GARDENS OLD AND NE\Y 





EAST ENTRANCE. 



men to the skirmish on Rowton Heath, by Chester, 

 came by his end like a loyal cavalier. His son, Sir 

 George, inherited an estate which had suffered through 

 his father's loyalty, but was able to repair all. Sand- 

 ford, describing his "most princelike palace," gives 

 us his picture in 1675 as a "very brave monsir ; 

 great houskeper, hunter and horse cowrser ; never 

 without the best runing hors or two, the best he can 

 get." His successor, Sir Henry, was the last of the 

 house. Though born in the Restoration year, he 

 lacked the light-heartedness of his age, and the 

 merriment of the London which had slammed the 

 door on the Puritan was not for him. Bishop 

 Nicolson of Carlisle found him living a gloomy and 

 reserved bachelor at his house of Hutton-in-the- 

 Forest, a changed place since the year when, a young 

 archdeacon with antiquarian tastes, he had first dined 

 with old Sir George. In 1684, writes the archdeacon, 

 " habe ich gespeiset zu Hutton," for being bred at 

 Leipzig he loved to mix English with High Dutch 

 in his diary, and doubtless there was good company 

 from all the country-side on that day. But in 1705 

 the bishop says nothing of guests. " Mr. Archdeacon 

 and I went to Hutton and dined with Sir H. F., who 

 will not bear touching upon his presumed desertion 

 of the Protestant faith." He had indeed deserted 

 his Protestantism, and soon afterwards he made a 

 settlement of his estate and went beyond sea to 

 Douay, that ancient refuge for English exiles of the 

 Roman obedience. There he took the vows of a 

 monk, and Hutton eventually passed to Henry 

 Vane, his sister's son. 



From Harry Vane, a fifteenth century Kentish 

 yeoman, sprang, as generations passed, the founders 

 of several noble houses, from dukedoms to baronies, 

 and from him also sprang the Vanes of Hutton-in- 

 the-Forest. Sir Harry Vane, the elder, is their 

 ancestor, that stirring and boisterous man, industrious 

 and bold, who began Court life with the purchased 

 office of a carver. In his hands the investment 

 prospered, until from a squire of lands worth under 

 ^500 by the year he swelled to be a Privy Councillor, 

 a Secretary of State and a knight with rents of ^3,000 

 at the least. He bought for his chief seat the noble 

 castle of Raby, once of the Westmorlands, where he 

 entertained the sovereign whose forces in after years, 

 headed by his own son George, captured it by sudden 

 surprise. 



Of his son Harry, "the younger Vane," history 

 has spoken. A Puritan mystic from his youth 

 upward, Harry Vane the younger took up his 

 father's feud with Wentworth, who had made 

 enemies of all the Vanes by wantonly choosing for 

 himself a title from their newly-bought castle 

 of Raby. " Vane, young in year but in sage 

 council old," was reckoned within the walls of the 

 Parliament an equal force to the Lord General 

 without, and when, after the Restoration, he died 

 steadfastly on the scaffold, a ruffle of drums and 

 a flourish of trumpets drowning his last words, 

 even the vindictive Cavaliers knew that they 

 had slain a great man, and had no joy of their 

 revenge. Sir George Vane, the younger brother of 

 this Puritan knight, must have been a simpler soul, 



