Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 32.djvu/81

 definite leaked out, the fact that a lady, before whom he had ridden in the disguise of her manservant, had been principally concerned in it, actually got into print within a month of Charles's arrival in Paris (13 Oct.) Colonel Lane accordingly determined to remove his sister to France, and, disguised as peasantfolk, they made their way on foot from Bentley Hall to Yarmouth, where they took ship for the continent in December. Arrived there they threw off their disguise and posted to Paris, having sent a courier in advance to apprise Charles of their approach. Charles came from Paris to meet them, accompanied by Henrietta Maria and the Dukes of York and Gloucester, and gallantly saluting Jane Lane on the cheek, called her his ‘life’ and bade her welcome to Paris. After residing some little time at Paris, where she was treated with great distinction by the court, Jane Lane entered the service of the Princess of Orange, whom she attended to Cologne in 1654. She was also one of the very small retinue which the princess took with her when she went incognito with Charles to Frankfort fair in the autumn of 1655. Three letters from Charles to her, written during the interregnum, are extant. Two are subscribed ‘your most affectionate friend,’ and one ‘your most assured and constant friend.’ All have been printed, one in the ‘European Magazine,’ 1794, ii. 253, reprinted in Seward's ‘Anecdotes,’ 1795, ii. 1, and Clayton's ‘Personal Memoirs of Charles II,’ i. 338; another in Hughes's ‘Boscobel Tracts,’ 2nd edit. p. 87; the third in the Historical MSS. Commission's 6th Rep. p. 473 (for her own letters see Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep. App. p. 253, 4th Rep. App. p. 336). Nor was her devotion forgotten at the Restoration. The House of Commons voted her 1,000l. to buy herself a jewel, and Charles gave her a gold watch, which he requested might descend as an heirloom to every eldest daughter of the Lane family for ever. It passed into the possession of Mrs. Lucy of Charlecote Park, Warwickshire, as then eldest daughter of the house of Lane, and was soon stolen from that house by burglars. A pension of 1,000l. was also granted to Jane Lane, and another of 500l. to her brother. Her pension was paid with fair regularity, being only six and a half years in arrear on the accession of James II, who caused the arrears to be made good and the pension continued. It was also continued by William III. Her portrait, attributed to Lely, with one of Charles painted expressly for her in 1652, is now in the possession of Mr. Lane of Kings Bromley manor, Staffordshire, the direct descendant of Colonel Lane of Bentley. The features are said to resemble those of Anne Boleyn. A portrait of her by Mary Beale, with a miniature of Charles II by Cooper, and a deed of gift of money from him to her and her sisters, is at Narford Hall, Brandon, Norfolk, the seat of Mr. Algernon Charles Fountaine. Other relics of Jane Lane are two snuff-boxes, one engraved with a profile of Charles I in silver, the other with a portrait of Charles II; and a pair of silver candlesticks inscribed ‘given to J. L. by the Princess Zulestein.’ These are now the property of Mr. John Cheese of Amersham, Buckinghamshire. The assistance so bravely rendered to Charles II by Jane Lane is one of the historical incidents selected for the frescoes in the lobby of the House of Commons.

Jane Lane married, after the Restoration, Sir Clement Fisher, bart., of Packington Magna, Warwickshire, whom she survived, dying without issue on 9 Sept. 1689. She is said to have left but 10l. behind her, it being her rule to live fully up to her income, which she pithily expressed by saying that ‘her hands should be her executors.’

 LANE, JOHN (fl. 1620), verse-writer, lived on terms of intimacy with Milton's father. His friends also included ‘Thomas Windham, Kensfordiæ, Somersettensis,’ Matthew Jeffery master of the choristers at Wells Cathedral, and 'George Hanscombe, Somersettensis.’ The approval he bestows on the Somerset poet Daniel, and his description of his own verse as ‘Lane's Western Poetry,’ in contrast with ‘Tusser's Eastern Husbandry,’ further strengthen the assumption that he was connected by birth with the county of Somerset (cf. Triton's Trumpet, infra). In his dedication of ‘The Squire's Tale’ to the poets laureate of the universities he says that he had had no academic 