Baxter has an account of Vane in his Autobiography: 'He was the Principal Man that drove on the Parliament to go too high, and act too vehemently against the King: Being of very ready Parts, and very great Subtilty, and unwearied Industry, he laboured, and not without Success, to win others in Parliament, City and Country to his Way. When the Earl of _Strafford_ was accused, he got a Paper out of his Father's Cabinet (who was Secretary of State) which was the chief Means of his Condemnation: To most of our Changes he was that _within_ the House, which _Cromwell_ was _without_. His great Zeal to drive all into War, and to the highest, and to cherish the Sectaries, and especially in the Army, made him above all Men to be valued by that Party ... When Cromwell had served himself by him as his surest Friend, as long as he could; and gone as far with him as their way lay together, (_Vane_ being for a Fanatick Democracie, and _Cromwell_ for Monarchy) at last there was no Remedy but they must part; and when _Cromwell_ cast out the Rump (as disdainfully as Men do Excrements) he called _Vane_ a Jugler' (_Reliquiæ Baxterianæ_, Lib. I, Part I, p. 75). This account occurs in Baxter's description of the sectaries who were named after him 'Vanists'. 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 _Athenæ 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.