life AND Service. . . 9-132" 
 
 Appendix A — Cotton and Vane 133 
 
 Appendix B — Contemporary Appreciations of 
 
 Vane. 153 
 
 Appendix C — Additional Modern Appreciations 
 
 of Vane 162 
 
 Appendix D — Winthrop and Vane 183 
 
 Appendix E— The Famous Synod of 1637. . . 186 
 Appendix F — Vane 's Conception of Civil Gov- 
 ernment. . . . 189 
 
 Appendix G — Vane 's Denial of All Complicity 
 
 with the Execution of the King. . . .191 
 
 Appendix H — Vane 's Opposition to Cromwell's 
 
 Usurpation 193 
 
 Appendix I — Vane's Estimate of the Cromwells, 
 
 Father and Son 195 
 
 Appendix J — Vane 's Final Confession. . . . 199 
 Index 201 
 
Sm HENRY YANE, Jr. 
 
 SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND SERVICE 
 
 ^^The name of Henry Vane is remem- 
 bered as one of the founders of the State 
 of Rhode Island/^ This statement is 
 made by Dr. WilHam W. Ireland, an 
 EngUsh author, in his ^^Life of Sir 
 Henry Vane, the Younger, ^^ pubUshed 
 in 1906. This able and exceedingly 
 interesting volume was written not 
 only to present a fresh review of the 
 great events leading up to, and char- 
 acterizing, the English Commonwealth, 
 but professedly to make amends for 
 the neglect by English historians of the 
 life and career of this eminent states- 
 
10 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 man. Dr Ireland says in the conclud- 
 ing paragraph of his preface : ^^ It is not 
 to the credit of England that she has 
 done so little honour to Sir Henry Vane 
 compared with the appreciation of the 
 historians of the United States. The 
 people of the Great Republic have not 
 forgotten the help Vane gave in the 
 foundation of the colonies of New Eng- 
 land. Yet the claims of justice have 
 increasing strength in the present age, 
 and the memory of Sir Henry Vane 
 has claims which will yet be more fully 
 recognized.^' 
 
 The purpose of this biographical 
 sketch is to portray briefly Vane's con- 
 spicuous career under the English Pro- 
 tectorate, to give an account of his 
 connection with the Massachusetts Bay 
 and its sudden termination, and in par- 
 ticular, to determine how far he may 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. H 
 
 be justly called ''one of the founders 
 of the State of Rhode Island.'^ 
 
 Vane was born in 1612, near the be- 
 ginning of one of the most stirring and 
 eventful centuries in English history. 
 He came of an old and prominent 
 family, whose line could be distinctly 
 traced for sixteen generations, and 
 whose members bore a conspicuous 
 part in the history of the times in which 
 they lived. It is beheved to have been 
 of Welsh origin, the first known an- 
 cestor bearing the name of Howell ap 
 Vane of Monmouthshire, before the 
 Conquest. His son, Griffith ap Howell 
 Vane, is said to have married the daugh- 
 ter of Blod\^in ap Ken^^yn, Lord of 
 Powis. The Enghsh home of the fam- 
 ily subsequently was in the county of 
 Kent. The name is sometimes spelt 
 ''Fane," and the given name, Henry or 
 
12 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 Harry, is not infrequent in the family 
 line. 
 
 In 1356, at Poic tiers, when the 
 French King John was taken prisoner 
 by the Black Prince, a Harry Vane 
 especially distinguished himself upon 
 the field of battle, and received from 
 the monarch his right-hand gauntlet in 
 token of surrender. He was knighted 
 on the field by his sovereign, and a 
 ''dexter gauntlet'' appears as a crest 
 on the Vane family coat of arms. Seven 
 generations later another Sir Henry 
 Vane was imphcated in the insurrection 
 of Sir Thomas Wyatt, who aroused 
 Kent against Bloody Mary. Though 
 the instigator of the insurrection was 
 executed. Vane escaped on account of 
 his youth. He was a member of Par- 
 Hament in the reign of Elizabeth, and 
 was the great-grandfather of the Sir 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. l3 
 
 Henry, Jr., who is the subject of this 
 sketch. It is worthy of note that the 
 same courage, independence, loyalty 
 to conviction, and self-sacrificing oppo- 
 sition to arbitrary power have been 
 displayed by members of the family 
 down to a very recent date. 
 
 The father of our Sir Henry, Sir 
 Henry, Senior, or ^^old Sir Henry, ^' 
 as he is wont to be called, both father 
 and son having been simultaneously 
 prominent in public affairs, was born 
 in 1589, married Frances, daughter of 
 Thomas Darcy of Tollhurst-Darcy, and 
 thus connected himself with an old 
 Essex family, was knighted by James 
 I, at the age of twenty- two, either by 
 purchase or by favor, and was twenty- 
 three years old at the birth of his 
 namesake. He was appointed cofferer 
 or treasurer to Prince Charles, and was 
 
14 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 retained in the office after Charles as- 
 cended the throne. He was not in 
 favor with Sir Thomas Wentworth, 
 afterward Earl of Strafford^ privy coun- 
 cillor, President of the North, and Lord 
 Deputy for Ireland, of whom it is said 
 that he was first "a, patriot^' and then 
 '^an apostate/' eaten up with ambition, 
 turning against his political friends, 
 becoming a servile tool of the Iling and 
 preceding his master to the scaffold by 
 eight years.* But he was in favor 
 
 * Extract from Browning's Strafford. 
 
 Pym. 
 
 "Then I believe, 
 Spite of the past, Went worth rejoins you, friends." 
 
 Vane and Others. 
 
 "Wentworth? Apostate. Judas. Double-dyed. 
 A traitor. Is it Pym, indeed " * * * 
 
 Pym. 
 
 "Who says 
 Vane never knew that Wentworth, loved that man, 
 Was used to stroll with him, arm locked in arm, 
 Along the streets to see the people pass, 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 15 
 
 with Queen Henrietta Maria, probably 
 through the influence of Lady Vane, 
 combined with the Queen^s hatred of 
 Wentworth. He was a member of 
 ParHament from 1614, when he en- 
 tered it at the age of twenty-five, until 
 the time of his death in 1654, with few 
 intermissions. Through the favor of 
 the Queen, and undoubtedly by reason 
 
 And read in every island-countenance 
 
 Fresh argument for God against the King, — 
 
 Never sat down, say, in the very house 
 
 Where Ehot's brow grew broad with noble thoughts 
 
 And then left talking over Grachus' death." 
 
 * * * " 
 
 Vane. 
 
 "To frame, we know it well, the choisest clause 
 In the Petition of Right: he framed such clause 
 One month before he took at the King's hand 
 His Northern Presidency, which that Bill de- 
 nounced." 
 
 Pym. 
 
 "Too true. Never more, never more 
 Walked we together. Most alone I went. 
 I have had friends — all here are fast my friends — 
 But I shall never quite forget that friend." 
 
16 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 of his recognized ability and fidelity, 
 many honors came to him, and he was 
 called to fill many positions of great 
 responsibility, both at home and 
 abroad. He was not only connected 
 officially with the royal household, but 
 he was a member of the Privy Council, 
 and his name was attached to many of 
 the cruel decisions of the infamous 
 Star Chamber. In 1631 he was sent 
 as ambassador to Christian IV of Den- 
 mark, and afterward to the Court of 
 Gustavus Adolphus, the leading dip- 
 lomatic position of his age. He twice 
 entertained the King and his retinue in 
 magnificent state at Raby Castle, which 
 he had recently purchased, the first 
 time when the King was journeying to 
 Scotland to his public coronation. As 
 courtier and diplomatist he was most 
 successful, a man of acknowledged in- 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 17 
 
 fluence and marked ability, though as 
 Dr. Ireland says, ''he had neither the 
 unswerving rectitude nor the great 
 abihties of his gifted son/' 
 
 Into this exceptional inheritance was 
 young Vane born, a distinguished an- 
 cestry, unbounded wealth, great poUti- 
 cal influence, and unlimited royal favor. 
 Certainly not a very hopeful soil for the 
 germination and development of re- 
 pubhcan and Puritan principles! 
 
 But influences were at work other 
 and mightier than those of family and 
 of Court. It is not necessary to trace 
 them to their origin or in their slow 
 and sometimes uncertain growth. But 
 in England in the first half of the seven- 
 teenth century the breath of liberty 
 was in the air. The oppressions of the 
 throne had become numerous and bur- 
 densome. Magna Charta, wdth its 
 
l8 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 measure of freedom, had been virtually 
 ignored. Royal pledges were made 
 only to be broken, indeed apparently 
 with no intention of being kept. Forced 
 loans were demanded and crushing 
 subsidies against the will and remon- 
 strance of Parliament and the increas- 
 ing resistance of the people. The lib- 
 erties and lives of the people, as well as 
 their properties, seemed to be under 
 the control of the Iving, and could be 
 sacrificed at his pleasure. The rights 
 of the people were beginning to assert 
 themselves, and men were discussing, 
 in Parliament and out of it, the mean- 
 ing, and the seat, and the limitations of 
 sovereignty. The famous Petition of 
 Rights was presented in the House of 
 Commons for the purpose of declaring 
 the prerogatives and liberties of Par- 
 liament, and protesting against their 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, jR. 19 
 
 infringement. Hampden and Pym 
 were its foremost advocates. Legal 
 power was one thing, and that they 
 were wiUing to accord to the King; but 
 regal power was another thing, if it 
 meant unlimited sovereignty, and that 
 the Commons disputed, and would have 
 none of. Pym declared: ^^All our 
 petition is for the laws of England, and 
 this power seems to be another power 
 distinct from the power of the law. I 
 know how to add sovereign to the 
 King^s person, but not to his power, 
 for he has never possessed it.'^ Some 
 brave men were daring to call in ques- 
 tion the divine right of Kings, and 
 some braver ones were dreaming of 
 constitutional liberty and the sov- 
 ereignty of the people. Browning, in 
 his drama on the ^^Earl of Strafford,'^ 
 makes Pym say: ^^The People or the 
 King? and that King, Charles!'^ 
 
20 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 But there was another influence 
 which had already become a positive 
 force in certain quarters of English 
 society, not yet receiving much recog- 
 nition in courtly circles, but demand- 
 ing unheard-of rights and liberties for 
 the people, viz., Puritanism. This was 
 the logical and legitimate fruit of the 
 Reformation, in which, in its essential 
 features the great Protestant Reforma- 
 tion of the sixteenth century, on both 
 sides of the channel, would have 
 splendidly culminated, had it not been 
 arrested in its development. The Re- 
 formation in England had suffered a 
 temporary setback under the reign of 
 Catholic Queen Mary, but was again 
 rapidly moving forward.* Milton be- 
 
 *" Henry VIII having quarreled with Rome about 
 a question of discipline, not of doctrine, left England 
 legally separated from the Holy See, but not reformed. 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 21 
 
 lieved, according to Professor Masson, 
 ^Hhat the European Reformation, be- 
 gun by Luther, had been arrested in 
 England at a point far less advanced 
 than that which it had reached in other 
 countries, and that in consequence, 
 England had ever since been suffering, 
 and struggling, and incapacitated, as 
 by a load of nightmare only half thrown 
 
 A Protestant confession of faith was given to her by 
 Edward VI, but taken away again by Mary Tudor, 
 who restored the Roman CathoHc reUgion by force. 
 Ehzabeth, who found herself between the rural dis- 
 tricts which were Catholic, and the towns which were 
 Protestant, took refuge in a compromise Anglicanism, 
 based on episcopacy and on the royal supremacy. 
 Her Church was a broad one as regarded individual 
 belief, but narrow as regarded the form of worship. 
 This compromise was not accepted by rigid Protes- 
 tants, who were for the most part Calvinists, and who 
 soon obtained the significant name of Puritans. Thus 
 began that obstinate opposition which was one day 
 to shatter the monarchy." 
 
 Charles Borgeaud's "T/ie Rise of Modern Democ- 
 racy," pp. 11, 12. 
 
22 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 off, for the full and free exercise of her 
 splendid gift.'^ 
 
 Puritanism was not something for- 
 eign and separate from civil liberty. It 
 was its accompaniment, aye, its inspi- 
 ration, and its strength. It was a de- 
 mand for freedom in religious matters. 
 It acknowledged the authority in mat- 
 ters of faith of no church, or council, 
 or government, priestly or national, 
 that is, when Puritanism was the pure, 
 fully-ripened article. It insisted that 
 Christ alone w^as on the throne, and 
 that all human authority was dis- 
 tributed equally among the sovereign 
 people. It repudiated all union be- 
 tween Church and State as unholy, and 
 protested against the State interfering 
 in matters of religion by prescribing 
 government or ritual, by the enactment 
 of law or the infliction of penalty. 
 
Moreover, it emphasized the spiritual 
 nature of religion, declaring that it was 
 not a matter of outward form or cere- 
 mony, but vital fellowship of the soul 
 with God. the Infeite Spirit. In a 
 word, Puritanism, to use a phrase with 
 which our ears are somewhat familiar, 
 was soul-Kberty. the liberty of the in- 
 dividual soul to think, to obey, to 
 worship, to order its life for itself, 
 knowing no guide but the Word of 
 God to which it bowed, and no law 
 but the enlightened conscience. 
 
 Of course PHuitanism made a new 
 party or parties, for it existed in differ- 
 ent degrees, and increased the divisions 
 among the people, and intensified the 
 discussions, already heated enough, and 
 made union of sentiment and action to 
 accomplish any purpose for home and 
 coimtr}' seem an utter impossibility. 
 
24 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 There were Roman Catholics and 
 Church of England adherents and 
 Presbyterians, none of whom had any 
 conception of religious liberty, and all 
 of whom when possessing the power, 
 used it oppressively; Royalists and Par- 
 liamentarians, Non-Conformists, and 
 Partial Conformists, and Quakers; In- 
 dependents, who were divided be- 
 tween Brownists and Baptists; and 
 Puritans, some of whom desired liberty 
 simply for themselves, while others had 
 reached the status of out-and-out Sep- 
 aratists or Pilgrims, for Puritanism, 
 like Democracy, was a growth, not a 
 fiat. 
 
 With no harmony in their views of 
 civil liberty, and were it possible, still 
 less in their views of religious liberty, 
 how could they live together within the 
 narrow boundaries of a single island- 
 
SIR HENRY VAXE, JR. 25 
 
 empire? Indeed, four years before 
 young Henry Vane was born, a group 
 of religious dissenters had escaped 
 across the English channel in search of 
 a larger freedom, and eight years after 
 he was born they re-embarked and 
 turned the prow of their frail ship 
 westward across the wide ocean, seek- 
 ing in an unexplored and boundless 
 continent room to breathe the free air 
 of liberty for which their souls longed. 
 Again, ten years later still, when young 
 Vane was three years from his majority, 
 another and larger contingent of his 
 fellow countrymen, of whose departure 
 he must have known, impelled b}' the 
 oppressive measures of those in au- 
 thoritv in Church and State, and bv a 
 desire for liberty and self-government, 
 left old England and found their way 
 across the sea, to found here a Puritan 
 
26 SIR HENRY A'ANE, JR. 
 
 Commonwealth.* Neither they nor he, 
 in their wildest imaginings, could have 
 thought that in six years the son of a 
 Privy Councillor and an official of the 
 royal household, would be elected to 
 
 *" Crowds of victims to the tyranny of Church and 
 State now accordingly left their homes and their country, 
 willing to encounter any sufferings, privations, and 
 dangers in the distant wilderness they sought, be- 
 cause of the one sole hope they had, that there, at least, 
 would be found some rest and refuge for liberty, for 
 religion, for humanity. 
 
 So extensive, however, did the emigration threaten 
 to become, that Laud thought it necessary to inter- 
 fere at last, and — with a refinement of tyranny of 
 which, it has been truly said, the annals of per- 
 secution afford few equally strong examples — to 
 seek to deprive the conscientious sufferers of that last 
 and most melancholy of all resources, a rude, and dis- 
 tant, and perpetual exile. On the 1st of May, 1638, 
 eight ships bound for New England, and filled with 
 Puritan families, were arrested in the Thames bj^ an 
 order in Council. It has been a very popular 'rumour 
 of history' that among the passengers in one of those 
 vessels were Pym, Hampden, Cromwell, and Hazelrig." 
 Statesmen of the Commonwealth, by John Forster, p. 
 161. Mr. Forster adds ''There is no good authority 
 for it, and it is deficient in all the moral evidences of 
 truth." 
 
S]R HENRY VANE, JR. 27 
 
 be the Governor of the new Colony. 
 
 Into this wide-spread and deep- 
 seated poHtical unrest, portentous of 
 coming beheadings and bloody civil 
 war, into these longings for a larger 
 liberty and conflicting and chaotic 
 views of how it could be brought about, 
 into these dissensions and jealousies 
 about church polity and religious doc- 
 trine and rite, always passionate, often 
 acrimonious, not infrequently deter- 
 mining men^s political plans and creat- 
 ing suspicions of each other^s motives, 
 into this confusion of opposing forces 
 the younger Vane was born. Which 
 forces will prevail in shaping his char- 
 acter, determining his life-associations, 
 and guiding his career? 
 
 The boyhood of Vane was such as to 
 excite great expectations in the mind 
 of his father. His irrepressible life and 
 
28 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 early maturity gave promise, under 
 proper training, of political preferment 
 and distinguished public service in be- 
 half of the King and the glory of his 
 reign. At the age of fifteen we find 
 him at Westminster School, with Lam- 
 bert Osbaldestone for his master, and 
 among his companions were Thomas 
 Scott and Arthur Haselrige, both of 
 whom were to be heard from later in 
 the national councils. At about six- 
 teen years of age, says Anthony Wood, 
 in Athenoe Oxonienses, ^^Vane became a 
 gentleman commoner at Magdalen Hall, 
 Oxford, as his great creature, Henry 
 Stubbe, hath several times informed 
 me; but when he was to be matricu- 
 lated as a member of the university, 
 and so consequently take the oath of 
 allegiance and supremacy, he quitted 
 his Athense gown, put on a cloak, and 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 29 
 
 studied notwithstanding in the same 
 hall.'^ This act indicated a spirit of 
 rebeUion against constituted authority 
 and sacred custom. His stay at Mag- 
 dalen was brief. Something had evi- 
 dently come over the spirit of the 
 youth, and produced a momentous 
 change in the plans which his parents 
 and friends had formed for him, and 
 which undoubtedly he had formed for 
 himself. Some force outside of the in- 
 fluence of his family and the royal 
 court had struck him, and turned him 
 from the prescribed track, and given 
 him a new vision of life and duty. 
 That force can best be defined, and 
 that change described, in his own lan- 
 guage. In a review of his life in after 
 years Vane said: ^^I was born a gen- 
 tleman, had the education, temper and 
 spirit of a gentleman as well as others, 
 
30 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 being in my youthful days inclined to 
 the vanities of this world, and to that 
 which they call good fellowship, judg- 
 ing it to be the only way of accom- 
 plishing a gentleman; but about the 
 fourteenth or fifteenth year of my age, 
 which was about thirty-four or five 
 years since, God was gracious to lay 
 the foundation or ground-work of a 
 repentance for me in the bringing of 
 me home to Himself, by His wonderful 
 rich and free grace, revealing His Son 
 in me, that by the knowledge of the 
 only true God and Jesus Christ whom 
 He has sent, I might, even while here 
 in the body, be made partaker of 
 eternal life in the first fruits of it/' 
 
 That is the spirit and language of 
 Puritanism. The language reminds us 
 of the language of Roger Williams, 
 whom Ambassador Bryce calls '^an 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 31 
 
 orthodox Puritan/^ and whom Vane 
 was afterwards to know most in- 
 timately^ which he employed to de- 
 scribe a spiritual change which came to 
 him at about the same period of his 
 life: ^^From my childhood, now about 
 three score years, [this was written 
 when he was about seventy-five years 
 old] the Father of lights and mercies 
 touched my soul with a love for Him- 
 self, to his only-begotten, the true Lord 
 Jesus, and to his Holy Scriptures.'^ 
 
 Vane had caught somewhere the un- 
 fashionable and despised spirit of Pur- 
 itanism, and passed through its initial 
 experience, and was to become, not the 
 fashionable gentleman of the period, 
 and the obsequious courtier of the 
 King, and the representative of his am- 
 bitious and treacherous diplomacy, but 
 a loyal subject of Jesus Christ, a citizen 
 
32 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 of the kingdom of God on earth, and a 
 fearless advocate of the rights and 
 hberties of men in two hemispheres. 
 That experience was his first point of 
 contact with Roger Wilhams, though 
 probably as yet unknown personally, 
 and brought him into a sympathetic 
 relationship which was afterwards to 
 ripen into the truest and most helpful 
 friendship. 
 
 It is needless to inquire where or 
 how young Vane imbibed this spirit. 
 It is evermore true that ^Hhe wind 
 bloweth where it listeth, and thou 
 hearest the sound thereof, but canst 
 not tell whence it cometh or whither 
 it goeth.'^ The spirit of Puritanism, 
 like the spirit of liberty, was in the air, 
 and souls that were susceptible of its 
 influence, caught the divine infection. 
 His friend and biographer, George 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 33 
 
 Sikes, a Bachelor in Divinity and Fel- 
 low of Magdalen College, using the 
 language of an inspired historian of an 
 earlier Puritan, says of Vane: ^^He 
 was a chosen vessel of Christ, separated 
 (as Paul) from his mother's womb, 
 though not actually called till fourteen 
 or fifteen years ' standing in the world, 
 ('twas longer ere Paul was called), 
 during which time such was the com- 
 plexion and constitution of his spirit, 
 through ignorance of God and his ways, 
 as rendered him acceptable company 
 to those they call good fellows. * * * 
 Then God did, by some signal impres- 
 sions and awakening dispensations, 
 startle him into a view of the danger 
 of his condition. On this he and his 
 former jolly company came presently 
 to a parting blow. Yea, this change 
 and new steering of his course con- 
 
34 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 tracted enmity to him in his father's 
 house.— Matt. 10: 36, 37." We shall 
 do well probably to accept the inter- 
 pretation of Mr. Sikes, and leave it 
 there. 
 
 That the change in young Vane and 
 the new trend of his life were a great 
 disappointment to the father's worldly 
 and ambitious hopes, and exceedingly 
 objectionable to him, goes without say- 
 ing. He took every opportunity to 
 express his disapproval and every 
 method to exorcise the supposedly 
 evil and harmful spirit. He sent his 
 son to France to study its language 
 and philosophy, and to Vienna in the 
 train of the English ambassador, where 
 he was entrusted with important state 
 secrets, though but nineteen years old. 
 He kept up a constant correspondence 
 with his father, partly in French and 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 35 
 
 partly in cipher, confessing a lack of 
 sympathy with the questions that were 
 shaking the nations of Europe at that 
 time, and arraying them in bloody and 
 protracted war against each other, but 
 always respectful in tone, and express- 
 ing regret and sorrow that he must dis- 
 appoint his father ^^apres tant de soin 
 et d^espence que vous eues employ ez 
 sur moy." It is believed by some stu- 
 dents*that he spent some portion of his 
 absence in Geneva, though if he did, 
 his new convictions could hardly have 
 been weakened in the strong Protestant 
 atmosphere of that Swiss city, which 
 one writer has relieved himself by 
 characterizing as ^^sulphurously pun- 
 gent with the fumes of a grim 
 theology/' 
 
 Young Vane returned to England in 
 the spring of 1632, bearing important 
 
36 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 dispatches from his father, who, at that 
 time was ambassador to the court of 
 Sweden, to King Charles, and dehvered 
 them in person. In deference to his 
 father's wishes, he seems at first to 
 have sought some official appointment. 
 But the condition of England was more 
 distressing than ever. The third Par- 
 liament of Charles I had been dissolved 
 three years before, because it would 
 not yield to the King's demands in the 
 matter of subsidies. Sir John Eliot 
 had been sent to the Tower, whose 
 political views found expression in the 
 memorable utterance: ^^None have 
 gone about to break Parliaments, but 
 in the end Parliaments have broken 
 them." He died November 27, 1632, 
 of consumption, brought on by nearly 
 four years of inhuman treatment within 
 prison walls. Freedom of speech and 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 37 
 
 of the press was interdicted. No book 
 could be published or put on sale with- 
 out the approval of the Bishop of Lon- 
 don or the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 Charles and Laud were carrying things 
 with a high hand. Charles had been 
 on the throne seven years, and was 
 already exhibiting that ''whimsical 
 contradictoriness/' which, as Peter 
 Bayne says, drives the student of his 
 character to despair. He does not 
 hesitate to call him ''a faithful be- 
 trayer, an ingenious bungler, a fool- 
 hardy coward, an affectionate torturer, 
 a cunning simpleton, a subtle fool, a re- 
 ligious liar,'' ''the vacillating yet self- 
 willed, the weak yet tyrannical, tort- 
 uous, ever plotting, slippery Charles." 
 And Laud was his evil genius. The 
 friends of hberty were discouraged, and 
 the Puritan aristocrat found himself ut- 
 
38 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 terly out of sympathy with the things 
 around him, both in Church and State. 
 The breach widened from month to 
 month. He became more outspoken in 
 his views^ attracting the attention of 
 men prominent in his social circle, and 
 exciting the alarm of his father, who 
 loved him, and still hoped to reclaim 
 him from his wanderings which he was 
 unable to understand. He sought to 
 introduce him to an interview with the 
 King, thinking that the royal presence 
 would awe or charm him into a sub- 
 missive loyalty. But the young man 
 hid himself behind the draperies before 
 the King entered the room, where the 
 contemplated interview was to be had. 
 The father then committed him to the 
 convincing persuasions and tender 
 mercies of Bishop Laud, soon to be- 
 come Archbishop of Canterbury and 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 39 
 
 the terror of Puritan unbelievers, hop- 
 ing thereby to convince the young 
 upstart of his heresies, and cause him 
 to renounce them. But the narrow 
 prelate was no match for the clear- 
 headed and broadening liberal. Bishop 
 and King were alike unsuccessful. The 
 father despaired of winning back his 
 son to his inherited beliefs, and to the 
 son life in England became intolerable. 
 At length he announced to his father 
 his purpose to follow the Puritans 
 across the sea to the new world of 
 liberty and light. The father con- 
 sented reluctantly, and the King wil- 
 Ungly, glad to be rid of a subject so 
 incorrigible, and who might become 
 dangerous. 
 
 Two contemporary utterances have 
 come down to us, which disclose the 
 judgment of the time at his decision. 
 
40 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 ^^The Comptroller Sir Henry Vane's 
 eldest son hath left his father, his 
 mother, his country, and that fortune 
 which his father would have left him 
 here, and is, for conscience' sake, gone 
 into New England to lead the rest of 
 his days, ^i^ jj^ >i« j hear that Sir 
 Nathaniel Rich and Mr. Pym have done 
 him much hurt in their persuasions this 
 way. God forgive them for it, if they 
 be guilty." 
 
 The second utterance which has been 
 preserved is as follows: ^^Sir Henry 
 Vane also hath as good as lost his 
 eldest son, who is gone into New Eng- 
 land for conscience' sake; he likes not 
 the discipline of the Church of England; 
 none of our ministers would give him 
 the sacrament standing ; no persuasions 
 of our Bishops nor authority of his 
 parents could prevail with him; let 
 him go." 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 41 
 
 Before young Henry left home for 
 the new world, which was then very 
 new, he wrote a farewell letter to his 
 father, which not only discloses the 
 deep sincerity and conscientiousness of 
 his spirit, but is ample evidence that 
 he was not wanting in filial respect and 
 affection, a letter which we are not 
 surprised to have one of his biograph- 
 ers say is ^^in a handwriting tremulous 
 in some places, as under deep emotion/' 
 
 ^^ And, Sir, believe this from one that 
 hath the honor to be your son (though 
 as the case stands, adjudged a most 
 unworthy one), that howsomever you 
 may be jealous of circumventions and 
 plots that I entertain and practice, yet 
 that I will never do anything (by God's 
 good grace) which both with honor and 
 a good conscience I may not justify, 
 or be content most willingly to suffer 
 for. And were it not that I am very 
 confident that as surely as there is 
 
42 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 truth in God, so surely shall my in- 
 nocency and integrity be cleared to 
 you before you die, I protest to you 
 ingenuously that the jealousy you 
 have of me would break my heart. 
 But as I submit all other things to the 
 disposal of my good God, so do I my 
 honesty among the rest; and though I 
 must confess I am compassed about 
 with many infirmities, and am but too 
 great a blemish to the religion I pro- 
 fess, yet the bent and intention of my 
 heart I am sure is sincere, and from 
 hence flows the sweet peace I enjoy 
 with my God amidst these many and 
 heavy trials which now fall upon me 
 and attend me; this is my only support 
 in my losses of all other things; and 
 this I doubt not of but that I have an 
 all-sufficient God able to protect me, 
 and who in His due time will do it, and 
 that in the eyes of all my friends. 
 
 Your most truly humble and 
 obedient Son, 
 
 H. Vane. 
 
 Cherring Cross, this 7th of July, 1635." 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 43 
 
 In later years Vane described the 
 motives which influenced him in leav- 
 ing home, and estate, and friends, and 
 prospects, for the perils and depriva- 
 tions of the New World, in these words : 
 ^^ Since my early youth, through grace, 
 I have been kept steadfast, desiring to 
 walk in all good conscience towards 
 God and towards man, according to the 
 best light and understanding God gave 
 me. For this I was willing to turn my 
 back upon my estate; expose myself 
 to hazards in foreign parts; yet nothing 
 seemed difficult to me, so I might pre- 
 serve faith and a good conscience, 
 which I prefer above all things/^ These 
 are not the words of a wayward prodi- 
 gal who demands ^^Give me the portion 
 of goods that falleth to me,^' before 
 he takes his journey into a far country, 
 or of an unbalanced enthusiast, who 
 
44 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 throws himself recklessly into a cause 
 without understanding its merits or its 
 issues, but of a calm, level-headed, con- 
 scientious man, who loved God and his 
 fellow men, and who believed that God 
 had given him light and a divine mis- 
 sion, to which he must be loyal at 
 whatever sacrifice to himself. 
 
 Vane reached Boston, October 6, 
 1635, in the ship '^ Abigail.'^ Two of 
 his fellow passengers were John Win- 
 throp, Jr., who became Governor of the 
 Connecticut Colony, and Rev. Hugh 
 Peters, who became the minister in 
 Salem, taking the place vacated by 
 Roger Williams when he was com- 
 pelled to flee, and who after a brief 
 residence in America returned to Eng- 
 land, and became chaplain of Oliver 
 Cromwell. Vane^s arrival was hailed 
 with great rejoicing by the Massa- 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 45 
 
 chusetts Colonists, the most of whom 
 were of comparatively humble estate, 
 and whose hearts were elated by the 
 presence of the representative of a 
 noble family, high in the favor of the 
 Court, who had, out of conscientious 
 conviction and sympathy of views, 
 surrendered the most exalted social 
 position and the most flattering pros- 
 pects to cast in his lot with those who 
 were living in voluntary exile and in 
 primitive simplicity, not to say in cir- 
 cumstances sometimes of painful dis- 
 comfort. The town had been settled 
 only five years before. Their houses 
 were Uttle more than huts, poorly pro- 
 tected against the severity of the New 
 England chmate. Their streets were 
 winding paths, some of which Boston 
 has never been able to straighten. 
 Their resources and supphes were of the 
 
46 SIR HENEY VANE, JR. 
 
 most meager kind. They had no edu- 
 cational and few social advantages. 
 Their only comfort was that they were 
 in the path of duty, which as yet did 
 not open very far into the future, that 
 they had found a place of liberty which 
 as yet was little understood and de- 
 fined even by the wisest of them,* 
 that they had been drawn together 
 
 * "By law the civil government was distinct from the 
 ecclesiastical, but in fact it was strictly subordinate to 
 it. Owing to their moral influence, the pastors and 
 elders formed a sort of Council of Ephors; no impor- 
 tant decision was arrived at without their consent. 
 They spoke in the name of the Divine Will revealed in 
 the Bible, and their sentence could only be appealed 
 against by calling in question their interpretation. 
 
 'When a Commonwealth hath liberty to mould its 
 own frame {Scripturoe plenitudinem adoro), I conceive/ 
 writes Cotton, ' the Scripture hath given full direction 
 for the right ordering of the same. It is better that 
 the Commonwealth be fashioned to the setting forth 
 of God's house, which is his Church, than to accom- 
 modate the Church's frame to the civil State.' 
 
 Thus was founded the theocratic Commonwealth of 
 Massachusetts, with none like it to be found in history, 
 except the Republic of Calvin; like it, brave, austere, 
 
SIR hEnhy vane, jr. 47 
 
 and drawn across the ocean by a un- 
 animity of conviction which proved to 
 be not so unanimous after all ; and pos- 
 sibly in the memory of the pleasant 
 homes and the more abundant life 
 which they had enjoyed in the old 
 world. The following lines were writ- 
 ten by John Cotton^ who had been 
 Fellow and Dean of Emmanuel College, 
 rector of the beautiful St. Botolph^s 
 church in Boston, in Lincolnshire, had 
 wielded a great influence as a Church- 
 man and then as a Non-Conformist, but 
 who came to the Boston in the Massa- 
 chusetts Bay in 1633 to be one of the 
 pastors of its church, for as Prof. James 
 K. Hosmer says, in his ^^Life of Young 
 Sir Henry Vane,^^ ^'the New England 
 
 but intolerant of inquiry, persecuting heresy without 
 pity, and without mercy." 
 
 Charles Borgeaud's ''The Rise of Modern Democ- 
 racy,'' y>V- 148, 149. 
 
48 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 pulpits from which such constant can- 
 nonading was demanded, were of nec- 
 essity double-barrelled/^ These are 
 Cotton^s lines : 
 
 ''When I think of the sweet and gracious 
 company 
 
 That in Boston once I had, 
 And of the long peace of a fruitful ministry 
 
 For twenty years enjoyed, 
 The joy that I found in all that happiness 
 
 Doth still so much refresh me. 
 That the grief to be cast out into a wilderness 
 Doth not so much distress me." 
 
 Surely it does not seem a very en- 
 viable condition, when a man^s chief 
 and assuaging joy is found in the 
 memory of the brighter and happier 
 condition which he has sacrificed. Cot- 
 ton^s experience seems a contradiction 
 of Dante's familiar sentiment: ^^A 
 
sm henhy vane, jh. 40 
 
 sorrow^s crown of sorrow is remember- 
 ing happier things/^ 
 
 How much correspondence young 
 Vane may have had, if any, with the 
 Colonists of the Massachusetts Bay, be- 
 fore leaving England, and how well in- 
 formed he may have been as to their 
 mode of life, and their social and politi- 
 cal affairs, we have no means of know- 
 ing. But it is safe to say that after his 
 arrival he had many things to learn, 
 and that in some things he was bitterly 
 disappointed. He reached Boston in 
 troublous times, as if any of those early 
 Puritan times were not troublous. The 
 date of his arrival was, as has been said, 
 October 6, 1635. This was in the very 
 midst of the Roger Williams con- 
 troversy, in which the whole question 
 of religious liberty was involved, and 
 in which the Bay was agitated from 
 
50 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 center to circumference. Already 
 Roger Williams had been summoned 
 twice to appear before the General 
 Court to answer to the charges brought 
 against him. The next session of the 
 Courts to which the third summons was 
 issued, occurred in that very month of 
 October, '^all the ministers in the Bay 
 being desired to be present." Mr. 
 Hooker was chosen to dispute with him. 
 It was an open discussion, probably 
 taking place the last of the month or 
 the first of November, in which both 
 sides of the case were fully presented, 
 and the views of Mr. Williams and 
 his accusers were clearly announced 
 and enforced. The gravamen of the 
 charges, put in briefest form, was that 
 Mr. Williams maintained that ^^the 
 civil power has no jurisdiction over 
 the conscience." The verdict was pre- 
 
SIR heNry vaNe, jR. 51 
 
 determined. Winthrop^s record says 
 naively, not to say facetiously, ^^Mr. 
 Hooker could not reduce him from any 
 of his errors/' The morning after the 
 discussion closed, the Court pronounced 
 the well-known sentence, ^^all the min- 
 isters, save one, approving it.'' This 
 was on the third of November, twenty- 
 seven days after the arrival of Vane. 
 Such was the deep and universal in- 
 terest in this trial (Neal in his ^^ History 
 of New England," says, that on the 
 final passing of the act ^Hhe whole 
 town of Salem was in an uproar") that 
 it is impossible to conceive of Vane's 
 not being present and listening to both 
 sides of the discussion with profound 
 attention. It is safe to say that this 
 first experience in New England was a 
 revelation to him, and it is more than 
 possible, a disappointment, when he 
 
62 Sir henry vane, jr. 
 
 witnessed the spirit and conduct of 
 those who had sought a new world to 
 escape from oppression and persecu- 
 tion, and to breathe the free air of 
 Hberty.* So far as is known, this 
 opportunity to see Roger WiUiams, and 
 to hear his bold, clear, out-spoken 
 interpretation and defence of soul- 
 liberty, was his first personal introduc- 
 tion to the great apostle. It was the 
 beginning of an acquaintance which 
 was to grow more intimate and sym- 
 pathetic in coming days. 
 
 There is no record that at the time 
 of the trial Vane gave any expression 
 
 *"It was for religious liberty in a peculiar sense that 
 our fathers contended, and they were faithful to the 
 cause as they understood it. The true principle of 
 religious liberty, in its wide and full comprehension, 
 had never dawned upon their minds, and was never 
 maintained by them." 
 
 Chas. W. Upham, "Ldfe of Sir Henry Vane," p. 61. 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 53 
 
 of his own opinion. He probably 
 thought that he was too recent a comer 
 to take any part in the discussion. As 
 has been said, the Colonists welcomed 
 him gladly, not only because of his 
 rank, but because of his personal char- 
 acter, and the leading spirits bestowed 
 upon him their admiring praise, and 
 quickly took him into their confidence. 
 Winthrop wrote in his ^^ History of 
 New England,^' ^^ There came also Mr. 
 Henry Vane, son and heir to Sir Henry 
 Vane, comptroller of the King's house, 
 who being a young gentleman of ex- 
 cellent parts, and had been employed 
 by his father in foreign affairs; yet 
 being called to the obedience of the 
 gospel, forsook the honors and pre- 
 ferments of court to enjoy the ordi- 
 nances of Christ in their purity here.'' 
 He also adds that the King commanded 
 
54 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 his father to send him hither, and gave 
 him ^ license for three years stay'^ and 
 that immediately after his arrival, on 
 November 1st, he was received as a 
 member of the church in Boston. 
 
 Before Vane had been here two 
 months he was appointed one of a com- 
 mittee of three to arbitrate in matters 
 of dispute among the Colonists in order 
 to avoid legal proceedings. He under- 
 took mth Hugh Peters to harmonize, 
 and with apparent success, certain 
 misunderstandings and jealousies which 
 he found existing between Haynes and 
 Winthrop and Dudley. And then, 
 most remarkable of all, at the following 
 spring election, held March 25, 1636, 
 he was elected Governor of the Colony. 
 He had not then been in Boston six 
 months, and w^as only twenty-four 
 years of age. He has been truly called 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 55 
 
 'Hhe boy Governor/' He entered upon 
 his official term with considerable 
 pomp and with great acclaim on the 
 part of the people. But he little 
 knew, young and inexperienced as he 
 was, what grave responsibilities he had 
 assumed or what trials would trouble 
 his administration. 
 
 Within a week of his accession there 
 was a little flurry in the religio-political 
 atmosphere (that was the prevailing 
 atmosphere of the time) which might 
 have terminated in a disastrous storm, 
 had it not been for the wisdom and 
 courage of the young Governor. As it 
 was, it left a chill upon the mind of one, 
 who should have been his warmest 
 supporter, John Winthrop. Shortly 
 before, Endicott had cut the cross out 
 of the English flag, declaring it to be an 
 idolatrous symbol. Soon there arrived 
 
56 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 in the harbor a ship belonging to Went- 
 worth, the powerful Lord Deputy of 
 Ireland, flying the hated flag. The 
 lieutenant of the harbor fortification, 
 which was flying no colors, went on 
 board and ordered the master to strike 
 his flag. Vane secured an apology on 
 the part of the lieutenant, which sat- 
 isfied the master, and then invited the 
 captains of the fifteen English ships, 
 lying at anchor in the harbor, to a 
 sumptuous dinner. Under the warm- 
 ing and mellowing influence of the 
 Governor's hospitality certain terms of 
 agreement were entered into, calculated 
 to prevent the recurrence of such an 
 insult, and to preserve a mutual under- 
 standing in the future. 
 
 But the incident was not closed. 
 One of the ships in the fleet, named 
 appropriately the ^ ^Hector,'' had a 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 57 
 
 mate whose heart evidently had not 
 been softened by the Governor's feast, 
 who boldly ^^ declared that because the 
 King's colors were not shown at the 
 fort, the Colonists were all traitors and 
 rebels/' The offending mate was for- 
 cibly seized, brought on shore, ar- 
 raigned before the magistrates, and 
 compelled to retract his words. But 
 the incident opened the very serious 
 question of the relation of the Colony 
 to the English government. What 
 would be the consequences, if the report 
 should be carried back that the Colo- 
 nists had defied the King, and in their 
 disuse and treatment of the emblem 
 of England's authority, had rendered 
 themselves amenable to the charge of 
 the out-spoken mate? The situation 
 was one of great embarrassment. Opin- 
 ions were divided as to what course 
 
58 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 was expedient. The discussion ran 
 high. Until at length Vane, supported 
 by Dudley and Cotton, took the respon- 
 sibility, and ordered the flag hoisted 
 on the Castle, defending the act by 
 the rather fine distinction that while 
 they still declared their conviction that 
 the cross on the flag was idolatrous, and 
 should never be used on the Colony's 
 flag, yet it might be lifted over the 
 fort, as that was maintained in the 
 King's name, and so their respon- 
 sibility would be relieved. The flag 
 was hoisted, one being borrowed from 
 one of the ships, as the Colony was not 
 able to furnish an unmutilated one. 
 Governor Winthrop and many others, 
 it is said, ^^ washed their hands of the 
 concession." This was the first breach 
 between Vane and Winthrop. 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR.^ ^^ 
 
 The excitement of this incident had 
 hardly subsided before there came the 
 news of the threatened invasion of the 
 hostile Pequots, the most powerful and 
 savage of the Indian tribes. The first 
 intelligence was received in a letter to 
 Governor Vane under date of July 26, 
 1636, written by the magnanimous 
 exile, Roger Williams, who had scarcely 
 had time to roof in his simple cabin on 
 the banks of the Moshassuck. The 
 information came to him through his 
 friends, the Narragansetts, with whom 
 the Pequots were seeking an alhance 
 for the extermination of the English set- 
 tlers. Mr. Wilhams quickly informed 
 the Massachusetts Governor of the plot, 
 and was entreated to use at once his 
 friendly influence with the Narragan- 
 setts to prevent the hostile alliance. 
 Mr. WiUiams at the peril of his life un- 
 
60 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 dertook the mission. The account of 
 his service, hardship, and exposure he 
 has given in his thriUing letter to Ma- 
 jor Mason: ^^ Upon letters received from 
 the Governor and Council at Boston, 
 requesting me to use my utmost and 
 speediest endeavors to break and hinder 
 the league labored for by the Pequots 
 and Mohegans against the English, the 
 Lord helped me immediately to put 
 my life into my hand, and scarce ac- 
 quainting my wife, to ship myself 
 alone, in a poor canoe, and to cut 
 through a stormy wind, with great 
 sea^, every minute in hazard of life, to 
 the Sachem's house. Three days and 
 nights my business forced me to lodge 
 and mix with the bloody Pequot am- 
 bassadors [who were visiting the Narra- 
 gansetts to effect their desired league], 
 whose hands and arms, methought. 
 
Sm HENRY VANE, JR. 61 
 
 reeked with the blood of my country- 
 men, * * * and from whom I could 
 not but nightly look for their bloody 
 knives at my own throat also.'^ 
 
 His mission was successful. As he 
 said, ^^God wondrously preserved me, 
 and helped me to break to pieces the 
 Pequots' negotiation and design.^' It 
 is necessary to dwell upon this in- 
 cident that we may know what part 
 Vane had, if any, in the founding of 
 Rhode Island. Roger Wilhams not 
 only broke in pieces the contemplated 
 league of the other tribes with the 
 Pequots, but he was instrumental in 
 cementing an English league with the 
 Narragansetts and Mohegans against 
 the Pequots. By his mediation Mian- 
 tonomo, the two sons of Canonicus, and 
 numerous attendants went to Boston 
 on the twenty-first of October to visit 
 
62 SIR HENBY VANE, JR. 
 
 Governor Vane, and to perfect and 
 ratify the new league, offensive and 
 defensive, against the Pequots. Here 
 is where the Governor's part came in. 
 He received the Indians with much 
 friendhness and parade, feasting them 
 all, and taking the chiefs into his own 
 dining-room. He undoubtedly left a 
 very favorable impression of his good 
 will upon their minds; the treaty was 
 consummated, which was submitted to 
 Roger Williams for interpretation and 
 explanation, showing the confidence of 
 both parties in him, and the red-skin 
 guests were dismissed with more parade 
 and a parting military salute. 
 
 In this incident Roger Williams was 
 again brought into personal relations 
 with Vane, who must have gratefully 
 appreciated the service which he had 
 rendered to those who had been his 
 
SIR HENRY VANEj JR. 63 
 
 enemies, must have been won to him 
 by his self-sacrificing and magnanimous 
 spirit, and must have admired him for 
 his wonderful influence and successful 
 diplomacy with his savage neighbors. 
 Now it so happened that a year and a 
 half afterward, in March, 1638, John 
 Clarke, Wilham Coddington, and others, 
 dissatisfied' with the disturbed con- 
 ditions in Boston and the evident lack 
 of hberty which they had crossed the 
 ocean to find, as seen in the violent 
 religious controversy which was then 
 raging, determined to leave the Puritan 
 strife, and migrate southward, to Long 
 Island or Delaware Bay, to found a 
 new colony. On their journey they 
 visited Roger WilHams in Providence, 
 and were persuaded by him to change 
 the place of their destination, and 
 through his further persuasion and 
 
64 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 assistance Aquidneck and other islands 
 in the Narragansett Bay were pur- 
 chased of the friendly Sachems, Canoni- 
 cus and Miantonomo, ^^on considera- 
 tion of forty fathoms of white beads/ ^ 
 for the new settlement. 
 
 It was this transaction to which Roger 
 Williams referred in a letter written in 
 1658, twenty years later, the language 
 of which has been misunderstood, as 
 if it ascribed an equal and joint agency 
 to Vane and himself, and as if the name 
 '^ Rhode Island ^^ referred to the whole 
 State as it is now used, instead of being 
 limited in its application to Aquidneck 
 as was formerly the case, a mistake 
 which is sometimes made by modern 
 writers on our early history. The 
 language of Roger Williams's letter is 
 as follows: ^^It was not price nor 
 money that could have purchased 
 
Sm HENRY VANE, JR. 65 
 
 Rhode Island (i. e. Aquidneck). Rhode 
 Island (i. e. Aquidneck) was obtained 
 by love; by the love and favor which 
 that honorable gentleman, Sir Henry 
 Vane, and myself, had with that great 
 Sachem, Miantonomo, about the league 
 which I procured between the Massa- 
 chusetts Enghsh and the Narragansetts 
 in the Pequot war." It will be noticed 
 that the influence of Governor Vane 
 dates back to the kindly reception 
 which he gave to the Indians at the 
 time the league was entered into, the 
 love which he showed to them at that 
 time, and the favorable impression 
 which he made upon their minds. 
 Roger Williams at the time of writing 
 the letter, twenty years afterward, had 
 been receiving very recent attentions 
 from Sir Henry, and special cooperation 
 and aid in behalf of the charter of the 
 
66 stR henhy vane, jr. 
 
 State, and naturally he thought of his 
 early connection with him at the time 
 of the formation of the league mth 
 the Narragansetts, to which friendly 
 league he very generously ascribed 
 some measure of the success in the 
 purchase of Aquidneck. Arnold in the 
 ^^ History of the State of Rhode Is- 
 land/' records the transaction and 
 explains Williams's account of it in 
 these words: ^^ Through the powerful 
 influence of Roger Williams, who in his 
 account of the affair, modestly divides 
 the honor with Sir Henry Vane, nego- 
 tiations were shortly concluded with 
 Canonicus and Miantonomo for the 
 purchase of the island" [of Aquidneck]. 
 It is very evident that Sir Henry's 
 influence was most remote and indirect, 
 and that he had no active participation 
 in the purchase, which Roger Williams 
 
SIR HfiNHY VANE, jR. 67 
 
 seems to declare was not a purchase at 
 all, but was won by love, though he 
 adds: ^^It is true I advised a gratuity 
 to be presented to the Sachem and to 
 the natives.'^ That probably refers to 
 ^Hhe forty fathoms of white beads /^ 
 
 Yet it is principally upon the basis of 
 Roger Williams^s language, which is so 
 easily misunderstood, that Dr. Ireland 
 claims that ^^Sir Henry Vane is re- 
 membered as one of the founders of 
 Rhode Island/^ Indeed, Dr. Ireland 
 quotes the language of Roger Williams 
 still further in these words: ^^This I 
 mention, as the truly noble Sir H. 
 Vane had been so good an instrument 
 in the hand of God for procuring this 
 island from the barbarians, as also for 
 procuring and confirming the charter, 
 that it may be recorded with all thank- 
 fulness.^^ This, too, must be regarded 
 
68 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 as the expression of a noble and appre- 
 ciative heart, which is not careful to 
 measure its words with studied accu- 
 racy, when it records the valuable 
 service which it has received. That 
 the exceedingly hospitable treatment of 
 the Indian chiefs by Sir Henry Vane 
 confirmed their friendliness towards the 
 English is true enough. That he could 
 have had nothing personally to do in 
 securing the island of Aquidneck as a 
 plantation for the new settlers in March, 
 1638, is no less true, for he sailed from 
 Boston for England seven months be- 
 fore, on August 3, 1637. Yet Sir 
 Henry does have genuine and sub- 
 stantial claims upon the grateful rec- 
 ognition of the whole State of Rhode 
 Island as one of its early friends, and 
 undoubtedly its most active and in- 
 fluential benefactor in the mother 
 country. 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 69 
 
 A peculiarly trying experience yet 
 awaited him during his year's occu- 
 pancy of the Governor's chair, which 
 made a painful ending of his admin- 
 istration which opened so jubilantly, 
 and made a speedy termination of his 
 stay in New England. He was suc- 
 cessful in escaping the invasion of the 
 Indians, but he was not successful in 
 escaping the strife of the theologians. 
 It is not within the purpose of this 
 paper to go into the details of that 
 bitter, lamentable and to us utterly 
 irrational controversy over the reli- 
 gious views of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, 
 whom Johnson, in his ' ^ Wonder-work- 
 ing Providence '' (I. ch. 42) calls ''The 
 masterpiece of human wit.'' Charles 
 Francis Adams (''Three Episodes of 
 Massachusetts History") describes the 
 controversy in these words: "Not only 
 
70 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 were the points obscure, but the dis- 
 cussion was carried on in a jargon 
 which has become uninteUigible.'^ Par- 
 tisan feeling was strong, not to say 
 vehement and conscientiously mllful 
 on both sides. The Boston church and 
 community were of course the storm- 
 center. The two pastors, John Cotton 
 and John Wilson, were the leaders of 
 the opposing parties; Cotton as the 
 friend and admired pastor of Mrs. 
 Hutchinson, who had been previously 
 known by her in England, and Wilson 
 as the criticized teacher and enemy. 
 Cotton carried with him all the mem- 
 bers of the Boston church but five. 
 Wilson^s supporters were numerous in 
 the outside settlements, for the whole 
 colony was involved in the controversy. 
 Vane, whose home was with Cotton, 
 because of his clear and positive views 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. t 1 
 
 of religious toleration, espoused the 
 cause of Mrs. Hutchinson, but it cost 
 him, at least temporarily, the valued 
 friendship of Governor Winthrop, who 
 was actively identified with the oppos- 
 ing party. It led to a personal con- 
 troversy between the two, in which we 
 of to-day believe that Winthrop was 
 wrong and that Vane was right, and 
 had the better of the argument. At 
 any rate he left on record an admirable 
 presentation of the true principle of 
 religious liberty which they had all 
 crossed "the sad and solitary sea^' to 
 illustrate and enjoy, and the reasons 
 for their professed belief. Prof. J. L. 
 Diman says: ^^It seems beyond dis- 
 pute that what mainly interested Vane 
 was not so much the precise opinions 
 which Anne Hutchinson maintained, as 
 the great doctrine of religious liberty 
 
72 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 which he conceived to be imperilled. 
 It was no ^^ mocking and unquiet 
 fancy/ ^ such as Clarendon describes, 
 but the early and clear apprehension of 
 the great princple which guided and 
 illumined his whole subsequent career. 
 This is plainly shown in his paper 
 termed ^^A Brief Resume.^' Of course 
 it convinced nobody. The bitter strife 
 with the deep disappointment of soul 
 at the destruction of his high hopes, 
 was too much for the nerves and the 
 power of endurance of ^Hhe boy Gov- 
 ernor."* '^At a meeting of the mag- 
 istrates and ministers convened to 
 reconcile, if possible, the jarring par- 
 
 *" Vane's mind was deeply vexed by these bitter con- 
 troversies. He had crossed the ocean to get quit of 
 Laud and his commissioners, and here were new in- 
 quisitors eager to suppress every opinion which did 
 not chime in with their own. They had brought with 
 them the root of all this intolerance, the conviction that 
 men could only be saved from everlasting torments by 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 73 
 
 ties/^ the discussion descended to sharp 
 personalities. Even Peters, his quon- 
 dam friend, accused him to his face of 
 destroying the peace of the colony 
 (though the divisions had their origin 
 in the people, not in him), and of being 
 presumptuous for one of his youth and 
 inexperience. Then it was that the 
 Governor, having defended himself 
 manfully and sometimes sharply, pos- 
 sibly giving as good as he received, 
 broke down, and pleaded in tears that 
 they would accept his resignation and 
 release him from the responsibility and 
 the pain of it all. Brooks Adams re- 
 marks: ^^That a young and untried 
 
 adopting certain dogmas. The controversy was shifted 
 from ceremonies to shadowy doctrines, the covenant 
 of grace and of works instead of the ritual and the altar. 
 Instead of the Pope being antichrist, it was Anne 
 Hutchinson, who deserved that appellation." 
 
 Wm. W. Ireland's ^^ Lije of Sir Henry Vane, " p. 80. 
 6 
 
74 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 man like Vane should have grown 
 weary of his office and longed to escape, 
 will astonish no one who is familiar 
 with the character and mode of warfare 
 of his enemies/' 
 
 His friends in Boston, who stood by 
 him loyally, persuaded him to with- 
 draw his resignation and serve out his 
 term. At the spring election after a 
 heated campaign amid scenes rarely 
 surpassed at a ward caucus in our 
 day,* Governor Winthrop was chosen 
 
 *"The whole town of Boston and the whole colony 
 of Massachusetts was set in commotion by the rude 
 theological brawl. Such was the state of combustion 
 in Boston that it was thought necessary by the op- 
 ponents of Vane and Mrs. Hutchinson to hold the court 
 of elections at the former capital, Newtown. The ex- 
 citement at this court was so great that the church 
 members, who only could vote, were on the point of 
 laying violent hands on one another in a contest grow- 
 ing out of a question relating to the indwelling of the 
 Holy Ghost." 
 
 Edward Eggleston, "The Beginners of a Nation," p. 
 335. 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 75 
 
 Governor, and Vane and his friends 
 were retired from office. He was, 
 however, elected at once to represent 
 Boston in the General Court, and when 
 the election was declared illegal, he 
 was re-elected the very next day. The 
 indignation at the treatment of Vane 
 was intense, in which for a time un- 
 doubtedly he shared, though it brought 
 to him relief from his official trials. 
 The religious discussion still went on 
 without abatement to its painful, pre- 
 determined issue. Vane did not wait 
 to see it through. On the third of 
 August he took ship for the old world, 
 
 " It was therefore a time of intensest excitement ; a 
 tumult was feared ; fierce speeches were bandied about ; 
 Mr. Wilson himself, the pastor of the Boston Church, 
 harangued the electors from a tree into which he 
 climbed ; and there was rash laying on of hands among 
 some of the disputants." 
 
 John S. Barry, "History of Massachusetts, First 
 Period," p. 212. 
 
76 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 having been in the new world only one 
 year and ten months. His departure 
 was announced by salvos of artillery 
 from the shore and the Castle in Bos- 
 ton harbor, and he sailed away from 
 experiences which were often distress- 
 ing, but undoubtedly of great edu- 
 cational value, serving to strengthen 
 his convictions, clarify his views of 
 liberty, and fit him for twenty-five 
 years of conspicuous service in that 
 stormy period of English history, as 
 perhaps England's most brilliant states- 
 man, the persistent advocate of civil 
 and religious freedom, and the trusted 
 friend of New England. 
 
 Possibly Vane's brief career in 
 the Massachusetts Bay may not have 
 been without its beneficial effects here, 
 though not recognized at the time. 
 One contemporaneous writer said of 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 77 
 
 his career: ''It was of God's great 
 mercy that it ended not in our de- 
 struction." A remark which leads Prof. 
 Hosmer to reply: ''Very likely. He 
 was to become one of the greatest of 
 state-builders; he tried his 'prentice- 
 hand^ on Massachusetts, the very 
 energy which, when well guided, was 
 to be so effective, racking nearly to its 
 downfall the jack-straw framework 
 which the cautious Winthrop was so 
 painfully erecting." To quote Pro- 
 fessor Diman again: "Vane^s career in 
 Massachusetts may have seemed to him- 
 self, as doubtless it seemed to others, a 
 mortifying failure, but he left a deep 
 mark on the institutions of the New 
 World. Systems perish, but ideas are 
 indestructible. The curious theocratic 
 State, built up with so much pains by 
 Winthrop and his connections, has 
 
78 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 passed away. The principle of entire 
 religious liberty, which, through the 
 efforts of Vane, received for the first 
 time in Christendom a recognition in 
 Rhode Island, has continued to grow 
 till the whole land sits under the 
 shadow of it.^' It is pleasant to know 
 that the alienation between Vane and 
 Winthrop was short-lived. They were 
 both men of too large mould to cherish 
 petty misunderstandings and animos- 
 ities, and were in fact actuated by 
 similar spirits and aims, and were 
 pressing towards the same goal, though 
 it may be at a slightly different pace. 
 
 Seven years afterward, when the 
 Massachusetts Colonists were in dis- 
 tressing need of friends at Court, Win- 
 throp wrote: ^^It pleased God to stir 
 them up such friends, viz.: Sir Henry 
 Vane, who had sometime lived in 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 79 
 
 Boston, and 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 noble and generous 
 mind/^ The year following, when Eng- 
 land was torn in twain by the civil 
 war, the week before, the stronghold 
 of Leicester having been captured by 
 the forces of the King, and the week 
 after, the victory of Naseby being won. 
 Vane who was then the acknowledged 
 leader of Parliament wrote an affec- 
 tionate letter to Governor Winthrop, 
 expressing and commending the spirit 
 of charity and forbearance, where 
 views were so often conflicting. He 
 wrote : 
 
80 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 '^ Honored Sir, I received yours by your Son, 
 and was unwilling to let him return without 
 telling you as much. The exercise and troubles 
 which God is pleased to lay upon these king- 
 doms and the inhabitants in them, teaches us 
 patience and forbearance one with another in 
 some measure, though there be difference in 
 our opinions, which makes me hope that from 
 the experience here, it may also be derived to 
 yourselves, lest whilst the Congregational way 
 amongst you is in its freedom and is backed 
 with power, it teach its oppungners here to 
 extirpate it and root it out from its principles 
 and practice. I shall need to say no more, 
 knowing your son can acquaint you particu- 
 larly with our affairs. Sir, I am. 
 
 Your very affectionate Friend and Servant 
 in Christ, H. Vane. 
 
 June the 10th, 1645. 
 
 Pray commend me kindly to your wife, Mr. 
 Cotton and his wife, and the rest of my friends 
 with you. 
 
 For my honored friend John Winthrop, Sr. 
 Esq." 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 81 
 
 On account of Vane's residence and 
 influence in New England and his long 
 and gracious and vastly important in- 
 fluence in behalf of New England after 
 his return home, Mr. Upham, his 
 biographer, feels justified in saying, 
 ^^The name of young Sir Henry Vane 
 is the most appropriate link to bind 
 us to the land of our fathers.'' 
 
 Vane's life was still before him. His 
 early return was looked upon with 
 suspicion by those who had rejoiced 
 in his departure, was a surprise to his 
 friends, and possibly to himself. But 
 he soon left no one in any doubt as to 
 where he stood. Garrard wrote to the 
 Lord Deputy: ^^ Henry Vane, the comp- 
 troller's eldest son, who hath been 
 Governor in New England this last 
 year is come home; whether he hath 
 left his former misgrounded opinions 
 
S2 Sm HENilY VANE, JR. 
 
 for which he left us, I know not.'^ 
 Men did not need to wait long to be 
 convinced that his exile, instead of 
 curing him of his ^^misgrounded opin- 
 ions/' had only confirmed him in his 
 Puritanism and Republicanism. After 
 taking a brief rest in his old home with 
 his kindred, and making the necessary 
 preparations for a home of his own by 
 taking to wife Frances, daughter of Sir 
 Christopher Wray, he identified him- 
 self openly, actively, unreservedly, with 
 what he believed to be the cause of the 
 people, and laid himself literally, with 
 all his maturing and exceptional pow- 
 ers, upon that altar. Only the briefest 
 outline of the events of his political ca- 
 reer, the offices he filled and the ser- 
 vice he rendered, can be given; nor is 
 more necessary to our purpose. 
 
siU Henry vane, jH. S3 
 
 He was elected to Parliament in 
 1640, was quickly and sympathetically 
 associated with Hampden and Pym, 
 and soon became an acknowledged 
 leader. He enjoyed their companion- 
 ship and support, however, for only a 
 brief time. Hampden received a mor- 
 tal wound at the fight at Chalgrove 
 Field, June 18, 1643, and in December 
 of the same year. Vane assisted in 
 carrying the body of his friend and 
 teacher, Pym, to its burial in West- 
 minster Abbey. Godwin, in ^^The His- 
 tory of the Commonwealth (I. 176), 
 declares, ^^ Vane was the individual best 
 qualified to succeed Hampden as a 
 counsellor in the arduous struggle in 
 which at this time the nation was en- 
 gaged.'^ And Forster bears this tes- 
 timony to Vane's political primacy: 
 ^^The efforts of Pym found their worth- 
 
84 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 iest supplement and completion in the 
 younger Sir Henry Vane. (^^States- 
 men of the Commonwealth/' p. 282.) 
 In the mention of every group of 
 Puritan leaders, however small, the 
 name of Vane is invariably conspicuous. 
 In the camp before York, says Godwin, 
 ^^We might see Manchester, deficient 
 neither in the qualities of a gentleman 
 nor the valour of a soldier, Cromwell, 
 the future guide and oppressor of the 
 Commonwealth, and Vane, ever pro- 
 found in thought and sagacious in pur- 
 pose, embracing in his capacious mind 
 all the elements of public safety.'' 
 Says Forster, '^A wide gulf separated 
 Vane from the Presbyterian party on 
 many of the most important questions 
 of civil policy. But on the side of 
 toleration with him stood also Crom- 
 well, Marten, and St. John, and such 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 85 
 
 men as Whitelocke and Selden. Milton, 
 too, lent to that great cause the aston- 
 ishing force of his genius/^ Again 
 Godwin says, ^Tromwell, Ireton, St. 
 John and Vane were four of the ablest 
 statesmen that ever figured upon the 
 theatre of any nation.'^ And still again, 
 Godwin says: ^^It is impossible to con- 
 sider these appointments [Bradshaw to 
 be President of the Council and Milton 
 to be Secretary of the Council for for- 
 eign tongues] without great respect. 
 They laid the foundation for the illus- 
 trious figure which was made by the 
 Commonwealth of England during the 
 succeeding years. . The admirable state 
 of the navy is in a great degree to be 
 ascribed to the superlative talents and 
 eminent public virtue of Vane. * * * 
 The perfect friendship of these three 
 men, Milton, Bradshaw and Vane, is. 
 
86 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 in itself considered, a glory to the 
 island that gave them birth /^ 
 
 Vane was knighted by Charles I 
 undoubtedly through his father^s in- 
 fluence, and to propitiate his possible 
 hostility to the ^King was made joint 
 Treasurer of the Navy. He was acci- 
 dentally associated with the trial and 
 execution of the Earl of Strafford, and 
 was actively engaged in all the dis- 
 cussions and measures that led up to 
 the civil war, and was uniformly on 
 the right side. The King raised his 
 standard at Nottingham, August 22, 
 1642, and the bloody conflict for the 
 rights of Parliament and the liberties 
 of the English people was inaugurated. 
 Vane's voice and rapidly increasing in- 
 fluence in the counsels of the nation 
 were consecrated without stint to what 
 he believed to be the cause of civil and 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 87 
 
 religious freedom. He was instrumen- 
 tal in securing the adoption of the 
 Solemn League and Covenant, which 
 sent thousands of armed Scotchmen 
 over the line to the help of the Par- 
 liamentary forces, and made Naseby 
 and Mars ton Moor possible. He op- 
 posed the execution of Charles I, 
 doubting the wisdom of the regicidal 
 act, and also opposed Pride's Purge, 
 unwilling to consent to any use of ar- 
 bitrary and despotic power.* He was 
 
 *"Next morning (the army having advanced mean- 
 while from Windsor to London) the city guard was 
 withdrawn from Westminster by its commander Skip- 
 pon, and the posts were occupied by three regiments 
 under the command of Sir Hardress Waller, Colonel 
 Henson, and Colonel Pride. The latter officer, with a 
 list in his hand, took his station at the door of the 
 House of Commons, and as the members entered and 
 were identified by the doorkeeper and Lord Grey of 
 Groby, who stood near Pride for the purpose, arrested 
 in succession, and during a period of three days, the 
 Presbyterian majority, in all upward of a hundred 
 
88 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 the friend and admired associate of 
 Milton, the great Repubhcan states- 
 man, believer in truth and freedom and 
 ^' Poet Laureate of the Puritans/'* and 
 for a time the most intimate associate 
 and powerful supporter of Cromwell, 
 though later he broke with the Great 
 Commoner, objecting to what he be- 
 
 and fifty members, several of whom were afterward 
 unconditionally restored." 
 
 John Forster's " The Statesmen of the Common- 
 wealth,'' p. 370. 
 
 *" Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose 
 to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do 
 injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt 
 her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who- 
 ever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open 
 encounter? * * * Yoy who knows not that truth 
 is strong, next to the Almighty; she needs no policies, 
 no strategems, nor licensings to make her victorious; 
 those are the shifts and the defences that error uses 
 against her power." 
 
 From Milton's " Areopagitica." 
 
 " It seems to me sometimes as if New England were 
 a translation into prose of the thought that was work- 
 ing in Milton's mind from its early morning to its sun- 
 set." — Frederic D. Maurice. 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 89 
 
 lieved to be his unwarranted and 
 dangerous usurpation of power, and 
 was in consequence imprisoned by 
 him.* He was instrumental in con- 
 junction with Cromwell in pushing to 
 a successful issue what Forster calls 
 '^one of the most masterly strokes of 
 policy that had yet distinguished the 
 
 *When Cromwell dissolved the Parliament by force 
 of arms, Milton than whom he had no wiser counsellor, 
 sent to him a message of warning, which contained 
 these memorable words — "Recollect that thou thyself 
 canst not be free, unless we are so ; for it is fitly so pro- 
 vided in the nature of things that he who conquers 
 another's liberty, in the very act loses his own; he 
 becomes, and justly, the foremost slave. But indeed, 
 if thou, the patron of our liberty, should undermine 
 the freedom, which thou hadst but so lately built up, 
 this would prove not only deadly and destructive to 
 thine own fame, but to the entire and universal cause 
 of religion and virtue. The very substance of piety 
 and honour will be seen to have evaporated, and the 
 most sacred ties and engagements will cease to have 
 any value with our posterity; than which a more 
 grievous wound cannot be inflicted on human interests 
 and happiness, since the fall of the first father of our 
 race." 
 
 7 
 
90 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 statesmanship of the times/' viz., ^Hhe 
 self denying ordinance and the new 
 model/' which placed the military 
 leadership in the hands of the In- 
 dependents. 
 
 He was made Secretary of the Navy, 
 and pushed every measure to promote 
 the efficiency of both army and navy; 
 indeed, under his supervision and ad- 
 ministration the English navy was so 
 enlarged and equipped that it defeated 
 the Dutch fleet under Van Tromp., and 
 England became mistress of the sea. 
 Such was his victorious leadership that 
 he was declared to be in Parliament 
 what Cromwell was in the army. Rich- 
 ard Baxter's exact words are : '' He was 
 that wdthin the House that Cromwell 
 was without." 
 
 Under Cromwell Vane, being out of 
 sympathy with his measures, retired 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 91 
 
 for a period to private life, during 
 which period he wrote his principal 
 theological work, entitled '^A Retired 
 Man^s Meditations/^ for Vane was not 
 only a deeply religious man, a genuine 
 Puritan, but he was a profound student 
 of the Scriptures and a disciple of 
 Origen, especially delighting in the 
 study of the prophecies, and given to 
 excessive allegorical interpretation, so 
 that men have entertained entirely 
 opposite views as to the value of the 
 results of his studies. He also wrote 
 at this time, ^'The Healing Question,^' 
 a frank and manly reply to what he 
 supposed to be an honest public appeal 
 by Cromwell for light. It was this 
 publication which he sent to Cromwell, 
 that, instead of enlightening his mind, 
 enraged it, and caused his arrest and 
 
92 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 temporary imprisonment in the Isle of 
 Wight. 
 
 For many years the relations between 
 Vane and Cromwell were of the most 
 intimate character. They invented fa- 
 miliar and affectionate names for each 
 other, which they used in their corres- 
 pondence. It is the verdict of history 
 that ^^No man served the Common- 
 wealth with more zeal than Vane.^'* 
 Lilburne complained that Cromwell 
 
 *Cromwell called Vane "Brother Heron," and Vane 
 addressed Cromwell as "Brother Fountain." "No 
 man served the Commonwealth with more zeal. Vane 
 was elected a member of every Council of State dur- 
 ing the period, and his name is always high in the 
 list of attendances. He was on every committee of 
 importance. When Cromwell invaded Scotland, the 
 business of supplying his army with money, provisions 
 and re-enforcements was especially trusted to Vane's 
 care, and Vane also kept him informed of home and 
 foreign politics. ' Let H. Vane know what I write ' 
 is Cromwell's message when he was in his greatest 
 extremity just before the battle of Dunbar." 
 
 C. H. Firth in ^^ Dictionary of National Biography." 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 93 
 
 was ^^led by the nose by two unworthy, 
 covetous earthworms/^ meaning Vane 
 and St. John. The question of dis- 
 solving the Long Parhament produced 
 a lasting breach between them. Vane 
 characterized it as ^^ usurpation/' as 
 ^^ plucking up of liberty by the very 
 roots/' as ^introducing an arbitrary 
 regal power under the name of Pro- 
 tector, by force and the law of the 
 sword.''* The exclamation of Crom- 
 
 *" Though the authority of the faithful was the rule 
 in their churches, the greater number of them ad- 
 mitted that the Divine Will also manifested itself ex- 
 traordinarily by a word or an inspired action ; the gift 
 of prophecy was to them a reality of their present day. 
 It was from this source that Cromwell now sought the 
 authority which he would not, and indeed could not, 
 any longer demand of the people. To his staff he was 
 the General, and that was enough, but to those to whom 
 might by itself was not right, he declared that he had 
 been called of God, and it was on this ground that he 
 justified his actions when he drove the Parliament from 
 Westminster, and had himself proclaimed Protector 
 of the Republic. Read his speeches, his declarations, 
 
94 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 well, often quoted as if it was an ex- 
 pression of his judgment of Vane, 
 ^^Sir Harry Vane! Sir Harry Vane! 
 The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry 
 Vane!^^ was little more, probably, than 
 a passionate outburst of impatience 
 and anger at the opposition of a man 
 which he dreaded more than that of 
 any other. The words were uttered 
 with other frenzied words on the floor 
 of the House of Commons, when Crom- 
 well, accompanied by an armed force, 
 broke up the Long Parliament, striding 
 back and forth, and speaking, as Lud- 
 
 his conversations. All remind us of this aspect of his 
 mission; he marches before the people of England as 
 Gideon did before Israel. * * * 
 
 The genius of this extraordinary man seems to have 
 imposed upon the Puritan democracy, for a time, a new 
 Divine Right by favor of those very beliefs out of which 
 that democracy had arisen, and which had taught it to 
 resist Divine Right." 
 
 Charles Borgeaud's " The Rise of Modern Democ- 
 racy," pp. 97, 98. 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 95 
 
 low says, ^^with so much passion and 
 discomposure, as if he had been dis- 
 tracted/^ 
 
 When Richard Cromwell rose to 
 power, Vane was again returned to 
 Parliament, and became inevitably a 
 leader. He openly opposed the new 
 Protector and boldly denied his right 
 of succession. He was excluded in 
 1660, and at the restoration of Charles 
 II was a second time arrested, and this 
 time sent to the fatal Tower. His 
 refusal to sanction the execution of 
 Charles I did not save him, as it ought 
 to have and would have, had the King 
 kept his word. An exception was made 
 in his case. He was too dangerous a 
 man to live under a Stuart dynasty. 
 False charges of high treason for com- 
 passing the death of the King and 
 subverting the ancient form of govern- 
 
96 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 ment were trumped up against him. 
 A form of trial was gone through with, 
 in which he was denied counsel, but in 
 which he made a masterly defence, 
 citing law and precedent, and utterly 
 confusing his judges, one of whom 
 confessed, ''Though we knew not what 
 to say to him, we knew what to do with 
 him,'^ and then he was sentenced to 
 the block, where he was beheaded June 
 14, 1662. The day after the verdict 
 was rendered, the King wrote to Lord 
 Chancellor Clarendon, the instigator 
 of the whole persecution, a letter in 
 which he said: ''He is too dangerous a 
 man to let live, if we can honestly [he 
 might have added or dishonestly] put 
 him out of the way.^^ It is stated that 
 the roofs of the houses and the windows 
 overlooking the path from the Tower 
 to the scaffold were crowded with 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 97 
 
 people who gave expression to their 
 feehngs in words of tender sympathy 
 and grateful appreciation and encour- 
 agement. His parting words to his 
 wife and children, and his farewell 
 address upon the scaffold, where he was 
 treated most brutally, are among the 
 noblest utterances that ever fell from 
 human lips. And so died a man of con- 
 spicuous gifts and enlightened views, 
 far in advance of his time, with a love 
 for his country and its highest interests 
 only equalled by his love for his family 
 and his Maker, with as brave and true 
 a heart as ever throbbed in a human 
 breast, a man of whom England was 
 not worthy. 
 
 So commanding was his personal 
 influence, so extraordinary his ability 
 and insight into men and principles, 
 and so exalted his character, that his 
 
98 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 enemy, and the enemy of toleration, 
 the royahst Clarendon, (who managed 
 to get himself hated alike by Presby- 
 terians, Independents, and Papists, and 
 finally incurred the displeasure of 
 Charles II, was deserted by his friends, 
 banished by Parliament, and died in 
 exile,) Lord Clarendon acknowledged, 
 ^^Sir Henry Vane was one of the com- 
 missioners, and therefore the others 
 need not be named, since he was all in 
 any business where others were joined 
 with him. He was indeed a man of 
 extraordinary parts, a pleasant wit, a 
 great understanding, which pierced into 
 and discerned the purpose of other men 
 with wonderful sagacity, whilst he had 
 himself vultum clausum, that no man 
 could make guess of what he intended.'' 
 Clarendon charges him with being 
 shrewd and tricksy in his diplomacy; 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 99 
 
 but such charges came only from the 
 Ups of enemies. Robert BailUe, also a 
 contemporary, a leading Scotch Pres- 
 byterian and member of the Westmin- 
 ster Assembly, characterizes him as 
 ''one of the gravest and ablest of Eng- 
 lish statesmen.'' So conspicuous was 
 his statesmanship that John Fiske says 
 of him: ''With the single exception of 
 Cromwell, the greatest statesman of the 
 heroic age of Puritanism was un- 
 questionably the younger Henry Vane. 
 * * * After the death of Pym, in 
 1643, Sir Henry Vane, then thirty-one 
 years of age, was the foremost man in 
 the Long Parliament, and so remained 
 as long as that Parhament controlled 
 the march of events.'' So enlightened 
 was his spirit, and so free from the 
 bondage of tradition and circumstance, 
 so progressive was he in his thought, 
 
100 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 and so modern in his conceptions of 
 civil government and human rights, 
 that Mr. Fiske boldly adds : ^^ Thorough 
 republican and enthusiastic lover of 
 liberty, he was spiritually akin to 
 Jefferson and to Samuel Adams. ^' 
 
 Carlyle, in a portraiture grotesque 
 and strangely depreciative, describes 
 Vane as ^^a man of light fiber. Grant 
 all manner of purity and elevation; 
 subtle high discourse; much intel- 
 lectual and practical dexterity; there 
 is an amiable, devoutly zealous, very 
 pretty man; but not a royal man; alas, 
 no ! On the whole rather a thin man.^' 
 A man who was the acknowledged 
 leader in the House of Parliament for 
 years in a trying and stormy period, 
 who honorably filled the most respon- 
 sible official positions in the State, who 
 by his consummate diplomacy brought 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 101 
 
 about the ^^ Solemn League and Cove- 
 nant/^ who developed the English navy 
 until it swept the sea of its mightiest 
 foe, and who dared to oppose Crom- 
 well, the most formidable personality 
 in the seventeenth century, can hardly 
 be spoken of as ^^ a man of light fiber, ^' 
 ^'si very pretty man,'' ^^on the whole 
 rather a thin man.'' Such epithets 
 appear to be most astonishing misfits. 
 On the other hand. Sir James Mack- 
 intosh declares that ^^Sir Henry Vane 
 was one of the most profound minds 
 that ever existed, not inferior, perhaps, 
 to Bacon. * * * jjis works dis- 
 play astonishing powers. They are re- 
 markable as containing the first direct 
 assertion of liberty of conscience." Of 
 course this last statement is incorrect. 
 Few men have lived who have been the 
 subjects of such widely differing judg- 
 
102 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 merits. Swift called him "a danger- 
 ous, enthusiastic beast/' while Hallam, 
 without prejudice, describes him as 
 ^^not only incorrupt, but disinterested, 
 inflexible in conforming his public con- 
 duct to his principles, and averse to 
 every sanguinary and oppressive meas- 
 ure/' To have opposed Cromwell 
 seems to have been, to Cromwell's eu- 
 logists. Vane's unpardonable offence, 
 and to have blinded their eyes to the 
 nobility of his character and the great- 
 ness of his service. 
 
 Perhaps the acme of human praise 
 was reached by that matchless orator, 
 Wendell Phillips, in his famous Phi 
 Beta Kappa oration, delivered at Cam- 
 bridge, in 1881, in which he said: ^'Sir 
 Henry Vane, in my judgment, the 
 noblest human being who ever walked 
 the streets of yonder city — I do not 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 103 
 
 forget Franklin or Sam Adams, Wash- 
 ington or Fayette, Garrison or John 
 Brown. But Vane dwells an arrow's 
 flight above them all, and his touch 
 consecrated the continent to measure- 
 less toleration of opinion and entire 
 equality of rights. We are told we can 
 find in Plato ^ all the intellectual life of 
 Europe for two thousand years.' So 
 you can find in Vane the pure gold of 
 two hundred and fifty years of Ameri- 
 can civilization with no particle of its 
 dross. Plato would have welcomed 
 him to the Academy and Fenelon 
 kneeled with him at the altar. He 
 made Somers and John Marshall possi- 
 ble; like Carnot, he organized victory; 
 and Milton pales before him in the 
 stainlessness of his record. He stands 
 among English statesmen pre-eminent- 
 ly the representative, in practice and 
 
104 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 theory, of serene faith in the safety of 
 trusting truth wholly to her own de- 
 fence. For other men we walk back- 
 ward, and throw over their memories 
 the mantle of charity and excuse, say- 
 ing reverently, ^Remember the tempta- 
 tion and the age.' But Vane's ermine 
 has no stain; no act of his needs ex- 
 planation or apology; and in thought 
 he stands abreast of the age, — like pure 
 intellect, he belongs to all time. Car- 
 lyle said in years when his words were 
 worth heeding, ' Young men, close your 
 Byron and open your Goethe.' If my 
 counsel had weight in these halls, I 
 should say, ^ Young men, close your 
 John Winthrop and Washington, your 
 Jefferson and Webster, and open Sir 
 Harry Vane.' It was the generation 
 that knew Vane who gave to our Alma 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 105 
 
 Matei^ for a seal the simple pledge, 
 Veritas. ^^ 
 
 It would be interesting to cite numer- 
 ous quotations from Vane^s speeches 
 and writings, for they are numerous, 
 which justify such high praise. Three 
 or four brief quotations must suffice. 
 The first is taken from a speech made 
 on the floor of Parliament during the 
 eight days' discussion on the Act of 
 Recognition of Richard Cromwell to 
 be Protector of the Commonwealth. 
 He said, ^^It was then necessary, as the 
 first act, to have resort to the founda- 
 tion of all just power, and to create and 
 establish a free State; to bring the 
 people out of bondage, from all pre- 
 tence of superiority over them. It 
 seemed plain to me that all offices had 
 their rise from the people, and that all 
 should be accountable to them. If this 
 
106 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 be monstrous, then it is monstrous to 
 be safe and rational, and to bear your 
 own good.'' 
 
 In a remarkable treatise, entitled 
 ^'The People's Case Stated/' Vane de- 
 clared: ^^The end of all government, 
 being for the good and welfare, and not 
 for the destruction, of the ruled, God 
 who is the institutor of government, as 
 he is pleased to ordain the office of 
 governors, intrusting them with power 
 to command the just and reasonable 
 things which his own law commands, 
 that carry their own evidence to com- 
 mon reason and sense, at least, that do 
 not evidently contradict it, so he grants 
 a liberty to the subjects, or those that 
 by him are put under the rule, to refuse 
 all such commands as are contrary to 
 his law, or to the judgment of common 
 reason and sense, whose trial he allows. 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 107 
 
 by way of assent or dissent, before the 
 commands of the ruler shall be binding 
 or put in execution; and this in a co- 
 ordinacy of power with just government 
 and as the due balance thereof; for 
 the original impressions of just laws 
 are in man's nature and very consti- 
 tution of being. * * * Sovereign 
 power then comes from God, as its 
 proper root, but the restraint or en- 
 largement of it, in its execution over 
 such a body, is founded in the common 
 consent of that body/' 
 
 Again he says, "All just executive 
 power arose from the free will and gift 
 of the people, who might either keep 
 the power in themselves, or give up 
 their subjection into the hands and will 
 of another, if they shall judge that 
 thereby they shall better answer the 
 
108 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 end of government, to wit, the welfare 
 and safety of the whole/' 
 
 Such declarations anticipated by two 
 hundred years the inspired utterance 
 of President Lincoln: ^^ A government 
 of the people, by the people and for the 
 people/' 
 
 A final quotation is taken from ^^A 
 Retired Man's Meditations/' and ex- 
 presses Vane's views especially and 
 clearly upon the subject of religious 
 liberty. ^'Magistracy is not to intrude 
 itself into the office and proper con- 
 cerns of Christ's inward government 
 and rule in the conscience; but it is to 
 content itself with the outward man, 
 and to intermeddle with the concerns 
 thereof in reference to the converse 
 which man ought to have with man, 
 upon the grounds of natural just and 
 right in things appertaining to this 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 109 
 
 life/^ — language inspired by the spirit 
 and faith which drew up the immortal 
 compact signed by the thirteen settlers 
 of the Providence Plantations, who 
 agreed ^^to submit themselves to all 
 such orders or agreements as shall be 
 made for the public good of the body 
 only in civil things J ^ 
 
 All through Vane's public career, by 
 voice and pen, in Parliament and out of 
 Parliament, from beginning to end, in 
 America and in England, from his 
 discussion with John Winthrop when 
 he announced principles which Win- 
 throp had been compelled before to 
 hear from the lips of Roger Williams, 
 to his final utterance on the scaffold, 
 he pleaded for the rights and liberties 
 of all men, for liberty regulated by law, 
 for religious toleration, and for the 
 recognition of the sovereignty of the 
 
110 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 people. Under God in Vane's pro- 
 gramme of human government the 
 people were supreme and the conscience 
 was to be forever free. 
 
 He died wdthout seeing the realization 
 of his splendid vision. But his service 
 and sacrifice helped to make it possible 
 for an English poet of a subsequent 
 generation to sing — 
 
 " Though o'er our heads the frozen Pleiads shine, 
 'Tis Liberty that crowns Brittania's isle, 
 And makes her barren rocks and her bleak moun- 
 tains smile." 
 
 Indeed, as Peter Bayne asserts, 
 ^^Constitutional logic has not made a 
 single step in advance of the funda- 
 mental positions of Vane. No possible 
 political development can outrun the 
 sovereignty of the people, represented 
 in an assembly appointed by the 
 
SIR HENRY VAXE, JR. Ill 
 
 people's intelligent will. This was his 
 essential principle/^ 
 
 And this man, statesman, publicist, 
 prophet, patriot, martyr, whose claims 
 ^^wdll yet be more fully recognized in 
 England'' in the behef of his Enghsh 
 biographer, Dr. Ireland, was by spirit- 
 ual sympathy and conviction, by vol- 
 untary choice, by generous words and 
 influential deeds, the friend of Roger 
 AYilhams and Rhode Island. 
 
 In June, 1643, Roger Williams was 
 sent to England to procure a charter 
 for the Colony. He arrived near the 
 beginning of the Ci\dl War, which was 
 convulsing the nation. Naturally he 
 sought out Sir Henry Vane, whom 
 Oscar Straus calls his ''intimate friend" 
 and ''distinguished coadjutor in the 
 cause of religious hberty." The pre- 
 \dous acquaintance in New England 
 
112 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 proved most fortunate. Vane received 
 him cordially, and invited him to be 
 his guest in London and in Lincoln- 
 shire. His friendship and aid crowned 
 his mission with success. A Board of 
 Commissioners for the Colonies had 
 been appointed by Parliament, of which 
 Board Vane was an influential member. 
 By him Roger Williams was introduced 
 to the Board, and his request advo- 
 cated. It was probably under Vane's 
 hospitable roof on this visit that Wil- 
 liams wrote his famous treatise, entitled 
 ''The Bloody Tenet of Persecution,'' in 
 answer to a letter of John Cotton, a 
 treatise which he dedicated to Parlia- 
 ment, and in which he discussed the 
 great principles of religious liberty. In 
 the preface he refers to ''a heavenly 
 speech," which he heard from one of the 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 113 
 
 members of Parliament, who was un- 
 doubtedly Vane. 
 
 Often in those long evenings when 
 they were waiting anxiously for news 
 from the contending armies, Williams 
 and Vane must have discussed to- 
 gether the principles for the triumph 
 of which they had both pledged their 
 fortunes and their lives. As soon as 
 the chapters of the book were com- 
 pleted, one by one, Williams must have 
 read them to Vane, and found in 
 him a most attentive and sympathetic 
 listener. Gratefully recognizing the 
 generous assistance of his friend, Wil- 
 liams returned from his successful expe- 
 dition, reaching Boston, September 17, 
 1644, armed not only with the desired 
 charter, but with a communication to 
 the Massachusetts authorities request- 
 ing them to permit him to pass through 
 
114 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 their territory, a thing which they had 
 refused to do on his way out. This 
 was signed by men prominent in the 
 EngHsh Parhament, and undoubtedly 
 Vane had a wilhng hand in getting it 
 up. It began, as follows: 
 
 ^^Our much honored friends: 
 
 '^ Taking notice some of us of long 
 time of Mr. Roger Williams^ good af- 
 fections and conscience, and of his suf- 
 ferings by our common enemy and op- 
 pressors of God^s people, the prelates, 
 as also of his great industry and travels 
 in his printed Indian labors in your 
 parts (the like whereof we have not 
 seen extant from any part of America) , 
 [Williams had pubHshed while in Eu- 
 rope his ' Key to the Indian Language '], 
 and in which respect it hath pleased 
 both Houses of Parliament to grant unto 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 115 
 
 him, and friends with him, a free and 
 absolute charter of civil government 
 for those parts of his abode/ ^ etc., etc. 
 The Massachusetts authorities granted 
 the request reluctantly, not daring to 
 refuse, at the same time justifying their 
 previous treatment of Williams. This 
 ^^free and absolute charter of civil gov- 
 ernment,'^ as it was called, was wholly 
 unique in colonial history. Previous 
 charters had been granted by favor of 
 the Crown with only limited provisions 
 for liberty of independent action. This 
 charter was issued by the Long Par- 
 liament, which had no occasion to 
 protect the rights and prerogatives of 
 the King, but granted to ^'the well 
 affected and industrious inhabitants'' 
 of this Colony full powers and authority 
 to govern themselves. ^^To the Long 
 Parliament," says Bancroft, ^'and es- 
 
116 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 pecially to Sir Henry Vane, Rhode 
 Island owes its existence as a political 
 State/ ^ or rather he should have said, its 
 recognition as a free political State, for 
 it had already existed without recogni- 
 tion for seven years. It must have 
 been a peculiar satisfaction to Vane to 
 assist in giving equal colonial standing 
 to a State founded upon principles 
 which he had failed to get incorporated 
 in the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay. 
 ^'Mr. Williams's return to Provi- 
 dence, '' says Knowles, ^'was greeted by 
 a voluntary expression of the attach- 
 ment and gratitude of its inhabitants, 
 which is one of the most satisfactory 
 testimonies to his character. They met 
 him at Seekonk, with fourteen canoes, 
 and carried him across the river to 
 Providence.'' Such an expression of 
 grateful appreciation of his service to 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 117 
 
 the Colony must have been very grati- 
 fying to Roger WilHams. So far as 
 is known there was but one heart 
 capable of hatred and jealousy at such 
 a time. Richard Scott, once a friend, 
 later an enemy, recorded the incident, 
 and added, ^^The man being hemmed 
 in, in the midst of the canoes, was so 
 elevated and transported out of him- 
 self, that I was condemned in myself 
 that amongst the rest, I had been an 
 instrument to set him up in his pride 
 and folly. ^' 
 
 Again in 1652, Roger Williams visited 
 England at the request of the Colony to 
 secure a confirmation of the charter, 
 and an interpretation which should 
 preserve their liberties, and protect 
 them against the threatened encroach- 
 ments of their neighbors. In this visit 
 
118 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 he was accompanied by Dr. John 
 Clarke, of Newport, who also went by 
 the request of his neighbors to secure, 
 if possible, a revocation of Coddington^s 
 ambitious and autocratic commission, 
 which he had secretly obtained. It is 
 more than probable that during the 
 intervening eight years, since Wil- 
 liams ^s first visit, a frequent corre- 
 spondence had been carried on between 
 these leaders in the cause of religious 
 liberty, each being eager to know how 
 the battle was going on the other side 
 of the world. At any rate, the friend- 
 ship was unbroken, even cemented by 
 their continued devotion to the com- 
 mon cause. Many things had hap- 
 pened in England, and many changes 
 had come about, which it is not nec- 
 essary to relate. But the heart of Vane 
 was unchanged, and his hand was 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 119 
 
 pledged to his aid. He welcomed him 
 again to his home in London, and to his 
 country seat at Belleau. Vane occu- 
 pied the responsible position at the 
 head of the navy (though he was soon 
 to be set aside), and the great sea- war 
 with the Dutch was in progress. But 
 he had time to aid his friends from the 
 new world, where ^Hhe lively experi- 
 ment^^ was being tried, and tested as 
 well. Again he must have conversed 
 often with his former guest about the 
 fresh rejoinder to Cotton which he was 
 putting through the press under the 
 title, ^^The Bloody Tenet yet more 
 Bloody, ^^ and probably with his new 
 guest. Dr. Clarke, who was also pub- 
 lishing a book entitled ^'111 News from 
 New England or a Narrative of New 
 England^s Persecutions, '^ which was of 
 the nature of a personal experience 
 
120 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 which he had had in Massachusetts. 
 (It may be said, by way of parenthesis, 
 that WiUiams pubhshed at this time 
 another, purely rehgious book, called 
 ^^Experiments of Spiritual Life," which 
 Lady Vane permitted him to dedicate 
 to herself.) But amid all this literary 
 work the main object of their visit was 
 kept ever in mind. 
 
 Through the mediation of Vane a 
 hearing was at length appointed with 
 the Council of State to whom a petition 
 was presented, who, on April 8, 1652, 
 referred it to the Committee on For- 
 eign Affairs. It met with serious oppo- 
 sition, but at last through the powerful 
 influence of one whose name can easily 
 be surmised, the Council granted an 
 order to vacate Mr. Coddington's com- 
 mission, and to confirm the former 
 charter. But let Roger Williams re- 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 121 
 
 port the struggle in his own words^ and 
 give the credit to whom it is due. In 
 a letter written from Sir Henry Vane's, 
 at Belleau, in Lincolnshire, under date 
 of April 1st, 1653, twelve months after 
 the petition was presented, to his ^^dear 
 and loving friends and neighbors of 
 Providence and Warwick, '' he wrote: 
 ^^Our noble friend. Sir Henry Vane, 
 having the navy of England mostly 
 depending on his care, and going down 
 to the navy at Portsmouth, I was 
 invited by them both to accompany 
 his lady to Lincolnshire. ... I 
 hope it may have pleased the Most 
 High Lord of sea and land to bring 
 Capt. Ch-rst-n's ship and dear Mr. 
 Dyre* unto you, and with him the 
 
 *This was William Dyer, who was one of the nine- 
 teen signers of the religio-civic compact (more religio 
 than civic) of the Aquidneck settlers, March 7, 1638. 
 8 
 
122 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 Councirs letters, which answer the 
 petition (that is, which are the answer 
 to the petition) Sir Henry Vane and 
 myself drew up, and the Council by 
 Sir Henry's mediation, granted us, for 
 the confirmation of the charter, until 
 the determination of the controversy. 
 This determination, you may please to 
 understand, is hindered by two main 
 obstructions. '^ 
 
 The two obstructions he explained 
 were, first, the absorbing interest of the 
 
 William Coddington and John Clarke were the first 
 two signers. Dyer's signature was the eleventh. He 
 was evidently a man of considerable prominence, and 
 held official positions at Aquidneck, and later under 
 the united colonies, for many years. It is supposed 
 that he went to England with Williams and Clarke, 
 and after the action of the Council of State annulling 
 Coddington 's commission and authorizing the colonies 
 to unite under the old charter of 1643, was commis- 
 sioned by them to return to this country and bring the 
 joyful news. He was the husband of Mary Dyer, the 
 Quaker martyr, who was hanged on Boston Common, 
 June 1, 1660. 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 123 
 
 war with the Dutch, which he said 
 ^^ makes England and Holland and the 
 nations tremble/' and secondly, the 
 opposition of Winslow and Hopkins, 
 who represented the New England 
 Confederacy, and the friends in Par- 
 liament whom they had gained to their 
 side, and of ^^all the priests, '^ as he calls 
 them, ^^both Presbyterian and Inde- 
 pendent/' Then he adds with em- 
 phasis and gratitude, ^^ Under God, the 
 sheet-anchor of our ship is Sir Henry, 
 who will do as the eye of God leads 
 him." The whole business seemed to 
 l3e in Vane's hands. He and Williams 
 drew up the petition. He secured its 
 presentation before the Council of 
 State, and labored for its favorable 
 consideration. It was by his inter- 
 cession that the action was taken, and 
 the combined forces of the opposition 
 
124 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 were defeated. Williams had not a 
 word of commendation for any one 
 else. Vane was ^Hhe sheet anchor of 
 their ship/' which saved their hopes 
 from failure and wreck. To him and 
 to his friendship for Roger Williams 
 and devotion to the principles which 
 he and Clarke represented, Rhode 
 Island is indebted for the confirmation 
 of its original charter. This was, in- 
 deed, a preliminary step, until a final 
 adjudication could be reached; but it 
 was an immensely important step. It 
 preserved the integrity of Rhode Island 
 for ten years, and prepared the way for 
 the charter of 1663. That charter 
 Vane did not live to see. Indeed,, 
 Cromwell dissolved the Rump Par- 
 liament that very year (1653), and 
 Vane was set aside and remained in 
 retirement for several years, having 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 125 
 
 but a brief period of public service 
 after that, before his beheading. 
 
 Wilhams, however, maintained 
 friendly relations with Cromwell. He 
 remained in England until the Pro- 
 tectorate was established, and then 
 having obtained assurances from Crom- 
 well that the interests of Rhode Island 
 would be cared for, he left the business 
 remaining to be attended to in the 
 hands of his friend. Dr. Clarke, who 
 remained in England on private busi- 
 ness, and also as the agent of the 
 Colony, and responded to an urgent 
 summons to return home on account 
 of the unseemly divisions and disorder 
 which prevailed among the Colonists. 
 
 No heart was more grieved and dis- 
 tressed by the reported condition in 
 the Providence Colony than the heart 
 of Vane, who looked upon it as the 
 
126 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 fullest illustration of his cherished prin- 
 ciples on either side of the Atlantic. 
 Upon its success there would be hope 
 for the world. Upon its failure all 
 would be lost. As an expression of his 
 deep and abiding interest in the pros- 
 perity of Rhode Island and the success 
 of its experiment, an interest so deep 
 that his own happiness and life seemed 
 to be bound up in it, he made Roger 
 Williams the bearer of a letter to the 
 citizens, which was filled with affec- 
 tionate rebukes and the most earnest 
 appeals that for their own safety and 
 for the sake of the sacred cause which 
 they represented, in which was in- 
 volved the cause of liberty, of humanity 
 and the kingdom of God on earth, they 
 would cease from thejjr bickerings and 
 strife, and follow the things that make 
 for peace. 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 127 
 
 ^^How is it that there are such divis- 
 ions amongst you? Such headiness, 
 tumults, disorders, injustice? The 
 noise echoes into the ears of all, as well 
 friends as enemies, by every return 
 of ships from those parts. Is not the 
 fear and awe of God amongst you to 
 restrain? Is not the love of Christ in 
 you, to fill you with yearning bowels, 
 one towards another, and constrain you 
 not to live to yourselves, but to Him 
 that died for you, yea, that is risen 
 again? Are there no wise men amongst 
 you? No public self-denying spirits, 
 that at least, upon the grounds of 
 public safety, equity and prudence, can 
 find out some way or means of union 
 and reconciliation for you amongst 
 yourselves, before you became a prey 
 to common enemies, especially since 
 this State by the last letter from the 
 
128 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 Council of State, gave you your free- 
 dom, as supposing a better use would 
 have been made of it than there hath 
 been? Surely, when kind and simple 
 remedies are applied and are ineffect- 
 ual, it speaks loud and broadly the 
 high and dangerous distempers of such 
 a body, as if the wounds were incura- 
 ble. But I hope better things from 
 you, though I thus speak, and should 
 be apt to think, that by commissioners 
 agreed on and appointed on all parts, 
 and on behalf of all interests, in a 
 general meeting, such a union and 
 common satisfaction might arise, as, 
 through God's blessing, might put a 
 stop to your growing breaches and 
 distractions, silence your enemies, en- 
 courage your friends, honor the name 
 of God (which of late hath been much 
 blasphemed, by reason of you), and in 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 129 
 
 particular, refresh and revive the sad 
 heart of him, who mourns over your 
 present evils, as being your affectionate 
 friend, to serve you in the Lord. 
 Belleau, the 8th of February, 1653-4. 
 
 H. Vane.^^ 
 
 This letter, couched in the frankest, 
 most affectionate and fatherly lan- 
 guage, produced a favorable effect, and 
 Roger Williams was requested to pre- 
 pare and forward a reply, in which due 
 acknowledgment was made of his ^^ con- 
 stant loving kindness and favor from 
 the first beginning of this Providence 
 Colony." While, therefore, Sir Henry 
 Vane may not be called, in the strict 
 sense of the title, ^^one of the founders 
 of Rhode Island" (there is no evidence 
 that he ever set foot on its soil), he 
 was certainly its chief benefactor, giv- 
 
130 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 ing to it the great influence of his strong 
 personahty, his high social rank, his 
 official position, and his active sym- 
 pathy. To him Rhode Island owes a 
 lasting debt of gratitude for its firm 
 establishment as a Commonwealth, and 
 for the preservation of its liberties. 
 Boston, which never lost faith in its 
 ^^boy Governor '^ (though the rest of 
 the Colony, to its shame be it said, 
 refused to re-elect him), and honored 
 him in his departure with every dem- 
 onstration of appreciation and respect, 
 has placed just within the entrance of 
 its public library a statue of Vane of 
 heroic size, by MacMonnies. Its 
 plumed hat, and hanging sw^ord, and 
 gay attire show little of the Puritan, 
 but more of the Cavalier, whose pro- 
 priety is supposed to be justified on 
 account of his family connection; yet 
 
SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 131 
 
 it is a fitting, though tardy, acknowl- 
 edgment of his heroic leadership in the 
 battle of human freedom. 
 
 Some memorial in the city of Provi- 
 dence, in enduring bronze or imper- 
 ishable granite, would be a most fit- 
 ting tribute to his memory, and his 
 great service in Rhode Island's infancy 
 and time of need. And upon that 
 monument no more appropriate in- 
 scription could be placed than the im- 
 mortal tribute of his intimate friend 
 and co-laborer in the cause of hu- 
 man freedom, the poet Milton, with 
 whom, he being Secretary of the Coun- 
 cil, Williams, when on his second visit 
 to England, lived in intimate rela- 
 tions, those of teacher and pupil as 
 well as those of friends of a noble cause. 
 In this manner would be associated in 
 this birth-place of civil and religious 
 
132 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 
 
 liberty that triumvirate of great names 
 — Roger Williams, John Milton, and 
 Sir Henry Vane. 
 
 ■" Vane, young in years, but sage in counsel old. 
 Than whom a better senator ne'er held 
 The helm of Rome, when gowns not arms repelled 
 
 The fierce Epirot and the African bold, — 
 
 Whether to settle peace, or to unfold 
 
 The drift of hollow states hard to be spell'd. 
 Then to advise how War may best, upheld, 
 
 Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold. 
 In all her equipage : besides to know 
 Both spiritual power and civil, what each means. 
 
 What severs each, thou hast learn 'd, which few have 
 done: 
 The bounds of either sword to thee we owe : 
 Therefore on thy firm hand Religion leans 
 
 In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son." 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 John Cotton and Sir Henry Vane, Jr. 
 
 In the inscription prepared for the recumbent 
 marble statue of John Cotton in the First 
 Church in Boston, he is described as the 
 ''Preceptor and Friend of Vane." Edwin D. 
 Mead, in a paper read before the Massachusetts 
 Historical Society, at its June meeting in 1907, 
 and pubhshed in ''Proceedings, 1907, 1908," 
 referring to one of Cotton's pubhcations (" Way 
 of the Churches of Christ in New England"), 
 speaks of the "influence of its cardinal views 
 upon Vane, who, during his stay in Boston, 
 lived for a time under Cotton's roof." It 
 should be stated that Dr. Charles Borgeaud, to 
 whose "Rise of Modern Democracy in Eng- 
 land and New E^gland," Mr. Mead refers for 
 authority for this statement, makes no allusion 
 whatever to any influence, real or supposed, 
 which Cotton had on Vane. 
 
134 APPENDIX A. 
 
 We know Vane and his views of religious 
 liberty at the time when he was Cotton's guest, 
 which not only led him to befriend and plead 
 for the rights of Mrs. Hutchinson, but found 
 expression in his dispute with Gov. Winthrop, 
 and his earnest protests against all laws of 
 exclusion or persecution because of religious 
 differences, as well as in his whole subsequent 
 career; and we know Cotton and his views, 
 which found expression in his numerous pub- 
 lications, as well as in his well-known conduct. 
 Though Cotton was twenty-seven years older 
 than his guest. Vane far outstripped his host 
 in his clearly defined principles of the rights 
 of conscience, and was able to give lessons to 
 the teacher of the Boston Church. This he 
 undoubtedly did, though the Puritan teacher 
 was unwiUing or too old to learn them. 
 
 It was Cotton who boldly affirmed that 
 ''toleration made the world anti-Christian," 
 and should therefore be religiously avoided and 
 prohibited, who approved the banishment of 
 Roger Williams, saying afterwards with a 
 heartless facetiousness that "it was not banish- 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 135 
 
 merit, but enlargement;" who carried on the 
 famous pubUshed controversy with WilUams, 
 in which he showed that he had never learned 
 the alphabet of reUgious liberty, much less 
 been a preceptor in that branch of knowledge ; 
 and who inhumanly justified the persecution of 
 the Rhode Island worthies, Clarke and Holmes, 
 in the famous reply which he and Wilson sent 
 to Saltonstall. Moreover, his conception of 
 democracy appears in the following language: 
 
 ^' Democracy I do not conceyve that ever 
 God did ordeyne as a fitt government eyther 
 for church or commonwealth. ... As for 
 monarchy and aristocracy, they are both of 
 them clearly approved, and directed in Scrip- 
 ture, yet so as God referreth the sovereigntie to 
 himself, and setteth up Theocracy in both, as 
 the best form of government." 
 
 It should be added that after Vane returned 
 to England, Cotton, who had stood with him in 
 the defence of Mrs. Hutchinson, went back on 
 himself, publicly professed his penitence with 
 many tears, declared that he had been made 
 ''her stalking horse," an'd not only abandoned 
 
136 APPENDIX A. 
 
 the poor woman to her enemies, but zealously 
 engaged in confuting her ''heresies/' and him- 
 self delivered the verdict of the church, and 
 ''pronounced the sentence of admonition with 
 great solemnity, and with much zeal and de- 
 testation of her errors and pride of spirit." 
 John S. Barry ("History of Massachusetts, 
 First Period," p. 259) says: 
 
 "This was the unkindest cut of all! This 
 blow staggered her ! And the unhappy woman, 
 baited and worried by her clerical tormentors, 
 "pumped and sifted to get something against 
 her," stigmatized as "the American Jezebel," 
 cast out of the church, spit upon, and defied as 
 it were, scarce knew what she said; and faihng 
 to give satisfaction to those whom nothing 
 probably would now have made lenient, was 
 excommunicated in due form." 
 
 Brooks Adams, commenting on this distress- 
 ing affair ("The Emancipation of Massachu- 
 setts," p. 60), says: 
 
 " Vane sailed early in August, and his depar- 
 ture cleared the last barrier from the way of 
 vengeance. . . . Cotton hastened to make 
 
APPENDIX A. 137 
 
 his peace by a submission, which Rev. Mr. 
 Hubbard of Ipswich describes with uncon- 
 scious cynicism: ''If he were not convinced, 
 yet he was persuaded to an amicable com- 
 pUance with the other ministers; . . . for 
 although it was thought he did still retain 
 his own sense and enjoy his own apprehension 
 in all or most of the things then controverted 
 (as is manifest by some expressions of his since 
 that time published) yet by that means did 
 that reverend and worthy minister of the 
 gospel recover his former splendour through- 
 out New England." 
 
 S. G. Arnold, (''History of Rhode Island," 
 Vol. I., p. 68), explains Cotton's conduct as 
 follows: — "When the powerful influence of 
 Vane was thus withdrawn, Cotton made good 
 his reconciliation with his offended colleagues, 
 and still appeared as the devoted servant of the 
 people." 
 
 It looks very much as if Cotton's momentary 
 liberalism in joining hands with Vane in the 
 defence of Mrs. Hutchinson was the effect of the 
 young Governor's presence and influence upon 
 
138 APPENDIX A. 
 
 him, and that after Vane had departed he fell 
 back in a most humiliating manner, and with 
 ostentatious penitence, which must be regretted 
 by every one, into his former narrowness and 
 an intenser opposition to the principle of 
 religious liberty. The facts do not appear to 
 justify the claim that Cotton was in any sense 
 the preceptor of Vane. In those days, and in 
 that community, the younger man, who was of 
 noble family and was generally welcomed with 
 enthusiasm by the Massachusetts Colonists on 
 his arrival, and in a few short months was elected 
 Governor of the colony, who held advanced 
 views, and possessed withal a striking person- 
 ality, would inevitably be listened to with 
 respect, and would easily be exalted, in spite 
 of difference in age, to the preceptor's chair. 
 
 The paragraphs above appeared as an article 
 in '^The Nation" April 8, 1909. Mr. Mead in 
 his courteous explanation in ''The Nation" 
 May 13, said, ''With Mr. King's observations 
 upon the relative merits and influence of Cotton 
 and Vane as concerning toleration, I should not 
 be disposed to take issue." Yet in the matter 
 
APPENDIX A. 139 
 
 of church pohty, of Independency in church 
 government, a very much less important matter, 
 he is still of the opinion that Cotton's relation 
 to Vane warrants his being called his '' pre- 
 ceptor." He refers to J. Wingate Thornton 
 ^nd Dr. James K. Hosmer in confirmation of 
 his opinion. A careful study of the religious 
 conditions in New England and Old England 
 at that time, and a proper consideration of the 
 meaning and application of Independency, as 
 well as of the known views of both Cotton and 
 Vane, will show how little basis there is for the 
 opinion that Vane was influenced by Cotton 
 even in this minor matter. 
 
 J. Wingate Thornton (''The Historical 
 Relation of New England to the English 
 Commonwealth"), seeking to establish the 
 influential relation of the Massachusetts Puri- 
 tans to the leaders of the English Common- 
 wealth, thinks that Vane was a principal 
 channel of that influence, and goes so far as to 
 assert that "Vane was trained in Cotton's 
 study." Dr. J. K. Hosmer (" Life of Sir Henry 
 Vane") says, "This is scarcely too much to 
 
140 APPENDIX A. 
 
 say," and gives a beautiful imaginary picture of 
 the relation of the two men, when Vane was 
 Cotton's guest. No evidence of this training 
 and education is brought forward. It seems 
 to be a pure conjecture, without any sub- 
 stantial proof, from the fact of Vane's residence 
 in Cotton's home. From what we know of the 
 two men, the probabilities are all against the 
 reasonableness of the conjecture. We know 
 that Vane could teach Cotton on the subject of 
 religious toleration; why not also on the sub- 
 ject of church independency and polity, of 
 true democracy in church government? In 
 those days the two subjects seemed to be in- 
 dissolubly connected. 
 
 We have no means of knowing how definite 
 and fully ripened Vane's views were when he 
 arrived in Boston. Edwin D. Mead says: 
 ''When he came to Boston to live with John 
 Cotton he was not an Independent, and when 
 he went back to England he was. The in- 
 ference would seem to be simple," that is, as to 
 the fact of his training under Cotton. Perhaps 
 not so simple, after all. It might be replied: 
 
APPENDIX A. 141 
 
 neither was Cotton an Independent when 
 Vane came to Boston, and more than that, he 
 never became one, and was hardly quahfied to 
 be a sympathetic and successful teacher. So 
 far as we have any knowledge, Vane was an 
 Independent in sentiment when he reached New 
 England, and his experience here simply con- 
 firmed him in views already accepted, instead 
 of teaching him new and broader views which 
 his supposed teacher never accepted. His 
 'draining in Cotton's study" was of the kind 
 that establishes the views which are not 
 taught; that is, a teaching by repulsion. It 
 is made certain by abundant testimony that 
 Vane was an outspoken and fully ripened 
 Independent at once when he returned to 
 England. He was elected to Parliament in 
 1640, and immediately, says Dr. Ireland, "the 
 leaders of the Independent party in the Com- 
 mons were the younger Vane and Oliver St. 
 John." Baillie, speaking of the Parliamentary 
 discussions at that time, praises naturally the 
 orators on the Presbyterian side, that is, those 
 who declaimed in defence of the narrow polity 
 
142 APPENDIX A. 
 
 and intolerance of the Presbyterians, and adds 
 significantly, ''Yet Henry Vane went on vio- 
 lently," on the side of the Independents. 
 
 It ought not to be necessary to repeat what 
 is so well known and universally acknowledged,, 
 that Independency in England and Puritanism 
 in Massachusetts Bay were not synonymous. 
 They did not stand for the same things, either 
 in the matter of civil or ecclesiastical polity. 
 Dr. Hosmer says: 
 
 " The first hint at Independency is perhaps 
 found in the writings of Zwingle. [A more 
 accurate statement would be in the publica- 
 tions of the Swiss Anabaptists in the sixteenth 
 century.] It first took form in England, how- 
 ever; then developed fully in America. [It 
 should be said it was many years in developing.} 
 While Prelacy was dominant in the time of 
 Elizabeth and James, little congregations of 
 Brownists or Separatists appeared here and 
 there in England, some of which went to Hol- 
 land." 
 
 As a proof of the lack of identity between 
 Massachusetts Puritanism and EngUsh In- 
 
APPENDIX A. 143 
 
 dependency it will be sufficient to quote Dr. 
 Henry M. Dexter, a recognized authority, who 
 says ('' Congregationalism as Seen in its Litera- 
 ture," p. 463): 
 
 ''The early Congregationalism of this country 
 was Barrowism and not Brownism — a Con- 
 gregationalized Presbyterianism, or a Presby- 
 terianized Congregationalism — which had its 
 roots in the one system and its branches in the 
 other." 
 
 Robert Browne, who broke with the Church 
 of England about the year 1580, enunciated 
 his new views, and founded an Independent 
 Church at Norwich, was, it is claimed, the 
 founder of Independency or Congregationalism. 
 ''This system," according to Dr. Dexter (p. 114) 
 that is, Brownism or Separatism, "proved to 
 have vitality enough and enough of adaptation 
 to the demands of human life, to resume and 
 reassert its interrupted sway," [Browne and 
 his little church soon migrated across the chan- 
 nel to Middleberg. Not long after, he returned 
 to England, repudiated his new views, and 
 became again a clergyman in the Church of 
 
144 APPENDIX A. 
 
 England, for the rest of his days. His views, 
 however, found other advocates] ''so that 
 although the thought may not be in their 
 minds, the Independents of England and the 
 Congregationalists of America, more nearly 
 than from any other, are to-day in lineal de- 
 scent from that little Norwich church of two 
 hundred and ninety-six years ago." Dr. 
 Dexter means, of course, the Congregationalists 
 of to-day, and not the Presbyterianized Con- 
 gregationalists of the first half of the seven- 
 teenth century in Boston. 
 
 This important distinction between the 
 English Independents of that period and 
 American Independents (?) is clearly brought 
 out by J. A. Doyle {" The Puritan Colonies/' 
 1,127): 
 
 " To such an one as Vane life in New England 
 must have been a continuous disenchantment. 
 [This is a plain recognition of Vane's advanced 
 position in Independency before he came to 
 New England.] The more cultivated men 
 among the political reformers valued and 
 sympathized with Puritanism. But they 
 
APPENDIX A. 145 
 
 valued it in its moral and political aspects, as 
 a means for the regeneration of the individual, 
 as an ally against corrupt courtiers and arbi- 
 trary statesmen, rather than a system of theo- 
 logical dogma. To them the Independent 
 system meant one under which self-constituted 
 societies, freely brought together by common 
 beliefs and aspirations, might work out the 
 problems of spiritual life. In New England 
 it meant the arbitrary rule of a tyrannical 
 public opinion. Moreover, to men familiar 
 with those theories of human rights which were 
 now asserting themselves, the ecclesiastical 
 jurisdiction of Massachusetts must have seemed 
 a violation of all sound principles." 
 
 The same fundamental distinction between 
 Brownism or English Independency and so- 
 called American Independency is recognized 
 and set forth as follows by Prof. Herbert L. 
 Osgood ("American Colonies in the Seventeenth 
 Century"): 
 
 " Not only was it [religious freedom] a funda- 
 mental tenet of Robert Browne, but it lay at 
 the basis of true Independency. The Puritans 
 
146 APPENDIX A. 
 
 of Massachusetts were in theory Independents^ 
 and had they remained true to the principle 
 upon which their movement began, they must 
 have welcomed the doctrine with which the 
 name of Roger Williams is identified. But 
 largely under the pressure of political necessity, 
 the Massachusetts leaders had from the be- 
 ginning committed themselves to a limited and 
 Presbyterianized Independency. In order to 
 secure unity and strength they had sacrificed 
 freedom (I, 235). 
 
 Finally, the tendency toward democracy in 
 ecclesiastical and civil government was counter- 
 balanced by the necessity for the maintenance 
 of order and authority. The more aristocratic 
 phases of this system were reproduced by the 
 Presbyterians of England and Scotland; the 
 more democratic by Robert Browne and his 
 followers, the Separatists. An intermediate 
 position came to be occupied by the Puritans 
 of New England (I, 203)." 
 
 In 1634, the year after Cotton's arrival in 
 Boston, he issued a publication entitled *' Ques- 
 tions and Answers Upon Church Government."' 
 
APPENDIX A. 147 
 
 This publication was re-issued in 1643. In it 
 Cotton maintained, according to Dr. Dexter 
 (p. 424), ''that Christ has committed govern- 
 ment partly to the body of the church, but prin- 
 cipally to the Presbytery of Ruling Elders." 
 The system of ruling elders was out and out 
 Presbyterianism to that extent. Dr. Dexter 
 declares (p. 699): 
 
 '' Our historic original New England Con- 
 gregationalism was a purely Presbyterian 
 polity, only that it was applied to, and stopped 
 short with, the local assembly." 
 
 The system was more and more departed 
 from as the years went by, to the regret of 
 prominent leaders. John Wise writing in 1717 
 {"A Vindication of the Government of N. E. 
 Churches, ^^ p. 88), ''pleads for the old New 
 England way, as he understands and advocates 
 it, with Ruling Elders holding their place." 
 
 Of "T/ie Way of the Churches of Christ in 
 New England,'' Cotton's publication, which Mr. 
 Mead thinks had influence on Vane, Dr. Dexter 
 says (p. 434) : "In this I think of nothing which 
 requires mention as adding to, or especially 
 
148 APPENDIX A. 
 
 modifying, the views already propounded." 
 The Cambridge Platform distinctly declared, 
 ^'The term Independent we approve not." 
 Hugh Peters said (1643), ''We are much 
 charged with what we own not, viz.: In- 
 dependency." There were undoubtedly dif- 
 ferent shades of belief among the churches. It 
 was a time of transition. Some of the leaders, 
 including Cotton, were charged with incon- 
 sistent utterances. It is doubtful if among the 
 early New England churches of ''the standing 
 order" there were any Independent churches 
 in the English sense or any Congregational 
 Churches in the modern sense anywhere, ex- 
 cepting in the Plymouth Colony. In its ripest 
 .stage for many years it was, to repeat Dr. 
 Dexter's accurate phrase, " Presbyterianized 
 CongregationaUsm." Dr. E. H. Bjdngton says 
 (" The Puritan in England and New England," 
 p. 108): 
 
 " The present Congregationalism is much 
 nearer that of the Plymouth Church than that 
 of the Cambridge Platform." 
 
 Under that Platform churches bearing the 
 
APPENDIX A. 149 
 
 name Presbyterian, though of the Congrega- 
 tional sort, were organized for a century and 
 more. An illustration is found in Providence, 
 R. I. The First Congregational (now Unita- 
 rian) Society in Providence, organized as late 
 as 1720, was called Presbyterian. In a dis- 
 course on the history of the church, delivered 
 in 1836, by the pastor. Rev. Edward B. Hall, 
 occur these words: 
 
 '' The first name given to this Society, Pres- 
 byterian, I know not how to explain. It is 
 found in the earliest records and deeds, and 
 was long the popular, if not the only, name. 
 * * * It is still better known probably, at 
 least to those in this vicinity, than any other 
 name." 
 
 The land on which the first house of worship 
 was erected, was conveyed in 1723 to '' Feoffees 
 in trust for the Presbyterian or Congregational 
 Society in Providence." The terms were em- 
 ployed interchangeably or as mutually de- 
 scriptive. This was true of the two succeeding 
 Congregational churches in Providence. 
 
 No fact in history is more incontrovertible 
 
150 APPENDIX A. 
 
 than that the Independency of England was 
 more advanced, and more consistent than the 
 Congregationahsm of New England. The ex- 
 tent of its diffusion is often underestimated. 
 The Brownists or Separatists, and the Baptists 
 were in harmony in their views of religious 
 liberty and of church polity. They were all 
 Independents or Congregationahsts. The In- 
 dependents did not become a political party 
 until near the close of the first third of the 
 seventeenth century. But they had long been 
 a, positive and increasing force to be reckoned 
 with among the religious forces of the English 
 people, and were so active and aggressive, in 
 spite of bitter and persistent persecution, that 
 they had not a little to do in bringing about the 
 English Commonwealth. They were strong 
 enough and numerous enough to become the 
 dominant party in England under Cromwell. 
 Fifty-five years had passed between Browne's 
 movement at Norwich, and the emigration of 
 Vane, and Browne's priority is disputed by 
 some Baptist historians. A half-century and 
 more is ample time for a harvest, when the 
 
APPENDIX A. 151 
 
 soil is ready. It is stated by an opponent 
 that the presses of the Baptists ''did groan 
 and sweat under the load of their pub- 
 lications," which scattered everywhere their 
 leavening influence. Green, in his ''Short 
 History of the English People," calls attention 
 to the fact that "at the beginning of the seven- 
 teenth century scores of Independent con- 
 gregations existed in England and Wales." 
 Thomas Erskine May {"Constitutional History 
 of England" II, 296) says: "Before the 
 death of EHzabeth (1603) the Independents 
 had spread themselves widely through the 
 country." Sir Walter Raleigh declared in 
 Parliament, before the close of the sixteenth 
 century, that "he was afraid that there were 
 nearly twenty thousand Brownists in Eng- 
 land." Evidently "the New England Way," 
 so-called, was not a new way in old England, 
 unless its modification made it such. Vane 
 had a thousand better qualified teachers at 
 home, and it is safe to say, had learned his 
 lesson well, so that he had Uttle need of Cotton 
 as "preceptor" during his brief experience in 
 
152 APPENDIX A. 
 
 Boston. This will easily account for the fact 
 which Mr. Mead, who nevertheless advocates 
 the claim for Cotton, acknowledges, when he 
 says: ''It is also certain that the learner ad- 
 vanced far beyond the [supposed] teacher." 
 At any rate, we must accept Cotton's own 
 testimony as to the position he held, viz.: 
 ''Democrary I do not conceyve that ever God 
 did ordeyne as a fitt government eyther for 
 church or commonwealth." Dr. Hosmer con- 
 fesses that '' For democracy in church or state 
 Cotton never had a kind word." 
 
APPENDIX B. 
 
 Contemporary Appreciations of Vane. 
 
 ''In fine, seeing himself on all hands in an 
 evil case, he [Vane] resolved for New England. 
 In order to this, striking in with some Non- 
 Conformists which intended that way, his 
 honorable birth, long hair and other circum- 
 stances of his person rendered his fellow- 
 travellers jealous of him, as a spy to betray 
 their Hberty, rather than in any way like to 
 advantage their design. But he that they 
 thought at first to have too little of Christ for 
 their company, did soon after appear to have 
 too much for them. For he had not been long 
 in New England, but he ripened into more 
 knowledge and experience of Christ than the 
 churches there could bear the testimony of. 
 Even New England could not bear all his 
 words, though there was there no King's 
 
 Court or King's Chapel.— Amos 7: 13, 14." 
 11 
 
154 APPENDIX B. 
 
 George Sikes, '' The Life and Death of Sir 
 Henry Vane, K^ cfcc" p. 8 (printed in the year 
 1662). 
 
 ''Then he [Vane] returns for Old England. 
 Shortly after, the leading and preparatory 
 passages to the Long Parliament and the late 
 public changes drew on. From the beginning 
 of that Parliament he became such a drudge 
 for his country, so willing on all accounts, both 
 in person and estate, to spend and be spent 
 (in his chargeable circumstances and un- 
 wearied endeavors for the public good and just 
 liberties of men as men, as also for the advance 
 of the Kingdom of Christ in these nations) as 
 I know not any former age or story can 
 parallel." 
 
 George Sikes, " The Life and Death of Sir 
 Henry Vane, K^ cfcc" p. 8. 
 
 ''This lover of his nation and asserter of the 
 just rights and liberties thereof unto his 
 death, was also for limiting the civil power, 
 delegated by the people to their Trustees 
 in the Supreme Court of Parliament or to any 
 Magistrates whatsoever. He held that there 
 
APPENDIX B. 155 
 
 <ire certain fundamental rights and liberties of 
 the nation that carry such a universal and un- 
 deniable consonancy with the light of nature, 
 right reason and the law of God, that they are in 
 no wise to be abrogated or altered, but preserved. 
 What less than this can secure people's lives, 
 liberties and birth-rights, declared in Magna 
 Charta, and ratified by two and thirty Par- 
 liaments since?" 
 
 George Sikes, '' The Life and Death of Sir 
 Henry Vane, K^" p. 98. 
 
 ''This worthy patriot was freely chosen, 
 without any seeking of his, to serve as burgess 
 for the town of Kingston-upon-Hull, in that 
 Parliament, which sat down November 3, 1640. 
 About thirteen years did he indefatigably labor 
 therein for his country's relief, against manifest 
 oppressions and public grievances that were 
 upon it. And well nigh ten years more he hath 
 patiently suffered as a useless or pernicious 
 person because of his destructive constitution 
 to the peace and interest of tyranny. During 
 the Long Parliament he was usually so engaged 
 for the public, in the House and several com- 
 
156 APPENDIX B. 
 
 mittees, from early in the morning to very late 
 at night, that he had scarce any leisure to eat 
 his bread, converse with his nearest relations^ 
 or at all to mind his family affairs." 
 
 George Sikes, '' The Life and Death of Sir 
 Henry Vane, K'" p. 105. 
 
 ''Sir Harry Vane was one of the commis- 
 sioners, and therefore the others need not be 
 named, since he was all in any business where 
 others were joined with him. He was indeed 
 a man of extraordinary parts, a pleasant wit^ 
 a great understanding, which pierced into and 
 discerned the purposes of other men with 
 wonderful sagacity; whilst he had himself 
 vultum clausum, that no man could make a 
 guess of what he intended. He was of a 
 temper not to be moved, and of rare dissimu- 
 lation, and could comply when it was not 
 seasonable to contradict, without losing ground 
 by the condescension; and if he were not 
 superior to Mr. Hampden, he was inferior to 
 no other man, in all mysterious artifices. There 
 need no more be said of his ability than that 
 he was chosen to cozen and deceive a whole 
 
APPENDIX B. 157 
 
 nation, which excel in craft and cunning; 
 which he did with notable pregnancy and 
 dexterity, and prevailed with a people that 
 could not otherwise be prevailed upon than 
 by advancing their idol presbytery, to sacrifice 
 their peace, their interest and their faith, to 
 the erecting a power and authority that re- 
 solved to persecute presbytery to an extirpa- 
 tion; and very near brought their purpose to 
 pass." (This is Lord Clarendon's account of 
 Vane's success in securing the adoption of 
 ''The Solemn League and Covenant," in which 
 he eulogises Vane's genius, and falsely im- 
 pugns the character of his motives and 
 methods.) 
 
 "In November, 1640, again elected for the 
 borough of Kingston-upon-Hull, Sir Henry 
 Vane the younger sat down at Westminster, 
 a member of the ever-memorable Long Parlia- 
 ment. From that instant his course was 
 plain, and never swerved from. ''In the be- 
 ginning of the great Parhament," says one who 
 had watched him well, the honest and able 
 Ludlow, "he was elected to serve his country 
 
158 APPENDIX B. 
 
 among them, without the least appUcation 
 on his part to that end. And in this station, 
 he soon made appear how capable he was of 
 managing great affairs, possessing in the highest 
 perfection a quick and ready apprehension, a 
 strong and tenacious memory, a profound 
 and penetrating judgment, a just and noble 
 eloquence, with an easy and graceful man- 
 ner of speaking. To these were added a 
 singular zeal and affection for the good of the 
 Commonwealth, and a resolution and courage 
 not to be shaken or diverted from the public 
 service." 
 
 Quoted from Forster's ''Statesmen of the 
 Commonwealth. ' ' 
 
 "I have, madam, whilst I own a love to my 
 country, a deep interest in the public loss, 
 which so many worthy persons lament. The 
 world is robbed of an unparalleled example of 
 virtue and piety. His great abilities made his 
 enemies persuade themselves that all the revo- 
 lutions in the last age were wrought by his 
 influence, as if the world were only moved by 
 his engine. In him they lodged all the dying. 
 
APPENDIX B. 159 
 
 hopes of his party. There was no opportunity 
 that he did not improve for the advantage of 
 his country, and when he was in his last and 
 much deplored scene, he strove to make the 
 people in love with that freedom they had so 
 lavishly and foolishly thrown away. He was 
 great in all his actions, but to me he seemed 
 greatest in his sufferings, when his enemies 
 seemed to fear that he alone should be able to 
 acquaint them with a change of fortune. In 
 his lowest condition you have seen him the 
 terror of a great prince, strengthened by many 
 potent confederates and armies; you have seen 
 him live in high estimation and honour, and 
 certainly he died with it. Men arrive at 
 honours by several ways. The martyrs, though 
 they wanted the glittering crowns the princes 
 in those ages dispensed, have rich ones in 
 every just man's esteem. Virtue, though un- 
 fortunate, shines in spite of all its enemies; 
 nor is it in any power to deface those lasting 
 monuments your friend hath raised of his, in 
 every heart that either knew him, or held any 
 intelligence with fame." (Extract from a letter 
 
160 APPENDIX B. 
 
 from a person of noble birth to a relative of 
 Vane about a week after the execution.) 
 
 ''Tell me, my Friend, how did he wield his 
 glittering flaming sword? Did not it behave 
 itself valiantly, conquering and turning every 
 way to preserve the way of truth, liberty. 
 Righteousness, and the cause of the Lord and 
 his people? Was not his whole armor very 
 rich? Was it not all from the sanctuary, for 
 beauty and strength? Oh, mighty man of 
 valor! thou champion for the Lord and His 
 host, when they were defied! How hast thou 
 spoiled them! The Goliah is trodden under 
 foot. The whole army of the Philistines fly. 
 Is he fled? Is he gone from amongst men? 
 Was not this earth, this kingdom worthy of 
 him? Wast thou upon the top of the Mount 
 of Olives with him, to see how he was lifted up, 
 glorified, advanced? Didst thou see him 
 ascend, and chariots and heavenly hosts, the 
 glorious train accompanying him to his cham- 
 ber, to the palace of the great King, whither 
 he is gone, we gazing below after him? But 
 will he not come again? Will not the Lord, his 
 
APPENDIX B. 161 
 
 Bridegroom, bring him, when he shall come to 
 reign, and his saints with him? Make ready 
 then, my friend. Gird up thy loins. Ride 
 through gloriously, for the day is a great day 
 of battle. And he that overcometh shall sit 
 down with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the 
 Prophets, the Apostles, and our late Friend 
 Vane, in the kingdom of Heaven, whither I 
 shall ever long to be prepared to set forward 
 with the first, and to meet thee, Friend, 
 ascending into the heavenly place." (Extract 
 from a letter from a friend out of the country 
 to one who accompanied Sir Henry Vane to 
 the scaffold.) 
 
APPENDIX C. 
 
 Additional Modern Appreciations of Vane. 
 
 "The most distinguished personage who 
 arrived at this time was Henry Vane, after- 
 wards Sir Henry Vane the younger, the heir of 
 one of the most powerful noblemen of England, 
 and, "a young gentleman of excellent parts, '^ 
 whose accession was hailed as an omen of good. 
 He had long been desirous of visiting America, 
 and had only been prevented by the prohibi- 
 tion of his father, who yielded to the commands 
 of King Charles, and suffered him to depart.'^ 
 
 John S. Barry, "History of Massachusetts,'^ 
 First Period, p. 207. 
 
 "It was a period of intense and violent 
 excitement. Popular controversies had pre- 
 ceded his arrival; and to the pressure of ex- 
 ternal aggressions, were added internal com- 
 motions of by no means a trifling nature. 
 
APPENDIX C. 163 
 
 Faction and intrigue were rearing their hydra- 
 heads in direst strife. Extraordinary re- 
 Hgious dissensions were on the eve of con- 
 vulsing society to its centre. With the genius- 
 of the people he was little acquainted; nor was 
 he imbued with the prejudices which their 
 situation engendered. Some of the principal 
 persons, jealous of the enthusiasm with which 
 he was received, and of his interventions to 
 heal the distractions of the Commonwealth^, 
 (see Winthrop I. 211-214) looked upon him with 
 coldness and mistrust. And, ' more for things 
 than persons, spirit then forms,' and owning 
 and cherishing goodness everywhere, the liber- 
 ality of his heart, which refused to be tied down 
 to all the formalities of the age, was little in 
 unison with the cynical moroseness of a portion 
 of the clergy. Hence the day on which he was 
 invested with the purple of magistracy, saw 
 a formidable opposition organized against 
 him, determined to embarrass his government 
 at every step; and so well did his antagonists 
 succeed in involving himself personally in 
 difficulties, and his most intimate friends in. 
 
164 APPENDIX C. 
 
 hopeless and inextricable confusion, that his 
 administration was brief and stormy; and by 
 the trials he encountered he was painfully con- 
 vinced of his mistake in accepting an office, 
 which, under other and more favorable aus- 
 pices, there can be no doubt he would have 
 filled as acceptably and as successfully as 
 either of his predecessors." 
 
 John S. Barry, ^^ History of Massachusetts, '' 
 First Period, pp. 209, 210. 
 
 ''But twenty-four years of age at this time, 
 his was indeed a remarkable character. . . 
 He was a man, and had doubtless the failings of 
 R man. Yet the gravity of his deportment^ 
 the calm and contemplative composure of his 
 countenance, the complete control which he 
 had gained over his passions, with his deep 
 penetration, and his intuitive discernment of 
 the characters and purposes of others, by even 
 Clarendon are noted as extraordinary qualities, 
 rendering him, if not the superior, at least the 
 equal of Hampden; and his profound theolog- 
 ical attainments, the purity of his mind, his 
 easy and graceful eloquence, and the brilliance 
 
APPENDIX C. 165 
 
 of his genius, won for him the warmest eu- 
 logiums of the gifted Milton, who is lavish of 
 his encomiums upon the young champion of 
 liberty. Dark dissimulation was no attribute 
 of his nature. Whatever of enthusiasm he 
 possessed, it was tinged with no fanaticism; 
 stained with no hypocricy; nor did it precipi- 
 tate him into injudicious measures, or sangui- 
 nary excesses, but added new luster to his ac- 
 quired abilities, new powers to his natural sa- 
 gacity; and to the latest hour of his life, amid 
 the wreck of his fortune and the treachery of 
 his associates, . . . never for a moment 
 did he swerve from his principles, but pre- 
 pared himself for his fate with heroic and 
 even smiling intrepidity." 
 
 John S. Barry, '^ History of Massachusetts,'^ 
 First Period, p. 208. 
 
 ''In every great measure of the Commons the 
 name of the younger Vane now prominently 
 appears; and pending the trial of Strafford, he 
 had carried up the impeachment which dis- 
 abled the power of Laud, the once terrible 
 enemy of toleration. In all matters of re- 
 
166 APPENDIX C. 
 
 ligious reform he more especially distinguished 
 himself; he was one of the greatest supporters 
 of the famous 'root and branch' petition 
 against prelacy; in the committee of which 
 Hyde was chairman he spoke with masterly 
 •effect in favor of the bill against episcopal 
 government; and when the famous Assembly 
 of Divines assembled at Westminster, to de- 
 liberate on the state of the Church, and the 
 interests of religion, being requested by the 
 House of Commons, to take upon himself the 
 -duty of one of its lay members, he rendered 
 himself conspicuously eminent in the con- 
 sultations of that most grave and learned 
 body; not only by his theological attainments, 
 hut by the singular subtlety and skill with 
 which he addressed them to the loftier pur- 
 poses of government; and in the faith of those 
 opinions ... he sought to impress upon 
 his more sectarian colleagues the necessity of 
 associating with the popular principle in civil 
 affairs an extreme and universal toleration of 
 religious differences." 
 
APPENDIX C. 167 
 
 John Forster, '^Statesmen of the Common- 
 wealth," p. 282. 
 
 ''When he retired for a time from public 
 life, in disgust at the usurpation of Cromwell, 
 he occupied his leisure with religious and 
 political writing. In politics he wrote with 
 the clear and impressive reason, the simple and 
 masterful style of a consummate statesman. 
 In religion he indulged occasionally those 
 wild and visionary thoughts which have 
 seldom failed to visit all strong and fervent 
 spirits of the earth, when they have flung 
 themselves passionately into the profounder 
 questions of man's existence and destiny." 
 
 John Forster, '' Statesmen of the Common- 
 wealth,'' p. 287. 
 
 '' A theoretical republican Vane was not, if it 
 is attempted to be shown by this that the 
 motive of his public exertions was merely a 
 preconceived idea of the abstract excellence of 
 that form of civil society. What Vane sought 
 was good and popular government, extensive 
 representation, freedom of thought, freedom of 
 the press, and perfect liberty of conscience. 
 
168 APPENDIX C. 
 
 Because he could not find these under a Mon- 
 archy, he became a repubUcan." 
 
 John Forster, "Statesmen of the Common- 
 wealth;' p. 300. 
 
 ''Vane comprehended the principles of 
 civil and religious liberty. He understood 
 them thoroughly, and when still scarcely more 
 than a youth, defended them with an ingenuity, 
 force, and felicity of illustration, particularly 
 from the Scriptures, which will not suffer by 
 comparison with anything that has since been 
 done in the same great cause. He well deserves 
 a place in that illustrious company, who have 
 taken the lead, in modern times, in asserting 
 the rights of conscience, and in vindicating 
 the principles of Christian liberty. He was 
 contemporaneous with Roger Williams, and 
 was followed by John Milton, William 
 Penn, and John Locke. Not one of them 
 grasped the subject more completely than he 
 did ; and when we consider that he was zealously 
 engaged in religious discussions, and enthu- 
 siastically devoted to what he thought the 
 truth, we can hardly hesitate to yield to him 
 
APPENDIX C. 169 
 
 the glorious distinction of having to a degree 
 that was never surpassed, if ever equalled, 
 comprehended in theory, and developed in 
 practice throughout his whole life the sacred 
 principles of Christian toleration and religious 
 liberty. 
 
 As writers and as statesmen. Vane and 
 WilUams seem to deserve the glory of the 
 earliest promulgation of the principles of 
 toleration. They understood them, in their 
 whole extent, as applicable not only to Chris- 
 tians, but to all men of whatever reUgion." 
 
 Charles W. Upham's ''Life of Sir Henry 
 Vane,'' pp. 69, 70. 
 
 ''At the same time came Henry Vane, the 
 younger, a man of the purest mind; a states- 
 man of spotless integrity; whose name the 
 progress of intelligence and liberty will erase 
 from the rubric of fanatics and traitors, and 
 insert high among the aspirants after truth 
 and the martyrs for liberty. . . . He 
 was happy in the possession of an admirable 
 genius, though naturally more inclined to 
 contemplative excellence than to action; he 
 
 12 
 
170 APPENDIX C. 
 
 was happy in the eulogist of his virtues, for 
 Milton, ever so parsimonious of praise, reserv- 
 ing the majesty of his verse to celebrate the 
 glories and vindicate the providence of God, 
 was lavish of his encomiums on the youthful 
 friend of religious liberty. But Vane was still 
 more happy in attaining early in life a firmly 
 settled theory of morals, and in possessing an 
 energetic will, which made all his conduct to 
 the very last conform to the doctrines he had 
 espoused, turning his dying hour into a seal 
 of the witness, which his life had ever borne 
 with noble consistency, to the freedom of con- 
 science and the people/' 
 
 Bancroft's ^^ History of the United States," 
 Vol. I., p. 383. 
 
 "Now that all England was carried away 
 with eagerness for monarchy. Sir Henry Vane, 
 the former Governor of Massachusetts, the 
 benefactor of Rhode Island, the ever-faithful 
 friend of New England, adhered with un- 
 daunted firmness to the glorious cause of 
 popular hberty; and shunned by every man 
 who courted the returning monarch, he became 
 
APPENDIX C. 171 
 
 noted for the most 'catholic' unpopularity. 
 He fell from the affections of the English people, 
 ivhen the English people fell from the jealous 
 •care of their liberties. He had ever been 
 incorrupt and disinterested, merciful, and 
 liberal. When Unitarianism was persecuted, 
 not as a sect, but as a blasphemy. Vane inter- 
 ceded for its advocate; he pleaded for the 
 liberty of the Quakers imprisoned for their 
 opinions; as a legislator he demanded justice in 
 b)ehalf of the Roman Catholics; he resisted the 
 .sale of Penruddoc's men into slavery, as an 
 aggression on the rights of man. The immense 
 emoluments of his office as treasurer of the 
 navy he voluntarily resigned. When the Pres- 
 byterians, though his adversaries, were forcibly 
 excluded from the House of Commons, he also 
 ^absented himself. When the Monarchy was 
 overthrown, and a Commonwealth attempted. 
 Vane reluctantly filled a seat in the Council, and 
 resuming his place as a legislator, amidst the 
 floating wrecks of the English constitution, he 
 <;lung to the existing Parliament as to the only 
 fragment on which it was possible to rescue 
 
172 APPENDIX C. 
 
 English liberty. His energy gave to the Eng- 
 lish navy its efficient organization; if England 
 could cope with Holland on the sea, the glory 
 of preparation is Vane's. His labors in that 
 remnant of a Parliament were immediately 
 turned to the purification of liberty at its 
 sources; and he is believed to have anticipated 
 every great principle of the modern reform bilL 
 He steadily resisted the usurpation of Crom- 
 well; as he had a right to esteem the sorrows of 
 his country his private sorrows, he declared 
 it no small grief that the evil and wretched 
 principles of absolute monarchy should be 
 revived by men professing godliness, and Crom- 
 well, unable to intimidate him, confined him 
 to Carisbrook Castle. Both Cromwell and 
 Vane were unsuccessful statesmen; the first 
 desired to secure the government of England to 
 his family, the other to vindicate it for the 
 people." 
 
 Bancroft's ^^ History of the United States," 
 Vol. II, pp. 36-38. 
 
 ''At the election in May, John Winthrop and 
 Thomas Dudley were chosen councillors for life. 
 
APPENDIX C. 
 
 173 
 
 But the young Henry Vane was at the same 
 time elected Governor of Massachusetts — a 
 signal proof of the influence and importance 
 he had so rapidly acquired in the Colony. 
 Winthrop, who accepted the Deputy Governor- 
 ship under him, says of him in his journal on 
 this occasion : 'Because he was son and heir to a 
 privy councillor in England, the ships congrat- 
 ulated his election with a volley of great shot.' 
 But Vane had ability and enterprise enough to 
 have secured an ultimate success and celebrity, 
 as well as salutes of ' great shot,' without the 
 aid of any mere family prestige. His adminis- 
 tration, however, was destined to be disturbed 
 by a violence of religious and civil controversy 
 which has never been exceeded on the same 
 soil, if indeed, on any soil beneath the sun." 
 
 Robert C. Winthrop, ''Memorial History of 
 Boston;' Vol. I., pp. 125-126. - 
 
 ''From the day when scarcely more than a 
 boy he defended Anne Hutchinson in Massa- 
 chusetts, to the day when yet in his full 
 strength he serenely laid his head upon the 
 block on Tower-hill by command of Charles II, 
 
174 APPENDIX C. 
 
 he consecrated the whole force of extraordinary- 
 powers to the expounding and vindication of 
 what he held to be English freedom, overlaid by 
 accretions which were in reality foreign to it> 
 If the principles for which he lived and died are 
 examined, it will be found that they are no less 
 precious to Americans than to Englishmen. 
 'Government of the people, by the people, and. 
 for the people,' the famous sentence of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln's Gettsyburg address, was also the 
 fundamental thought with young Sir Henry- 
 Vane. 
 
 One by one England has adopted and is- 
 adopting the reforms which he proclaimed to be 
 necessary in order that the State should rest 
 upon the substructure fitted for it — the ex- 
 tension of the suffrage, the transformation of 
 the Upper House, the disestablishment of the 
 Church — the doing away with every privilege 
 of faith and class that stands in the path of 
 toleration and fair equality — the utter com- 
 mitting of power to the hands of the people 
 assembled in their representatives in the great 
 national Council. As in England and her de- 
 
APPENDIX C. 
 
 175 
 
 pendencies the power of the people grows, a 
 process which we see going forward without 
 break, that noble Commonwealth becomes 
 more and more manifest which Vane prema- 
 turely tried and died to bring to pass. For 
 and in England he struggled, when America 
 was scarcely in embryo, but no statesman more 
 soundly American can be named than he." 
 
 James K. Hosmer's "Young Sir Henry 
 Vane;' pp. 567, 568. 
 
 ''Vane was one of the noblest characters of 
 his age, though 'the subject of widely differing 
 judgments.'" 
 
 Sanford H. Cobb, "The Rise of Religious 
 Liberty in America;' p. 190. 
 
 "By far the most advanced man of his time 
 was Sir Henry Vane. He had suffered some- 
 what from the intolerance of Massachusetts, 
 and returning to England, had thrown his 
 energies into the struggle against the king. 
 But whether from king or commonwealth, he 
 did not approve of interference with rehgion. 
 In 1656 he pubhshed A Healing Question, in 
 which he took the ground that 'the magistrate 
 
176 APPENDIX C. 
 
 had no right to go beyond matters of outward 
 practice, converse, and deahngs in the things 
 of this Hfe between man and man.' In this 
 same essay he also maintained that the army 
 should be subject to Parliament, for which he 
 was haled before Cromwell and thrown into 
 prison." 
 
 " The Rise of Religious Liberty in America," 
 p. 60, by Sanford H. Cobb. 
 
 ''Vane's American career has been harshly 
 judged by American historians. He made 
 many mistakes, but the greatest mistake was 
 that made by the Colonists themselves, when 
 out of deference to birth and rank, they set a 
 young and inexperienced stranger to deal with 
 problems which tasked the wisdom of their 
 ablest heads. Subsequently, however, his 
 connection with New England became an 
 advantage to the Colonies, and in 1645, Mas- 
 sachusetts merchants in difficulties with the 
 English government found him a strong help." 
 
 C. H. Firth in "Dictionary of National 
 Biography." 
 
APPENDIX C. 177 
 
 ''It is impossible to suppose that the Scottish 
 commissioners were simply outwitted by Vane; 
 they accepted the amendment because they 
 hoped to interpret it according to their own 
 wisheS; through the political and military 
 influence the alliance gave them." 
 
 C. H. Firth in "Dictionary of National 
 Biography,^' cf. with Lord Clarendon's inter- 
 pretation of Vane's conduct, p. 156. 
 
 ''In the question whether the republic should 
 have an established Church or not, Vane and 
 Cromwell took opposite sides. The proposals 
 of Owen and other Independent ministers to the 
 committee for the propagation of the gospel, 
 which Cromwell carried out in the ecclesiasti- 
 cal organization of the Protectorate were abso- 
 lutely contrary to Vane's principles." 
 
 C. H. Firth in "Dictionary of National 
 Biography.'' 
 
 "Vane, who was one of the few men of the 
 time who really understood and believed in the 
 principles of civil and religious liberty, and 
 had a horror of all forms of bigotry, had no 
 •sympathy with the attacks of the clergy on 
 
178 APPENDIX C. 
 
 Mrs. Hutchinson, with many of whose opinions 
 he entirely agreed. A strong opposition under 
 the lead of Winthrop was organized against 
 him, and on the day of the annual election, in 
 1637, he was defeated. But he had gained the 
 affections of the people of Boston, and was 
 instantly chosen by them one of their repre- 
 sentatives to the General Court. ... In 
 order to put down the Hutchinsonian heresy, a 
 law was passed by the General Court, that no 
 strangers should be received within the juris- 
 diction of the Colony except such as should be 
 allowed by some of the magistrates. This 
 created such public discontent that Governor 
 Winthrop felt obliged to put forward a 'De- 
 fence,' to which A^ane immediately replied. 
 
 From first to last he remained an inflexible 
 republican. After the death of Cromwell he 
 was elected to the Parliament of 1659, and 
 was there the leader of the republican party^ 
 When the Long Parliament was again sum- 
 moned to assemble, Vane was appointed one 
 of the Committee of Safety, and subsequently 
 
APPENDIX C. 179 
 
 President of the Council of State. The restora- 
 tion of the King led to his disgrace and death. 
 
 He was a leader of the Independents, and 
 was one of the lay members nominated by 
 Parliament to take part in the proceedings and 
 discussions of the Assembly of divines. His 
 labors in behalf of New England were ardu- 
 ous and important. It was in great measure 
 through his influence that the charter for the 
 Rhode Island Colony was procured, and Roger 
 Williams declared that his name ought to be 
 held in honored remembrance by her people.'' 
 — ^^ The New American Cyclopoedia.^^ 
 
 "He was sent to France and Geneva. Here 
 he no doubt acquired the strongly Puritan 
 views for which he had been prepared by a 
 remarkable change of mind when quite a boy. 
 In spite of the personal efforts of Laud, who 
 made the attempt at the King's request, he 
 refused to give them up, and fell especially 
 under the influence of Pym. In 1635, he 
 emigrated to Massachusetts, where he wa&. 
 elected Governor in 1636, though only twenty- 
 
180 APPENDIX C. 
 
 four years of age. After two (?) years in 
 office, during which he showed striking ad- 
 ministrative abinty,.he was defeated by Win- 
 throp, the former Governor, chiefly on account 
 of the protection he had given to Mrs. Hutchin- 
 son in the rehgious controversies which she 
 raised. Vane returned to England in August, 
 1637. Being elected to the Short Parliament 
 for Kingston-upon-Hull, he speedily became a 
 leader of the Independents and a marked man. 
 
 He was, in fact, foremost in all the doings 
 of the Long Parliament. When the war broke 
 out he surrendered his office of treasurer of the 
 navy, but was replaced in it by the Parliament. 
 Hereupon he gave a rare example of disin- 
 terestedness by relinquishing all the profits of 
 the office, stated at £30,000 a year, stipulating 
 only that £1,000 should be paid to a Deputy. 
 In August, 1642, he was on the Committee of 
 Defence. In 1643, he was the leading man 
 .among the commissioners sent to treat for a 
 league with the Scots. Vane, who was bitterly 
 opposed to the tyranny of the Presbyterian 
 
APPENDIX C. 181 
 
 system, was successful in two important points. 
 The aim of the Scots was chiefly the propaga- 
 tion of their disciphne in England and Wales, 
 and for this they wanted only a 'covenant.' 
 Vane succeeded in getting the bond termed 
 'The Solemn League and Covenant,' and fur- 
 ther in substituting the expression 'according 
 to the word of God and the example of the best 
 Reformed churches,' for the latter phrase 
 alone. In the Westminster Assembly, too, he 
 joined Cromwell in insisting upon full rehgious 
 liberty, and in opposing the view that the 
 taking of the Covenant should be necessary for 
 ordination." — ''The Encyclopoedia Britannica," 
 Ninth Edition. 
 
 ''In summing up the character of Henry 
 Vane we may use the words of an ancient 
 historian: Vir supra humanam potentiam mag- 
 nitudine animi praeditus. In portraying a 
 character one looks for some faults, as an 
 artist requires shading for his picture. Yet,, 
 throughout his whole career, nowhere have we 
 found thought or action which needed to be 
 excused or stated in a guarded form. One 
 
182 APPENDIX C. 
 
 knows not whether most to admire the correct- 
 ness of his pohtical judgments, his largeness of 
 view with his grasp of details, his triumph over 
 the temptations which beset his rough path, 
 his humanity and his toleration. Having de- 
 voted his life to the good of his country, and 
 to the cause of liberty, his personality seems 
 lost in the great events of his time. His re- 
 ligious views in no way dimmed his charity or 
 impeded his activity, while they strengthened 
 the earnest tone of his mind, and gave a firm- 
 ness to his character, which, as some thought, 
 he did not naturally possess." — Wm. W. Ire- 
 land's " The Life of Sir Henry Vane," p. 496. 
 
APPENDIX D. 
 
 John Winthrop and Sir Henry Vane, Jr. 
 
 Charles Francis Adams {" Three Episodes of 
 Massachusetts History''), though utterly mis- 
 interpreting the conduct of Vane while Gov- 
 ernor of Massachusetts, as other historians 
 have done, makes the following comparison 
 between him and Winthrop: ''In the Massa- 
 chusetts of 1637, there was nothing but the 
 clergy. Vane was the popular leader in the 
 first movement against their supremacy, and 
 the fight he made showed he possessed par- 
 liamentary qualities of a high order; but, as 
 was apparent in the result of it, the movement 
 itself was premature. ... As compared 
 with Winthrop, the younger Vane was a man 
 of larger and more active mind, of more varied 
 and brilliant qualities. What is now known 
 as an advanced thinker, he instinctively looked 
 deeper into the heart of his subject. Win- 
 
184 APPENDIX D. 
 
 throp, it is true, shared in the darkness and the 
 superstition, and even — in his calm, moderate 
 way — in the intolerance of his time; but it 
 was just that sharing in the weakness as well 
 as the strength — the superstitions as well as 
 the faith — of his time which made him so 
 valuable in the place chance called upon him 
 to fill. ... In 1637 — persecution or no 
 persecution, momentarily right or momentarily 
 wrong — Massachusetts could far better spare 
 Henry Vane from its councils than it could 
 have spared John Winthrop." (Vol. II, pp. 
 465, 466.) In other words, Winthrop wrong, 
 if only moderately wrong, was a wiser and 
 safer leader for the Massachusetts Colonists 
 than Vane right. The man possessing, accord- 
 ing to Mr. Adams' estimate, the smaller and 
 less active mind, and less varied and less bril- 
 liant qualities, and having a shallower insight 
 into vital principles, and withal chargeable 
 with the darkness and superstition and in- 
 tolerance of his time, the better man to be at 
 the head of political affairs! Is such logic 
 convincing? Can what followed be said to be 
 
APPENDIX D. • 1S5 
 
 unexpected? We know too well the fate of Mrs. 
 Hutchinson. Mr. Adams continues: ''Vane's 
 departure was none the less an irreparable loss, 
 almost a fatal blow, to John Wheelwright, for 
 by it he was deprived of his protector, and 
 left, naked and bound, in the hands of his 
 enemies. Nor did they long delay over the 
 course they would take with him.'' 
 
 18 
 
APPENDIX E. 
 
 The Famous Synod of 1637. 
 
 ''A synod of the church was called to give 
 ecclesiastical judgment on the heresy [of Mrs. 
 Hutchinson]. This body met at Newtown 
 (Cambridge) in the spring of 1637, and gravely 
 sat itself down to discuss 'eighty-two erroneous 
 opinions' taken from the teachings of Mrs. 
 Hutchinson and her brother. Full liberty of 
 discussion was given, with the curious proviso 
 that ' no one should be held responsible for the 
 opinions he defended unless he acknowledged 
 them to be his own.' The arch heretic and 
 her brother were examined. 'Inquisition was 
 made into men's private judgment, as well as 
 into their declarations and practices.' Cotton 
 acknowledged that most of the 'opinions' were 
 erroneous, but could not condemn all, and 
 drew upon himself the sharp criticism of some 
 of his brethren. . . . After various at- 
 tempts at compromise he, according to his 
 
APPENDIX E. 187 
 
 nature and manner, got himself down where 
 the chief power lay, with more or less of a 
 ivrench to his own convictions. 
 
 The synod condemned the heretical opin- 
 ions, and reported its action to the General 
 Court. This body met shortly after, in May, 
 1637, at Newtown, 'because of the excitement 
 in Boston,' and proceeded to elect a Governor, 
 putting Winthrop in the room of Vane, and 
 •showing to the latter scant courtesy in any 
 attempts he made at defence of his position 
 -and conduct. In order to forestall other 
 heretical disturbances, the Court prohibited 
 the harboring of persons whose religious views 
 "Were considered dangerous. The hill was 
 opposed by Vane, to whom Winthrop replied, 
 ■^ the intent of the law is to preserve the welfare 
 •of the body.' " Sanford H. Cobb, "Rise of 
 Religious Liberty in America/' pp. 191, 192. 
 
 ''This oppressive statute caused such dis- 
 content that Winthrop thought it necessary 
 to publish a defence, to which Vane replied and 
 Winthrop rejoined. The controversy would 
 long since have lost its interest had it not been 
 
188 APPENDIX E. 
 
 for the theory then first advanced by Win- 
 throp, that the corporation of Massachusetts^ 
 having bought its land, held it as though it 
 were a private estate, and might exclude 
 whom it pleased therefrom ; and ever since this 
 plea has been set up in justification of every 
 excess committed by the theocracy." Brooks 
 Adams, "The Emancipation of Massachusetts,^^ 
 p. 58. 
 
 ''In the case of the Antinomians, the new 
 movement was able to shelter itself under the 
 authority of the younger Vane, then Governor,, 
 and for a while under the apparent sanction of 
 the powerful Cotton. But no other religious 
 disturbance was ever allowed to gather head 
 enough, to become dangerous to the peace 
 and unity of the little state. Dislike as we 
 may the principles on w^hich uniformity was- 
 enforced, we must admire the forehanded 
 statesmanship of the Massachusetts leaders in 
 strangling religious disturbances at birth, as 
 Pharaoh's midwives did infant Hebrews." (?) 
 Edward Eggleston, " The Beginners of a 
 Nation;' p. 267. 
 
APPENDIX F. 
 
 Vane's Conception of Civil Government, 
 Liberty Regulated by Law and Leg- 
 islation Confined to Civil 
 Things. 
 
 Vane's last effort before Parliament was the 
 reporting a bill for the future and permanent 
 settlement of the government on the basis of 
 his Hfe-long contention. The following were 
 the heads of the bill: 
 
 ''1. That the supreme power, delegated by 
 the people to their trustees, ought to be in 
 some fundamentals not dispensed with;" that 
 is, that a constitution ought to be drawn up and 
 established, specifying the principles by which 
 the successive ''trustees" or representatives, 
 assembled under it, should be guided and 
 restrained in the conduct of the government, 
 and clearly stating those particulars in which 
 they would not be permitted to legislate or act. 
 
190 APPENDIX F. 
 
 2. One point, which was to be determined 
 and fixed in this constitution, so that no leg- 
 islative power should ever be able to alter or 
 move it, was this: ''That it is destructive to 
 the people's liberties (to which, by God's- 
 blessing, they are fully restored) to admit any 
 earthly king, or single person, to the legislative 
 or executive power over this nation." 
 
 3. The only other principle reported as- 
 fundamental, and to be placed at the very 
 basis of the constitution, was this, ''That the 
 supreme power is not entrusted to the people's 
 trustees to erect matters of faith and worship^ 
 so as to exercise compulsion therein." Quoted 
 from John Forster's ^'Statesmen of the Com- 
 monwealth.'^ 
 
APPENDIX G. 
 
 Vane's Denial of all Complicity with 
 THE Execution of the King. 
 
 In his speech at the time of his trial he told 
 his judges: 
 
 ''When that great violation of privileges 
 happened to the ParUament, so as by force of 
 arms several members thereof were debarred 
 coming into the House and keeping their seats 
 there, this made me forbear to come to the 
 Parliament for the space of ten weeks, to wit., 
 from the 3d of December, 1648, till towards 
 the middle of February following, or to meddle 
 in any public transactions; and during that 
 time the matter most obvious to exception, in 
 way of alteration of the government, did 
 happen. I can, therefore, truly say that I 
 had neither consent nor vote at first in the 
 resolutions of the House, concerning the non- 
 addresses to his late Majesty, so neither had I, 
 
192 APPENDIX G. 
 
 in the least, any consent in or approbation to, 
 his death; but on the contrary, when required 
 by the Parliament to take an oath to give my 
 approbation ex post facto, to what was done, I 
 utterly refused, and would not accept of sitting 
 in the Council of State upon those terms, but 
 occasioned a new oath to be drawn, wherein 
 that was omitted." 
 
APPENDIX H. 
 
 Yane's Opposition to Cromwell's Usurpa- 
 tion. 
 
 Extract from Vane's defence at his trial: 
 ''And I do publicly challenge all persons 
 whatsoever that can give information of any 
 bribes or covert ways used by me, during the 
 whole time of my public acting. Therefore I 
 hope it will be evident to the consciences of the 
 jury that what I have done hath been upon 
 principles of integrity, honour, justice, reason, 
 and conscience, and not as suggested in the 
 indictment by instigation of the devil or want 
 of the fear of God. A second great change 
 that happened upon the constitution of the 
 Parliament, and in them, of the very kingdom 
 itself and the laws thereof, to the plucking up 
 of the liberties of it by the very roots, and the 
 introducing of an arbitrary regal power, under 
 the name of Protector, by force and the law of 
 
194 APPENDIX H. 
 
 the sword, was the usurpation of Cromwell, 
 which I opposed from the beginning to the 
 end, to that degree of suffering, and with that 
 constancy, that well near had cost me not only 
 the loss of my estate, but of my very life, if he 
 might have had his will, which a higher than 
 he hindered; yet I did remain a prisoner, under 
 great hardship, four months, in an island, by 
 his order. Hereby that which I have asserted 
 is most undeniably evident, as to the true 
 grounds and ends of my actions all along, that 
 were against usurpation on the one hand, or 
 such extraordinary actings on the other as I 
 doubted the laws might not warrant or in- 
 demnify, unless I were inforced thereunto by 
 an over-ruling and inevitable necessity." 
 
APPENDIX I. 
 
 Vane's Estimate of the Cromwells, 
 Father and Son. 
 
 When Richard Cromwell, fearing lest Vane's^ 
 known hostility and powerful influence should 
 prevail against him, resolved to dissolve the 
 Parliament, the House of Commons determined 
 to resist his action, and ordered that the door& 
 be closed against the official messenger of the 
 Protector, and that he be refused admittance. 
 As the House sat behind closed doors, declining 
 to listen to the Protector's summons to meet 
 him in the House of Lords, Vane addressed the 
 speaker in the following words: 
 
 ''Mr. Speaker — Among all the people of the 
 universe, I know none who have shown so 
 much zeal for the liberty of their country, as 
 the English at this time have done. They 
 have, by the help of divine Providence, over- 
 come all obstacles, and have made themselves- 
 
196 APPENDIX I. 
 
 free. We have driven away the hereditary- 
 tyranny of the house of Stuart, at the expense 
 of much blood and treasure, in hopes of en- 
 joying hereditary liberty, after having shaken 
 off the yoke of kingship; and there is not a 
 man amongst us, who could have imagined 
 that any person would be so bold as to dare 
 to attempt the ravishing from us that freedom, 
 which cost us so much blood and so much 
 labour. But so it happens, I know not by 
 what misfortune we are fallen into the error 
 of those who poisoned the emperor Titus to 
 make room for Domitian, who made away with 
 Augustus that they might have Tiberius, and 
 changed Claudius into Nero, I am sensible 
 these examples are foreign from my subject, 
 since the Romans in those days were buried 
 in lewdness and luxury; whereas the people of 
 England are now renowned, all over the world, 
 for their great virtue and discipline; and yet 
 suffer an idiot without courage, without sense, 
 nay, without ambition, to have dominion in a 
 country of liberty! One could bear a little with 
 Oliver Cromwell, though, contrary to his oath 
 
APPENDIX I. 197 
 
 of fidelity to the Parliament, contrary to his 
 duty to the public, contrary to the respect he 
 owed that venerable body from whom he re- 
 ceived his authority, he usurped the govern- 
 ment. His merit was so extraordinary, that 
 our judgments, our passions, might be blinded, 
 by it. He made his way to empire by the 
 most brilliant actions; he had under his com- 
 mand an army that had made him a conqueror, 
 and a people that had made him their general. 
 But as for Richard Cromwell, his son, who is 
 he? What are his titles? We have seen that 
 he had a sword by his side; but did he ever 
 draw it? And, what is of more importance in 
 this case, is he fit to get obedience from a 
 mighty nation, who could never make a foot- 
 man obey him? Yet we must recognize this 
 man as our king, under the style of Protector! 
 A man without birth, without courage, without 
 conduct. For my part, I declare, sir, it shall 
 never be said that I made such a man my 
 master." 
 
 Richard Cromwell did not again appear in 
 public after this signal defeat. The govern- 
 
198 APPENDIX I. 
 
 merit was administered for a short time in his 
 name, when he formally abdicated. After a 
 brief unsuccessful attempt at a republican 
 administration under a resuscitation of the 
 famous Long Parliament came the restoration 
 of the Monarchy and the execution of Vane, 
 the noble patriot, the fearless champion of the 
 rights of the people, the consistent apostle of 
 human freedom. 
 
 1 
 
APPENDIX J. 
 
 Extract from Vane's Final Confession 
 Before his Execution. 
 
 ^'I die in the certain faith and foresight that 
 this cause shall have its resurrection in my death. 
 My blood will he the seed sown, by which this 
 glorious cause will spring up, which God will 
 speedily raise. Then, laying down this earthly 
 tabernacle is no more but throwing down the 
 mantle by which a double portion of the spirit 
 will fall on the rest of God's people. And if by 
 my being offered up the faith of many be con- 
 firmed, and others convinced and brought to the 
 knowledge of the truth, how can I desire greater 
 honour and matter of rejoicing. As for that 
 glorious cause which God hath owned in these 
 nations and will own, in which so ynany righteous 
 souls have lost their lives, and so many have 
 been engaged by my countenance and encourage- 
 ment, shall I now give it up, and declare them 
 
200 APPENDIX J. 
 
 all rebels and murderers. No, I will never da 
 it; that precious blood shall never lie at my door. 
 As a testimony and seal to the justness of that 
 quarrel, I leave now mi/ life upon it, as a legacy 
 to all the honest interest in these three nations.. 
 Ten thousands deaths rather than defile my 
 conscience, the chastity and purity of which I 
 value beyond all this world! I would not for 
 ten thousand lives part with this peace and 
 satisfaction I have in my own heart both in 
 holding to the purity of my principles, and to 
 the righteousness of this good cause; and to the 
 assurance that I have that God is now fulfilling 
 all these great and precious promises, in order 
 to what he is bringing forth. Although I see it 
 not, yet I die in the faith and assured expectation 
 of it.'' 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Adams, Brooks, quoted, 73, 136, 188. 
 
 Adams, Charles Francis, quoted, 69; compares Win 
 
 throp and Vane, 183. 
 Arnold, S. G., " Hist, of Rhode Island," quoted, 66, 137. 
 
 Baillie, Robert, opinion of Vane, 99; quoted, 141. 
 Bancroft, George, what is due to Vane, 115; quoted, 
 
 169, 170. 
 Barry, John S., quoted, 75, 136, 162, 163, 164. 
 Baxter, Richard, quoted, 90. 
 Bayne, Peter, quoted, 37, 110. 
 Borgeaud, Charles, quoted, 20, 46, 93. 
 Boston's early conditions, 45, 49. 
 Bradshaw, John, 85. 
 Browne, Robert, sketch of, 143. 
 Browning, Robert, quoted, 14, 19. 
 Bryce, James, opinion of Williams, 30. 
 Byington, E. H., quoted, 148. 
 
 Cambridge Platform, 148. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, grotesque portrait of Vane, 100. 
 
 Charles I, oppressions of, 17, 36; character of, 37; 
 
 inaugurated civil war, 86. . 
 
 Clarendon, Lord, instigated Vane's execution, 96; 
 
 characterized Vane, 98, 156. 
 
 14 
 
202 INDEX. 
 
 Clarke, John, founder of a colony, 63 ; sent to England 
 118; brought home second R. I. charter, 125. 
 
 Cobb, Sanford H., quoted, 175. 186. 
 
 Coddington, WilHam, founder of a colony, 63; his 
 autocratic commission, 118; revoked, 120. 
 
 Cotton. John, Boston pastor, 47; famous lines of, 48; 
 entertained Vane, 70; defends Anne Hutchinson, 
 70; remembered by Vane, 80; was he Vane's 
 preceptor, 133; view of toleration, 134, and de- 
 mocracy, 135; hostile to Mrs. Hutchinson, 135; 
 not an Independent. 141. 
 
 Cromwell. Oliver, supported by Vane at first, 88; on 
 most intimate terms, 92; usurpation of, 93; 
 opposed by Vane, 93, 193; famous exclamation, 
 94 ; friend of WiUiams, 125 ; Vane's estimate of, 196. 
 
 Cromwell, Richard, rose to power, 95; Vane's estimate 
 of, 197; abdication, 198. 
 
 Dexter, Henry M., quoted, 143, 147. 
 Diman, Prof. J. L., quoted, 71, 77. 
 Doyle, J. A., quoted, 144. 
 Dyer, WilHam, referred to, 121. 
 Eggleston, Edward, quoted, 74, 188. 
 Eliot, Sir John, sent to the Tower, 36. 
 Encyclopaedia Britannica, quoted, 179. 
 England, condition of, in 17th century, 17, 36; emigra- 
 tions from, 25; hindered by Laud, 26. 
 
 Fiske, John, estimate of Vane, 99. 
 
INDEX. 203 
 
 First Congregational Society in Providence called 
 
 Presbyterian, 149. 
 Firth, C. H., quoted, 92, 176, 177. 
 Forster, John, "Life of Vane," quoted, 26, 83, 84, 87, 
 
 157, 165, 167, 189. 
 
 Garrard, George, quoted, 81. 
 
 'Godwin's "Hist, of the Commonwealth," quoted, 83, 
 
 84, 85. 
 Green's "Short Hist, of England," quoted, 151. 
 
 Hampden, John, 19; associated with Vane, 83; mortally 
 
 wounded, 83. 
 Haselrige, Arthur, referred to, 28. 
 Hooker, Thomas, disputes with WilHams, 51. 
 Hosmer, James K., "Life of Vane," quoted, 47, 77, 
 
 139, 142, 152, 173. 
 Hubbard, WilHam, view of Cotton, 137. 
 Hutchinson Controversy, 69. 
 
 Independency, defined, 142; consistent in England, 
 
 150; Baptists Independents, 150. 
 Ireland, WilHam W., "Life of Vane," 9; calls Vane 
 
 "one of the founders of Rhode Island," 9 ; question 
 
 considered, 64; quoted, 72, 181. 
 Ireton, Henry, referred to, 85. 
 Knowles, James D., quoted, 116. 
 Laud, Archbishop, oppressions, of 37; relation to the 
 
 King, 37; interview with Vane, 38. 
 Lilburne, John, quoted, 92. 
 
204 INDEX. 
 
 Long Parliament dissolved, 94. 
 
 Ludlow, Edmund, quoted. 94. 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, estimate of Vane. 101. 
 
 Marten, Henry, referred to, 84. 
 
 Mason, Major, Williams's letter to, 60. 
 
 Massachusetts Puritans, not Independents, 145; Pres>- 
 
 byterianized Congregationalists, 143, 147. 
 Masson, Professor, quoted, 21. 
 May, Thomas Erskine, quoted, 151. 
 Maurice, Frederic D., quoted, 88. 
 Mead, Edwin D., quoted, 133, 138, 140, 152. 
 Milton, John, friend of Vane, 85, 88; secretary of the- 
 
 council, 85, Areopagitica, quoted, 88; message to- 
 
 Cromwell, 89; relation to WiUiams, 131; sonnet 
 
 to Vane, 132. 
 Neal's Hist, of New England, quoted, 51. 
 New American Cyclopaedia, quoted, 177. 
 
 Osbaldestone, Lambert, referred to, 28. 
 
 Osgood, Herbert L., quoted, 145. 
 
 Peters, Hugh, referred to, 44, 148. 
 
 Petition of Rights, purpose of, 18. 
 
 Phillips, Wendell, praise of Vane, 102. 
 
 Pride's Purge, 87. 
 
 Puritanism defined, 20-23. 
 
 Pym, John, 19, 40; associated with Vane, 83; deatb 
 
 of, 83. 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, quoted, 151. 
 
INDEX. 205 
 
 Reformation in England retarded, 20. 
 
 Rhode Island, first charter, 115; second charter, 124. 
 
 Rich, Sir Nathaniel, referred to, 40. 
 
 Scott, Richard, quoted, 117. 
 
 Scott, Thomas, referred to, 28. 
 
 Self-denying Ordinance and New Model, 89. 
 
 Sikes, George, contemporary arid biographer of Vane, 
 
 quoted, 33, 153, 154, 155. 
 Solemn League and Covenant, 87. 
 St. John, O., referred to, 84, 93. 
 Straus, Oscar, judgment of Vane, 111. 
 Synod of 1637, described, 186. 
 
 ''The Nation," articles in, 138. 
 Thornton, J. Wingate, quoted, 139. 
 
 Upham, Charles W., ''Life of Vane," quoted, 52, 81, 
 168. 
 
 Vane, Sir Henry, Sr., official career, 13, 36. 
 
 Vane, Sir Henry, Jr., birth and ancestry, 11; boyhood 
 and education, 27; conversion to Puritanism, 29; 
 sent to the Continent, 34; resolved to go to New 
 England, 39; letter to his father, 41; his motives, 
 43; reaches Boston, 44; reception, 45; interested 
 in the Williams controversy, 51; described by 
 Winthrop, 53; joins Boston church, 54; one of 
 committee to settle difficulties between Puritan 
 leaders, 54; elected Governor, 54; trouble about 
 i;he flag, 55 ; disagreement with Winthrop, 58 ; 
 
206 INDEX. 
 
 danger from the Indians, 59; relation to Aqiiid- 
 neck, 62; to the Hutchinson controversy, 69;. 
 again breaks with Winthrop, 71; advocates reU- 
 gious Hberty, 71; resigns, 73; defeated by Win- 
 throp, 74; elected to General Court, 75; returned 
 home, 75; reconciled to Winthrop, 78; writes to 
 him, 79; marriage, 82; elected to Parliament; 83; 
 worthy successor of Hampden and Pym, 83; a 
 leader of his party, 84; knighted by Charles I, and 
 treasurer of navy, 86; account of his services, 
 87-90; broke with Cromwell, 88; author of rehgious 
 works, 91; imprisoned, 91; intimate relations, 
 with Cromwell, 92; with WiUiams, 112, 119; 
 opposed to Richard Cromwell, 95; arrested under 
 Charles II and executed, 95; tribute by Clarendon, 
 98; Baillie, 99; John Fiske, 99; Carlyle's por- 
 trait, 100; Sir James Mackintosh's tribute, 101; 
 Hallam's tribute, 102; Wendell PhilUps' tribute, 
 102; indebtedness to, acknowledged by Williams, 
 123; interest in Providence colony, 125; chief bene- 
 factor, 129; Boston statue, 130; a memorial for 
 Providence, 131; fundamental principles of, 105- 
 109; conception of civil government, 189; refused 
 to consent to the King's death, 191; defence at 
 trial, 193; estimate of the Cromwells, 195; final 
 confession, 199. 
 
 Wentworth. Sir Thomas, character of, 14. 
 Whitlocke, B., referred to, 84. 
 
INDEX. 207 
 
 Williams, Roger, trial of, 50; saves English from 
 Indian massacre, 59; secures Aquidneck for 
 Clarke, 63; sent to England, 111; guest of Vane, 
 112, 119; second visit, 117; accompanied by Clarke, 
 118; welcomed by Vane, 119; author of books, 
 119; aided by Vane, 123; on friendly terms with 
 Cromwell, 125; and with Milton, 131; summoned 
 home, 125. 
 
 Wilson, John, opposes Mrs. Hutchinson, 70. 
 
 Winthrop, John, quoted, 51; describes Vane's arrival, 
 53; differed from Vane, 58, 71; defeats Vane, 74; 
 reconciled to Vane, 78; recognizes Vane's services, 
 78; compared with Vane, 183. 
 
 Winthrop, John, Jr., referred to, 44. 
 
 Winthrop, Robert C, quoted, 173. 
 
 Wise, John, pleads for "the old New England Way," 
 147. 
 
 Wood, Anthony, quoted, 28. 
 
A Summer Visit of Three Rhode Islanders 
 to the Massachusetts Bay in \65i 
 
 BY HENRY MELVILLE KING, 
 Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Providence, R. I. 
 
 Cloth, 12 mo., 115 pages. Price, $1.00 net. 
 
 Uniform with Sir Henry Vane, Jr. 
 
 An account of the visit of Dr. John Clarke, 
 Obadiah Holmes and John Crandall, members 
 OF the Baptist Church in Newport, R. I., to 
 William Witter of Swampscott, Mass., in July, 
 1651; ITS innocent purpose and its painful con- 
 sequences. 
 
 "Dr. King's pungent and conclusive essay is a 
 timely contribution. He adduces competent evidence 
 refuting the gratuitous insinuations of Palfrey and 
 Dexter, who charged the Rhode Islanders in question 
 with sinister political motives and excused their alleged 
 maltreatment on that ground. Citations from original 
 documents, with a bibliography, put the reader in 
 position to verify the allegations of the author." — 
 The Watchman. 
 
 "The late Dr. Dexter, along with other Puritan 
 apologists, is again successfully refuted; at the same 
 time recently discovered evidence of Roger Williams' 
 having been banished on account of 'his different 
 opinions in matters of religion,' is advanced out of 
 the mouths of his half-relenting persecutors." — The 
 Evening Post. 
 
 Sent postpaid upon receipt of the price by the 
 publishers. 
 
 PRESTON & ROUNDS CO. 
 
 Providence, R. I. 
 
The Baptism of Roger Williams. 
 
 A Review 
 OF Rev. Dr. W. H. Whitsitt's Inference. 
 
 BY HENRY MELVILLE KING, 
 Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Providence, R. I. 
 
 With an Introduction by Rev. Jesse B. Thomas, D. D. 
 
 Professor of Church History in the Newton 
 
 Theological Institution. 
 
 "We have to thank Dr. King for giving us so careful 
 .and so convincing a statement of the grounds for the 
 traditional belief. It could, indeed, make no difference 
 with our duty as Baptists if Roger Williams had not 
 been immersed; but we are glad to be reassured, by 
 one so competent to present the facts in the case, that 
 we may still claim our great Baptist pioneer as an 
 immersed follower of the Lord. — The Examiner. 
 
 "The argument of the book is decisive, in our 
 opinion, and the book is a valuable contribution to 
 Baptist historical literature." — The Western Recorder. 
 
 Cloth, 12 mo., 145 pages. Price, $1.00 net. 
 
 Uniform with Sir Henry Vane, Jr. 
 
 Sent postpaid upon receipt of the price. 
 
 PRESTON & ROUNDS CO., 
 
 Providence, R. I. 
 
Rcv^ John Myles, and the Founding; of 
 
 Swansea and the First Baptist Church 
 
 in Massachusetts* 
 
 BY HENRY MELVILLE KING, 
 Pastor of the First Baptist Ciiurch, Providence, R. I. 
 
 Cloth, 12 m., 122 pages. Price, $1.00 net 
 
 Uniform with Sir Henry Vane, Jr. 
 
 '* Like all of Dr. King's historical papers, it is lumi- 
 nous, instructive, and interesting, and constitutes a dis- 
 tinct and valuable addition to the literature of the 
 early period of our denominational history." — Zion's 
 Advocate. 
 
 "The clear, easy flowing and invigorating style of 
 
 the author makes the book most delightful reading. 
 
 , So important is the subject treated that the 
 
 book is an especially valuable one." — Providence 
 
 Telegram. 
 
 " An interesting historical study of the Puritan 
 character, and the added notes are historically valua- 
 ble." — Boston Transcript. 
 
 PRESTON & ROUNDS CO. 
 Providence, R. I. 
 
Religious Liberty. 
 
 An Historical Paper. 
 
 BY HENRY MELVILLE KING, 
 Pastor of the First Baptist Church in Providence, R. I. 
 
 "This is one of those highly satisfactory papers in 
 small compass that we sometimes come across that 
 sheds a clearer and more comprehensive light upon a 
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 fervor of the Puritan pen is easily observable in these 
 clear and simple tracings of the direct path of descent 
 of one of the noblest principles of American civiliza- 
 tion. . . . The subject certainly has an able and 
 pleasing expositor." — Boston Transcript. 
 
 " The book is one that will command attention from 
 all thinking people, and its value as a history of the 
 development of religious liberty is great." — Providence 
 Telegram. 
 
 Cloth, 12 mo., 132 pages. Price, $1.00 net. 
 
 Uniform with Sir Henry Vane, Jr. 
 
 Sent postpaid upon receipt of the price. 
 
 PRESTON & ROUNDS CO., 
 Providence, R. I.