Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/128

 war (, i. 304). The unscrupulous tactics by which the permanent establishment of the committee was effected help to explain the reputation for ‘subtlety’ which Vane acquired (ib. i. 343;, Letters, ii. 141, 154, 178, 186).

In the summer of 1644 the committee sent Vane to the camp before York to urge that Fairfax and Manchester should leave the siege to the Scots, and march into Lancashire against Prince Rupert (Vane's letters from the camp are of considerable interest: Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1644). There is ground for believing that, besides his ostensible mission, Vane was charged to propose a plan for the deposition of Charles I, and perhaps for the elevation of the elector palatine to the English throne. But the three generals were unanimous in rejecting the scheme, and it was one of the causes of the friction between the independent and the presbyterian leaders (, i. 367, ii. 27). Vane was one of the parliamentary commissioners at the treaty of Uxbridge in January 1645, but took little part in their debates (Hist. MSS. Comm. 10th Rep. iv. 150;, Memorials, i. 375). He was more prominent as an advocate of the reorganisation of the army and the supersession of the Earl of Essex. When Zouch Tate proposed the self-denying ordinance, Vane seconded his motion (9 Dec. 1644). The speech which Clarendon attributes to Vane upon this occasion is probably fictitious. On 21 Jan. 1645, in the vote appointing Fairfax general, Vane and Cromwell were the two tellers for the majority. On 4 March Vane, as the spokesman of the House of Commons, appealed to the city to provide the money necessary to enable the new army to take the field (Commons' Journals, iv. 26;, p. 236; , ii. 90; , viii. 193, 241, 260).

This conduct completed the breach between Vane and the Scots which his advocacy of toleration had begun. On 13 Sept. 1644 Cromwell, St. John, and Vane persuaded the House of Commons to pass what was called ‘the accommodation order,’ appointing a committee to consider the differences on the question of church government, and, if agreement proved impossible, to devise some means of tolerating ‘tender consciences.’ ‘Our greatest friends,’ complained Baillie, ‘Sir Henry Vane and the solicitor (i.e. St. John), are the main procurers of all this, and that without any regard to us, who have saved their nation, and brought these two persons to the height of the power they enjoy and use to our prejudice.’ Vane, ‘whom we trusted most,’ expressed the view that the accommodation order did not go far enough, and even at the table of the Scottish members of the Westminster assembly had ‘prolixly, earnestly, and passionately reasoned for a full liberty of conscience to all religions’ (, Letters, ii. 230, 235;, ii. 30). Roger Williams, in the preface to his ‘Bloody Tenent of Persecution,’ quotes ‘a heavenly speech’ which he heard uttered by one of the leaders of the parliament. ‘Why should the labours of any be suppressed, if sober, though never so different? We now profess to seek God, we desire to seek light.’ There can be little doubt that Vane was the speaker quoted. The two were old friends, and the charter for Providence Plantation which Williams obtained from the commissioners for the government of the colonies (14 March 1644), Vane's influence had helped him to procure (, ii. 289;, History of New England, i. 608, ii. 215). While thus helping to found a colony based on the widest toleration, Vane also endeavoured to persuade the magistrates of Massachusetts to show more indulgence to religious dissentients. Writing to Winthrop in June 1645, he expressed his fear ‘lest while the congregational way among you is in its freedom and backed with power, it teach its oppugners here to extirpate it and root it out from its own principles and practice’ (ib. ii. 175;, p. 81). As the first civil war drew to its close, the king's last hope was to enlist Vane and the independents on his side by the promise of toleration. An attempt to open negotiations for that purpose in January 1644, through Lord Lovelace, had been frustrated by Vane's revelation of the intrigue (Camden Miscellany, vol. viii.). On 2 March 1646 John Ashburnham, at the command of the king, appealed to Vane to support the king's request for a personal treaty in London. ‘If presbytery,’ he added, ‘shall be so strongly insisted upon as that there can be no peace without it, you shall certainly have all the power my master can make to join with you in rooting out of this kingdom that tyrannical government, with this condition, that my master may not have his conscience disturbed—yours being free—when that work is finished’ (Clarendon State Papers, ii. 226). This second overture Vane also rejected.

In 1646 the presbyterian party gained the upper hand in the Long parliament, and Vane's leadership ended. At the commencement of 1647 he was still in close alliance with Cromwell, and in March Lilburne complained that Cromwell was ‘led by the nose by two unworthy covetous earthworms,’ Vane