FANE or VANE, George (1616-63), of Apethorpe, Northants.

The Fanes claimed descent from Howell ap Vane of Monmouthshire, who was knighted by Edward III on the field of Poitiers, although a more authentic, if less romantic, ancestor was one Henry a Vane, who owned land at Tunbridge, Kent, in the mid-fifteenth century. By the late sixteenth century the family was seated at Badsell in Kent, and boasted close family links with the Lords Despenser and Bergavenny, the Wallers of Groombridge, and the Mildmays of Apethorpe, Nothamptonshire. This last alliance was created on the marriage of Francis Fane (later 1st earl of Westmorland) with the Mildmay heiress.17The Gen. xiii. 81-6; CP. George Fane was among the earl’s younger sons but apparently the favourite, being described (to his godfather, George Manners, 7th earl of Rutland) as ‘that poor little knave, who, I hope, will be one day a man able to draw his sword on his godfather’s side, or to crack with the arrantest crack in the north for his horse or his dog’.18Northants. Families, 112. Although, as this letter suggests, George Fane may have been intended from an early age for a military career, he was given a good education first, at Eton College between 1627 and 1632, and then at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, whence he proceeded MA in 1635.19Eton Coll. Reg. 1441-1698, 119; Al. Cant. For most of this period, Fane’s education was in the care of his mother, as his father had died in 1629 (the earldom going to his eldest brother, Mildmay Fane†).20CP.

On 18 November 1635, George Fane, with his elder brother, Anthony, took ship at Rye, bound for Dieppe, from where he went on to enlist as a volunteer in the Low Countries.21CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 353. At the end of the decade he served with his brother the 2nd earl of Westmorland in the bishops’ wars. In the spring of 1639 Fane was commissioned as captain in Sir Jacob Astley’s foot regiment; a year later he was sent to reinforce the garrison at Berwick under a warrant of 1 March 1640; and he may have been the ‘Captain Vane’ who subsequently served in the marquess of Hamilton’s regiment.22E351/292-3.

Fane presumably owed his election at Callington in Cornwall in November 1640 to the interest of his brother’s friends at court, but his activity in the Commons was more independent, as he joined the general criticism of the government. His first appointment was to the committee to enquire after popish recusants (14 Nov. 1640), and he went on to be named to committees to consider accusations against Sir Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford (30 Nov.), petitions against Ship Money (5 Dec.) and the enforcement of laws against Catholic priests and Jesuits (26 Jan. 1641).23CJ ii. 29a, 39b, 45b, 73b. There were limits to Fane’s support for reform, however. In February 1641 he wanted the London petition against bishops rejected out of hand; and in March, he supported the election of Robert Hyde* and Michael Oldisworth* (a client of Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke) for Salisbury.24D’Ewes (N), 337, 432; CJ ii. 95b. The clerk of the Commons almost certainly muddled the record of this division, naming Fane and ‘Mr Ashburnham’ – either John Ashburnham or William Ashbournham – as tellers for the noes. But the parliamentary diarists Sir Simonds D’Ewes and John Moore were clear that Fane and his fellow teller had represented the yeas.25Supra, ‘Salisbury’; Procs. LP ii. 612-13, 618. Fane’s views on the Strafford trial are unknown, but he was clearly susceptible to the rhetoric of men like John Pym, and on 16 March he was added to the committee ‘for the popish hierarchy’, taking the Protestation in May.26CJ ii. 105b, 137a.

From July Fane played no recorded part in Commons’ business, but during the winter of 1641-2, he was once more active in Parliament, usually siding with the opposition to the crown. On 21 December he moved that Dr William Beale, Laudian master of St John’s College, Cambridge, be referred to the committee ‘touching scandalous ministers’, and three days later he joined his cousin Sir Henry Mildmay as a delegation to attend the king with the request for a fast day.27D’Ewes (C), 333, 341. In January 1642 he was on the committee to consider the petition of loyalty to the king sent from Hertfordshire, and on 25 January he was one of those chosen to attend the king with a petition for the better defence of the kingdom against insurgents.28CJ ii. 393a, 394a. In February 1642 Fane moved that Richard Longe, MP for Bristol, should withdraw from the Commons as a monopolist, possibly because Mildmay was one of Longe’s business rivals; although Fane’s support for the release of Sir William Killigrew* may indicate that he now had some sympathy with those around the king.29PJ i. 284, 404. Fane’s last appearance in the Commons, on 23 April 1642, marked a return to his earlier involvement in moves against Catholic influences at court, as he championed a motion to demand that foreign ambassadors should not ‘suffer any of the king’s subjects to come to their masses’.30PJ ii. 208. On 28 June 1642, Fane was given leave to go to the country, and this order apparently marks his last appearance in the House.31CJ ii. 643b.

Bearing in mind his broad sympathies with the king’s opponents, it is perhaps surprising that, on 16 January 1643, the Commons ordered Fane to be ‘put out of the House’, ‘for appearing in arms against the Parliament’.32Add. 18777, f. 127; CJ ii. 929a. The decision to disable Fane may have been influenced by the activities of his eldest brother, who, as an ardent royalist, was arrested by Parliament and imprisoned between October 1642 and February 1644, but this would seem unduly harsh.33CP. In any case, in January 1643 Fane was not strictly speaking ‘in arms against the Parliament’, as his military commission was in the army in Ireland, where he had served, intermittently, since the outbreak of the Irish rebellion in the autumn of 1641. His activities in Ireland appear to have been uncontroversial. At first, he was commissioned as captain in the foot regiment of Sir Simon Harcourt (also known as Richard Gibson’s regiment, after its lieutenant-colonel, who seems to have succeeded Harcourt by 1643), and he is mentioned as fighting in a skirmish at Carrickmines, near Dublin, in March 1642. He mustered with his company at Dublin in May 1642 and at Oxmantown, just outside the capital, in November of the same year; he was again stationed in Dublin in 1643 and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel.34HMC Ormonde, o.s. i. 123, 128, 131, 134, 137, 140, 143, 159. Fane attended the Oxford Parliament in January 1644 and may have served with the royalist army at Marston Moor in July; in the same year he was sufficiently in favour with the king to be awarded the reversion of the clerkship of the court of wards, perhaps at the request of his brother.35Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573; HP Commons 1660-1690; CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 221. When James Butler, 1st marquess of Ormond, surrendered Dublin to Parliament in June 1647, Fane was viewed with suspicion, and he was one of a number of officers put under arrest, despite complaints from the marquess that this was against the articles he had just signed.36CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 698. With the return of Ormond to Ireland in September 1648 Fane was brought back into the royalist army, and was described as a colonel of foot in a muster early in 1649.37HMC Ormonde, o.s. i. 210.

Fane’s regimental command was to prove short-lived. In the spring or early summer of 1649 he abandoned his command in Ireland, and on 28 June presented himself at the Committee for Compounding in London, asking to compound ‘on his own discovery’. On 27 September he was fined £3 – a paltry sum that reflected his position as a landless younger son, with an estate valued at £60.38CCC 2099. The reason for his voluntary capitulation was apparently personal rather than political, as he was negotiating to marry a Warwickshire heiress, and wished to avoid her lands being included in any composition proceedings; the match seems to have been concluded that year, for their son, the future Sir Henry Fane†, was described as aged 18 at his marriage in 1668.39HP Commons 1660-1690. Self-interest also guided Fane’s supine approach to interregnum politics. In the spring of 1651 he was arrested on suspicion of involvement in royalist plots, but released on a bond of £1,000 for his good behaviour when no evidence could be found against him.40CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 113, 135, 175, 188-9, 209, 225. Apart from this brief brush with authority, Fane lived in retirement throughout the decade, and concentrated on building up an extensive landed estate. In June 1653, when he and his wife assigned their Warwickshire property to trustees, they possessed the manor and rectory of Hunningham, and lands in Eythrop, Wappenbury and Long Itchington, and in 1657 they purchased further land in Hunningham. This estate was assigned to their son in May 1659.41Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, DR18/10/61/1, 3-4. In 1656 Fane had purchased two manors in Berkshire, Basildon (on the Thames between Reading and Wallingford), and nearby Braemores, and these were acquired and held on his behalf by his sister, the countess of Bath, and his nephew, Charles Fane†, Lord Despenser.42VCH Berks. iii. 460-1; HP Commons 1660-1690. His attitude to the different commonwealth regimes is unknown, although he presumably welcomed the Restoration of the Stuarts in 1660.

In 1661 Fane was elected as MP for Wallingford, becoming a political ally of his brother, the earl of Westmorland; and in 1662 he was voted compensation for the abolition of the court of wards.43HP Commons 1660-1690. He died in 1663 at his house in the parish of St Andrew’s, Holborn, and was buried at Hatton Garden, within the parish of St Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield. He appears not to have left a will, and the administration of his goods was left in the hands of creditors. He was survived by a daughter, who went on to marry the vicar of Basildon, and by a son, Sir Henry Fane† of Basildon in Berkshire, who sat as MP for Reading in the later seventeenth century. The mortgage of the Basildon estate was granted to Sir Henry by his aunt, the countess of Bath, in 1679, and his son became 1st Viscount Fane.44Northants. Families, 112-3.