With the single exception of Cromwell, the greatest statesman of the heroic age of Puritanism was unquestionably the younger Henry Vane. He did as much as any one to compass the downfall of Strafford; he brought the military strength of Scotland to the aid of the hard-pressed Parliament; he administered the navy with which Blake won his astonishing victories; he dared even withstand Cromwell at the height of his power, when his measures savoured too much of violence. After the death of Pym in 1643, Sir Henry Vane, then thirty-one years of age, was the foremost man in the Long Parliament, and so remained as long as that Parliament controlled the march of events. As Baxter said, "he was that within the House that Cromwell was without." Yet before the beginning of his brilliant career in England, this young man had written his name indelibly upon one of the earliest pages in the history of the American people. It is pleasant to remember that this admirable man was once the chief magistrate of an American commonwealth. Thorough republican and enthusiastic lover of liberty, he was spiritually akin to Jefferson and to Samuel Adams. His career furnishes an excellent illustration of Mr. Doyle's remark, that "by looking at the colony of Massachusetts, we can see what sort of a commonwealth was constructed by the best men of the Puritan party, and to some extent what they would have made of the government of England if they could have had their way unchecked."

An adequate biography of this great statesman was a thing much to be desired. Half a century ago Mr. C. W. Upham contributed to Sparks's "American Biography" an interesting life of Vane; and about the same time Mr. John Forster, in his "Statesmen of the Commonwealth," made a sketch characterized by his usual brilliancy. But both these writers indulged themselves in that kind of indiscriminate eulogy which used in those days to be thought necessary for biographers; and by way of foil to their hero they seemed to feel bound to underrate and misinterpret Cromwell, even as Carlyle seemed to think he was exalting the great, Protector in belittling Vane. The remarkable advance in fairness and breadth of view which historical studies have made within the last fifty years is nowhere better illustrated than in the spirit in which the seventeenth century in England is treated by Masson and Gardiner as contrasted with Macaulay. It is no longer the fashion to depict individuals or parties as wholly saintlike or quite the reverse, and it is beginning to be practically recognized that there are two sides to almost every question.

The need for an adequate life of Sir Harry Vane has been most thoroughly and admirably satisfied by Mr. Hosmer. As a biography and as a historical monograph, it deserves to be ranked among the best books of the day. It paints a lifelike picture of the man, and it describes, in a broad, generous spirit and with keen philosophical insight, the causal succession of events in one of the most momentous political contests the world has ever seen. We are getting far enough away from the seventeenth century to realize the critical importance of the struggle in which kingship was struck down in England just as it was attaining unchecked supremacy in all the other great nations of Europe. We can put the Great Rebellion into its proper place in the series of conflicts which have so far resulted in spreading constitutional government far and wide over two hemispheres; and we can begin to see how disastrous in its consequences would have been the victory of the Cavaliers, true and gallant men as most of them doubtless were. Without dealing too much in generalities, Mr. Hosmer's narrative keeps before us the gravity of the issues at stake, while our attention is seldom drawn away from the powerful but quiet and gracious personality that occupies the centre of the canvas. It is customary for great eras to live in the twilight of popular memory in association with some one surpassing name, while other heroes of the time are dimly remembered or quite forgotten. The work of these other men gets unconsciously transferred to the credit of the most brilliant or striking hero, as Hamilton, for example, is apt to get associated not merely with his own all-important achievements, but likewise with those of Madison and the Federal Convention generally. In accordance with this labour-saving habit of mind, the Great Rebellion in popular memory means Oliver Cromwell, while such men as Eliot and Pym, Fairfax and Ireton, are passed over; and if Hampden stays, it is partly due to the often-quoted line of the poet Gray. So there are many who know Vane only through Milton's sonnet,—itself perhaps the noblest literary tribute ever paid to a statesman. In Mr. Hosmer's pages Sir Harry lives again, one of the brightest figures of the Puritan age, cheerful and affectionate, full of sacred enthusiasm, yet shrewd and self-contained. "He was indeed a man of extraordinary parts, a pleasant wit, a great understanding which pierced into and discerned the purposes of men with wonderful sagacity, whilst he had himself vultum clausum, that no man could make a guess of what he intended." So says Clarendon, who loved him not, but could not help admiring the skill which, at the most critical moment of the war, when many stout adherents of the parliamentary cause were inclined to abandon it as lost, all at once brought light out of darkness, as the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant summoned Alexander Leslie and twenty thousand brawny Scots across the border to stand side by side with Cromwell and Fairfax at Marston Moor. In later days it became matter of common report that the northern Covenanters had fallen a prey to the wiles of "that sweet youth," and allowed themselves to be hoodwinked and cozened by "sly Sir Harry," until, in the hope of establishing Presbyterianism south of the Tweed, they lent themselves to the work of setting the monster Independency upon its feet. Mr. Hosmer carefully examines this charge, and, we think, successfully refutes it. It was neither the first nor the last contract on record which has afterward come to receive conflicting interpretations from the two parties without any tricksome intent on either side. "The Scots," says Mr. Hosmer, "understood that England assumed their own narrow Presbyterianism, with its complete intolerance; Vane and his friends gave the instrument a different interpretation, which they honestly felt it would bear." The amendments which Vane partly succeeded in engrafting upon the Scottish proposals at Edinburgh are sufficient evidence of his straightforwardness. It was plain enough that, in making a league to overcome the King, the Scots wanted one thing, while the English wanted another. Vane did not hide this fact; to have emphasized it would have been to forfeit all claim to diplomatic tact. His part in the memorable negotiation is tersely summed up by Clarendon: "Sir Harry Vane was one of the commissioners, and therefore the others need not be named, since he was all in any business where others were joined with him." In the Committee of Both Kingdoms which the league created he was equally effective, and it was mainly through his persistent dexterity that the committee acquired the control of military affairs, and thus gave to the operations of the parliamentary army that unity which they had hitherto lacked.

The firstfruits of Vane's diplomacy were Marston Moor and Naseby, and it would be unreasonable to find fault with Mr. Hosmer for pausing to describe those battles. They are brilliant episodes in his narrative. We have nowhere seen the two battles more lucidly explained. The author has been himself a soldier, and has looked at the ground with a military eye. One quite envies him the pleasant journey, as on his tricycle he follows the route of the Ironsides over the smooth roads and smiling fields of Merry England. His pages are redolent of the mellow cheer and fragrance of the summer day under that mild northern sun. One catches, with the author, the spirit of the deadly fight, and realizes, as Naseby spire fades away in the distance, the gravity of the crisis and the completeness of the victory. Said stout old Sir Jacob Astley, when the Roundheads took him captive a few months afterward, "Gentlemen, ye may now sit down and play, for you have done all your work, if you fall not out among yourselves."

They were already falling out among themselves; how seriously, Dunbar and Worcester were by and by to show. "Their own generation," says Mr. Hosmer, "believed that the Independents drew their origin from America." Certainly there had been witnessed in Boston, in the year when Harvard College was founded, some noteworthy manifestations of Independency, and scenes had been enacted which had left a deep impress upon Sir Harry's youthful mind. In 1635 the gossips wrote: "Sir Henry Vane hath as good as lost his eldest son, who is gone into New England for conscience' sake; he likes not the discipline of the Church of England;... no persuasions of our bishops nor authority of his parents could prevail with him: let him go." The fascinating boy arrived in Boston in October, 1635, and in the following March, having won all hearts, was elected governor of Massachusetts. He witnessed the Pequot war, the beautiful heroism and rare diplomacy of Roger Williams, and the bitter strife which ensued upon the teachings of Mrs. Hutchinson. Mr. Hosmer gives a vivid picture of the life in the little colony, the theological warfare, and the passionate tears of the young man as the difficulties thickened around him. Perhaps his indiscreet threat of an appeal to the throne in favour of the Antinomians, as he sailed for England in the summer of 1637, may have served to hasten the banishment of Mrs. Hutchinson; but the lesson of toleration was already taking shape in his mind, as was clearly shown in his controversy with Winthrop. His friendly relations with Roger Williams began at the time of the Pequot war; and in 1643, when Williams visited England in quest of a charter for Rhode Island, he was Vane's guest at his house in London, and also at his country seat in Lincolnshire. It was then that Williams wrote that noble book, "The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience," in the preface to which he thus refers to his friend: "Mine ears were glad and late witnesses of an heavenly speech of one of the most eminent of that High Assembly of Parliament: Why should the labours of any be suppressed, if sober, though never so different? We now profess to seek God, we desire to see light!"[23] Mr. Hosmer gives in facsimile a touching letter from Vane to Winthrop in 1645, in which he urges his friends in New England to respect the liberty of conscience.

In 1648, in order to save the cause of liberty from losing to intrigue and chicanery all the ground it had won by the sword, the Ironsides felt themselves called upon to take things into their own hands. This period of the story, extending to the forcible dissolution of the Rump Parliament in 1653, Mr. Hosmer treats under the rubric of American England. For the moment, the spirit of Independency, which reigned supreme in Massachusetts, asserted itself in England in the temporary overthrow of the crown and the aristocracy. In this period Sir Harry appears as the opponent of the extreme measures of his party. He heartily disapproves of such irregular proceedings as Pride's Purge and the execution of the King. Here is shown the strong conservatism of temperament of this law-abiding American-Englishman. He had all the ingrained reverence of our sturdy practical race for constitutional methods, and withal a far-sighted intelligence that could discern ways of settling the difficulty which were for the moment impracticable, because his contemporaries had not grown up to them. In his mind were the rudiments of the idea of a written constitution, upon which a new government for England might be built, with powers neatly defined and limited. One fancies that in some respects he would have felt himself more at home if he could have been suddenly translated from the Rump Parliament of 1653 to the Federal Convention of 1787, in which immortal assembly there sat perhaps no man of loftier spirit than his. It was natural enough that Cromwell, whose stern common sense discerned the practical need of the moment and reluctantly fulfilled it, should cry, "The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!" In spite of this antagonism at the supreme crisis, however, the Protector recognized the worth of his opponent, and seems to have borne him no deep-seated ill will. There was no downright break between them until the Healing Question came up, in 1656.

In Vane's last years there seemed to be some good reasons for distrusting his judgment on practical questions. The element of dreamy enthusiasm always present in him began to come into the foreground as his more sober ideas and plans were thwarted. Some of his latest utterances are like the rhapsodies of the Fifth Monarchists. Herein again appears his spiritual kinship with his friends in Massachusetts. The theocratic ideal of the founders of Massachusetts, as developed freely in the American wilderness, was kept within rational bounds; but if hemmed in by such inexorable circumstances as checked the early growth of republicanism in England, it would very likely have flowered grotesquely enough in Fifth Monarchist vagaries. From Edward Johnson, of Woburn, author of the "Wonder-Working Providence," there often came the dithyrambic utterances of an extreme Fifth Monarchy man.

When Charles II. came back to his father's throne, there was but one thing to be done with such a representative republican as Sir Harry Vane. His head must come off, for there was not room enough in England to hold him and the son of Charles I. at the same time. He died on Tower Hill, with all the fearlessness and charming sweetness that had always marked his life. His memory is a precious possession for all coming generations; and the book in which Mr. Hosmer has told the story of his life, with such warm sympathy and such broad intelligence, is worthy of its subject.

January, 1889.