VICTORIOUS IN DEATH 495 death. Vane has swallowed up death itself into victory. He let fall his mantle, left his body behind, that he had worn nine and forty years, and is gone to keep his everlasting jubilee in God's rest. It is all day with him now, no night or sorrow more, no prisons or death. He is gone from a place where so much as the righteousness of man cannot be endured. He is gone to a place where the righteousness of God is the universal garb of all the inhabitants. He is gone to that better city, the new Jerusalem. He had served his generation in his mortal body, done his work, and was glad to sleep, and go look for his reward somewhere else. You see what this ungrateful world has afforded him for all his kindness-reproach, prisons, and death; he had need have other returns somewhere. Great is his reward in heaven. Well, they have done all they can do to this lover of his country and the laws thereof. But I would willingly have their understandings disabused in one point. Let them not think they have conquered him. They knew him not. He judged his judges at the bar. He triumphed over his executioners at the scaffold R. and the rest. Such a public execution was more eligible than to have lingered out some small time in a prison as a condemned person, liable to any arbitrary after claps, or any future motion or pretence of motion in our troubled sea. He had more ease, God more glory; the honest party of the nation and their just cause more advantage; and, why may I not say, his most intimate friends, and dearest relations more comfort; in this way of his deliverance, one for all."1 1 The body of Sir Henry Vane was given to his friends, who took it next day to the burial place of the family at Shipburne in Kent. In July 1879, Mr Henry M. Vane visited the vault where lie many of his Burnet tells us that it was generally thought that "the government had lost more than it had gained by his death." Pepys, now a courtier, who had hired a room to witness the execution, as he had a taste for such spectacles, goes home deeply moved, to write in his diary: "He changed not his colour or speech to the last." "In all things, he appeared the most composed man that ever died in that manner, and showed more of heat than of cowardice, but yet with all humility and gravity." Pepys was impressed by the saying of a sympathiser that "the king hath lost more by that man's death than he will get again a good while." In summing up the character of Henry Vane, we may use the words of an ancient historian: Vir supra humanam potentiam magnitudine animi præditus. 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 knows not whether most to admire the correctness of his political 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 devoted 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 religious views in no way dimmed his charity or impeded his activity, while ancestors. The remains of Sir Henry Vane were found to be in a solid leaden coffin. The receptacle for the head projects beyond those above it. On it is a cast of the head showing the shape of the several features. See the History of the Wrays of Glentworth, Aberdeen, 1881, vol. ii., P. 123, note. they strengthened the earnest tone of his mind, and gave a firmness to his character, which, as some thought, he did not naturally possess. The very purity of this great man's life may detract from the interest of his life. In the present state of popular taste, most readers look for a flavour of vice in their fiction, and possibly something rank in what history they can relish. The ancient historians made history a school for virtue and heroic deeds, and a terror to tyranny and wickedness; literary aspirants nowadays seek notoriety by displaying their skill in whitewashing Ethiopians, as a young advocate desires to gain reputation by defending a great criminal. Is there any perfidy, any usurpation, any tyranny, any blood-guiltiness for which some historiographer of to-day has not found specious excuses, if it only be joined to a fleeting success? Nevertheless, let us indulge the hope that there are still some to whom the example of a noble and unselfish life will not be lost. By his wife, Frances Wray, Sir Henry had 10 children, 5 sons, and 5 daughters. The three eldest sons died unmarried; the fourth without children. The fifth, and only surviving son, Christopher, was reinstated in his father's possessions, and made a peer under the title of Baron Barnard of Barnard Castle. Of one of his descendants, the third Earl of Darlington, it has been aptly said that "though he had an enormous interest at stake in the existence of the rotten boroughs, he was amongst the foremost to promote the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832, the measure his great ancestor had been the first to propose to parliament." He was made Duke of Cleveland. His three sons, who succeeded him and each other, dying without children, the title of duke ceased, and the estates fell to the descendants of the Honourable Morgan Vane, son of Gilbert, second Baron Barnard, and brother of the third baron, and first Earl of Darlington. The present holder of the stately pile of Raby Castle is Henry de Vere Vane, Lord Barnard. APPENDIX SOME EXTRACTS FROM VANE'S Meditations concerning Man's Life penned by this Sufferer in his Prison State ON LIFE IT is a principal part of wisdom to know how to esteem Life; to hold and preserve, to loose or give it up. There is scarce anything dearer than Life, esteem Life for itself, live, not but to live. Others think the shortest Life best; either not to be born at all, or else to die quickly. There are two extremes. That comes nearer Truth; a wise man said, Life is such a good, that if a man knew what he did in it, he would not accept it, at least not desire it, vitam nemo cuperet, si daretur tantum scientibus. Wise men, in living, make a virtue of necessity-live as long as they should, not as long as they can. There is a time to live and a time to die, a good death is far better and more eligible than an ill life. A wise man lives but so long as his life is more worth than his death. The longer life is not always the better. To what end serves a long life? Simply to live, breathe, eat, drink, and see this world? What needs so long a time for all this? Methinks we should soon be used with the daily repetition of these and the like vanities. Would we live long to gain knowledge, experience, and virtue? This seems an honest design, but is better to be had other ways by good men, when their bodies are in the grave. None usually employ their time so ill in this world as 499 |