Lane came from a minor gentry family which had been seated at Bentley since 1427. His father, a passive Royalist, compounded in 1646 for £225. Lane himself was in arms for the King from the beginning of the Civil War until the surrender of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, compounding at £252 16s. He is said to have been on his way to Worcester with a company of foot when he was told of the royalist defeat. The part which the Lane family, especially his sister Jane, played in Charles II’s escape is well known. He visited the exiled Court in the following year, and was described by Clarendon as ‘a very plain man in his discourse and behaviour, but of fearless courage and integrity superior to any temptation’. He was imprisoned on his return to England, and again during the rising of Sir George Booth, but released on 14 Sept. 1659 on entering into a £400 bond. He was listed among the proposed knights of the Royal Oak at the Restoration with an estate valued at £700 a year, and the Convention voted his sister (who later married Sir Clement Fisher) a reward of £1,000.4Shaw, ii. 95; Staffs. Parl. Hist. (Wm. Salt Arch. Soc.), ii. 128-9; Cal. Comm. Comp. 112, 1424; SP23/227/599, 603; Clarendon, Rebellion, v. 199, 201; H. M. Lane, Lanes of Bentley Hall, 3-6; CJ, viii. 222.
Lane was returned for Lichfield at the head of the poll at the general election of 1661. He was not an active Member of the Cavalier Parliament, being named to only ten committees of secondary importance, including the committee of elections and privileges in three sessions. ‘Very loyal, orthodox and stout, intelligent and active’, he played a much more prominent part locally in taking precautions against possible republican plotters. Listed as a court dependent in 1664, he was granted £2,000 in February 1667 for his eminent services during the Civil War, and given a regiment during the Dutch invasion scare in the summer; but he died on 31 Aug. He was buried at Wolverhampton, the only member of his family to sit in Parliament.5Gentry of Staffs. (Staffs. Rec. Soc. ser. 4, ii), 22; CSP Dom. 1663-4, pp. 152, 155, 346; 1666-7, pp. 525, 600; Shaw, ii. 157.