Clarendon and Baxter both lay stress on the element of the fanatic in Vane’s nature; and in a later section of the History Clarendon speaks of it emphatically:  ...  ’Vane being a man not to be described by any character of religion; in which he had swallowed some of the fancies and extravagances of every sect or faction, and was become (which cannot be expressed by any other language than was peculiar to that time) a man above ordinances, unlimited and unrestrained by any rules or bounds prescribed to other men, by reason of his perfection.  He was a perfect enthusiast, and without doubt did believe himself inspired’ (vol. vi, p. 148).

Milton’s sonnet, to Vane ‘young in yeares, but in sage counsell old’ gives no suggestion of the fanatic: 

          besides to know
  Both spirituall powre & civill, what each meanes
  What severs each thou ’hast learnt, which few have don. 
  The bounds of either sword to thee wee ow. 
  Therfore on thy firme hand religion leanes
  In peace, & reck’ns thee her eldest son.

There was much in Vane’s views about Church and State with which Milton sympathized; and the sonnet was written in 1652, before Cromwell broke with Vane.

See also Pepys’s Diary, June 14, 1662, and Burnet’s History of His Own Time, ed.  Osmund Airy, vol. i, pp. 284-6.

Page 150, ll. 13, 14. Magdalen College, a mistake for Magdalen Hall, of which Vane was a Gentleman Commoner; but he did not matriculate.  See Wood’s Athenae Oxonienses, ed.  Bliss, vol. iii, col. 578.

l. 17.  He returned to England in 1632; he had been in the train of the English ambassador at Vienna.

ll. 25 ff.  He transported himself into New England in 1635.  He was chosen Governor of Massachusetts in March 1636 and held the post for one year, being defeated at the next election.  He retransported himself into England in August 1637.

Page 151, ll. 27-9.  ’In New Hampshire and at Rhode Island.  The grant by the Earl of Warwick as the Governor of the King’s Plantations in America of a charter for Providence, &c., Rhode Island, is dated March 14, 164-3/4; Calendar of Colonial State Papers, 1574-1660, p. 325.  The code of laws adopted there in 1647 declares “sith our charter gives us power to govern ourselves ... the form of government established in Providence plantations is democratical.” Collections of the Massachusetts Hist.  Soc., second series, vol. vii, p. 79.’—­Note by Macray.

Page 152, ll. 2, 3.  He married Frances, daughter of Sir Christopher Wray, of Ashby, Lincolnshire.

ll. 5, 6.  He was made joint Treasurer of the Navy in January 1639, and was dismissed in December 1641.

ll. 10 ff.  Strafford was created Baron of Raby in 1640.  At the conclusion of Book VI Clarendon says that the elder Vane’s ’malice to the Earl of Strafford (who had unwisely provoked him, wantonly and out of contempt) transported him to all imaginable thoughts of revenge’.  Cf. p. 63, l. 25.