Few have been more unfairly represented than Sir Harry Vane the younger, member for Hull. Though son of the Comptroller of His Majesty's household, and brought up at Court, he was, when a youth, reported to the King as "grown into dislike of the discipline and ceremonies of the Church of England." Not long after this, it was stated in a letter, that he had left his father, (old Sir Harry Vane,) his mother, and his country, and that fortune which his father would have left him, and for conscience' sake was gone to New England.[75] There he became Governor of Massachusetts, and, in that capacity, carried out the principles of religious toleration with a consistency and an equity so unique, as to offend many of the colonists, who, while advocates of religious freedom, persecuted, through mistaken fears, a sincerely religious woman, only because she was obstinate and fanatical. Returned to England, young Vane became not only member of the Short Parliament, but received knighthood from Charles I., and joined Sir W. Russel in the Treasurership of the Navy--a proceeding which indicated at the time something of a conciliatory disposition on both sides. With a philosophical temperament of the imaginative cast, and with strong religious tendencies in a mystical direction; smitten also with the charms of Plato's republic, and longing for the realization of his ideal within the shores of England, Vane seemed to many of his sober-minded contemporaries an enthusiast and a visionary; yet it would be difficult to disprove the testimony of Ludlow, that "he was capable of managing great affairs--possessing, in the highest perfection, a quick and ready apprehension, a strong and tenacious memory, a profound and penetrating judgment, a just and noble eloquence, with an easy and graceful manner of speaking. To these were added a singular zeal and affection for the good of the Commonwealth, and a resolution and courage not to be shaken or diverted from the public service."[76] Probably no man, at the beginning of the Long Parliament, so thoroughly grasped or could so well advocate the principles of religious liberty as Sir Harry Vane. There he sat in old St. Stephen's, with a refined expression of countenance, most pleasant and prepossessing; a person, says Clarendon, "of unusual aspect, which made men think there was somewhat in him of extraordinary."[77]